Corrie and her family are famous for sheltering Jews from the Gestapo. They helped around 800 escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and after being imprisoned and released, Corrie spent the rest of her life sharing her testimony around the world. Lets dive a bit deeper into her story to get to know her a bit more…
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Cornelia Johanna Arnalda ten Boom, known simply as Corrie ten Boom, was born on April 15th, 1892 in Haarlem Netherlands. She grew up in a close-knit, Christian family with three older siblings, Betsie, Nollie, and Willem. Her parents, Casper and Cor raised the family in the Dutch Reformed Church. Even before the Nazis invaded in 1940, the ten Boom home was a place of refuge for many, and Corrie’s family supported early efforts to improve Christian-Jewish relations. In 1844, Corrie’s grandfather began a weekly prayer service in his home to pray for Jewish people. Corrie’s brother, Willem, a minister assigned to convert Jews, studied anti-semitism. The whole ten Boom family were well-known for showing kindness and hospitality to others, regardless of their abilities, or status in society.
Corrie experienced much heartbreak as a young woman. Her mother died when Corrie was 29 years old, and the man Corrie expected to marry, suddenly announced his engagement to a woman of wealth. Corrie’s father encouraged her during this time to ask God to redirect her love to Him, and Corrie gradually grew in her faith and love for the Lord. In her early twenties, Corrie began working with several disabled children, as well as teaching Sunday School, and Bible classes in public schools. She ran a network of Christian children’s clubs, and continued to lead these until the Germans forbid such meeting groups.
In 1837, Corrie’s grandfather started a watchmaker’s shop, and her father continued the family business. Corrie observed her father at work, and trained to be a watchmaker, and in 1922, she became the very first woman in the Netherlands to gain her watchmaker license. Shortly afterwards, her father invited her to join the family business. With her contribution, the business began to flourish. The ten Boom’s watchmaking business helped to provide for the family, as well as to reach out to help others. This watchmaking business played a key role in allowing the ten Boom family to shelter Jews from the Gestapo.
In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie writes that it was her father who first inspired her to help the Jews of Holland. Shortly after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Corrie’s family invited a pastor to their home, and Corrie asked the pastor if he would help hide a Jewish mother and newborn infant, to which he replied, “No, definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child!” Corrie’s father suddenly appeared at the doorway and said, “Give the child to me, Corrie.” He held the baby close, saying, “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.” After that, many more families found refuge in the ten Boom home.
The ten Boom home was the same building as the watchmaking business, and Corrie used her watchmaking business as a cover to build contacts with resistance workers, who helped her attain ration books, and build a hiding place inside her home. Corrie’s bedroom was situated at the very top of the house, which was the ideal place to hide refugees. The resistance workers hid bricks and mortar in large grandfather clocks, and carried them up the stairwell to Corrie’s room, where they built a fake wall and a closet with a crawl space which could hide six to seven people. Corrie made everyone practice drills so they were prepared to hide themselves, and all their belongings in the hiding place in under a minute and a half. They practiced this routinely, and were able to hide very quickly, in just under a minute and a half.
On February 28th, 1944, after being betrayed by a fellow Dutch citizen, the Germans stormed into the ten Boom home, and arrested 30 people, including the ten Boom family. Seven resistance members were spared, however, preserved by the hiding place in Corrie’s room. There they stayed for two days without food or water, until the Gestapo finally stopped watching the home. Resistance members entered the home, and helped those who were hiding to escape. All but one of those seven survived the war.
Ten days after the ten Booms were arrested, Corrie’s father, Casper died in prison. Corrie and Betsie were initially separated, but after some time they were reunited, and sent to a concentration camp in the Netherlands.
In Sep 1944, they were sent to the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. Books, especially Bibles were forbidden at these concentration camps, but Corrie describes a miraculous event when she was able to sneak a New Testament into the camp by hiding it in the folds of her dress. She says that she asked God to send his angels to protect her, and as she walked through the inspection line after Betsie, it was almost as though the guards did not see her: they skipped her, and checked the next person, but Corrie was somehow able to walk through without being inspected!
Corrie and Betsie witnessed to the women in the barracks, and held worship services every night. They started off timidly, but night after night, the guards never bothered them, and they grew bolder, and eventually found themselves surrounded by a crowd eager to participate.
Betsie seemed to play a significant role in the shaping of Corrie’s faith, and Corrie tells of how Betsie especially helped Corrie to see the best in every circumstance, even in the midst of their sufferings. When they first arrived at the barracks, the place was dirty, and crowded, and covered in fleas and lice, and yet Betsie continually encouraged Corrie to give thanks to God for everything. Corrie says that Betsie told her to even “thank God for the fleas!” to which Corrie said, “The fleas! Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.” Then one evening, Corrie found Betsie with her face beaming, and eyes, twinkling, “You’re looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself.” Corrie said to her. Betsie said she had never understood why they had so much freedom in the barracks to worship, and pray, but that she finally understood why. Corrie writes, “Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: ‘Because of the fleas, Corrie! That place is crawling with fleas!’ I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.”
What an amazing example of how God can redeem even the small parts of our suffering, and allow good to come from it. Because of the fleas, the guards did not want to go into their living quarters, which meant Corrie and Betsie, and all the women with them had the freedom to worship and pray as much as they wanted to when they were in the barracks.
Betsie experienced poor health during her childhood, and became very ill during her time at the barracks. Shortly before she died in Dec 1944, Betsie claimed she experienced three visions from God about what she and Corrie were to do after they were released. The first vision was a home for former prisoners. The second was to own a concentration camp where they could teach Germans to love again, and the third was that they would be released before the New Year. All three of these visions came true!
Miraculously, two weeks after Betsie’s death, Corrie ten Boom was released from prison due to some kind of a clerical error. Corrie always refers to this event as another of God’s miraculous interventions. Corrie was set free, but all the other women her age were sent to the gas chamber.
After she was released, Corrie returned to the Netherlands, and set up a rehabilitation center for concentration camp survivors. She even took in and ministered to those who had cooperated with the Germans during the occupation.
In 1946, Corrie began a worldwide ministry, and over the following years she visited more than 60 countries. During this time she wrote a number of books, including The Hiding Place, Tramp for the Lord, and In My Fathers House. She spoke at several conferences, and continually shared her testimony. On one very notable occasion, Corrie was sharing a message on forgiveness when she was met face to face with one of her captors from her time in a concentration camp. Here is a little portion of her own words describing this encounter:
“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.
It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.
“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”
The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.
It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.
“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.
Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”
Corrie continued her ministry into her old age, and in 1977, at 85 years old, she decided to retire from public life. In 1978, Corrie suffered a series of strokes that left her paralyzed and unable to speak. Corrie ten Boom went to be with Jesus on April 15, 1983, on her 91st birthday.
Corrie’s legacy continues to inspire and challenge many throughout the world today, and her testimony will undoubtedly live on throughout history.