Corrie ten Boom

Cornelia Johanna Arnalda ten Boom, is known to the world asCorrie ten Boom, (April 15, 1892 – April 15 1983). Corrie was rasied as a devout Christian, and believed fully in the equality and value of every person. Because of her strong faith, Corrie felt inclined to help the struggling and persecuted Jews during the Holocaust. Corrie was one of the leaders of the Dutch resistance during Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. She helped many Jews escaped and was eventually imprisoned in a concentration camp with her father and her sister, Betsie. Both her father and her sister died. Corrie was released due to a clerical error one week before all the women her age were sent to the gas chamber. Corrie dedicated her life to speaking about God's love and forgiveness, she traveled and spoke in over 60 countries.

Corrie was born on April 15, 1892 in Haarlem, North Holland. She spent the later part of her life in California, where she died on her birthday in 1983, she was 91 years old. In December of 1967, Corrie ten Boom was declared a member of the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

Pre-war Life

The Beje: The Ten Boom watch shop and home in Haarlem.

Casper and Cor ten Boom married in 1884 and were blessed with four children: Betsie, Willem, Nollie, and Corrie. The parents raised their children with the upmost faith in God and in the Christian religion. However, in one major respect, they differed from many people of the time. Casper love and respected all people, no matter their religion or race. He was not fooled or pursuaded to believe the falso propaganda pervading Europe at the time. Casper passed on this respect and love to his children. Corrie records memories from part of her childhood, which was spent in Amsterdam before the family made a permanent move to Haarlem (a neighboring town).

"My (parents). . . had opened a small jewelry store in a narrow house in the heart of the Jewish section of Amsterdam. There, in Amsterdam in that narrow street in the ghetto they met many wonderful Jewish people. They were allowed to participate in their Sabbaths and in their feasts. They studied the Old Testament together..." (Ten Boom, 1974, p. 133)

The strong Christian beliefs permeated every aspect of Corries life. The family prayed together daily and attended church, as well as doing many service activities. In Corries later life, when it was just her father, Betsie and herself living at the Beje (their home in Haarlem), the trio read their scriptures together morning and night.

The Ten Boom children grew into people of kindness and service. Corrie, herself, began working with several of the diabled children in her area when she was in her twenties and thirties. She describes her family and their lives in detail in her famous novel, The Hiding Place. Corrie grew up as the youngest child, remember how respected and loved her parents were in the community in which they lived. Her mother, Cor, was a continuing example of generosity, kindness, and selfless service. She was often seen carrying a baskets full of homemade bread and other food taking them to people in times of need. She also was a gentle woman, who raised her children with an abundance of love. The family suffered heartbreaking shock when Cor died of a stroke.

The Ten Boom house in Haarlem, North Holland, was affectionately named the Beje. It was a place of comfort, love, and refuge, even before the role it would serve in World War II. In 1918, the Ten Boom family took in the first of many children that they would take in and care for. Casper Ten Boom took over his father's watch shop, which had been opened in 1834. He was a well-loved and well-repected watch repairman, but as Corrie observed, not a very good buisnessman. He couldn't bare to turn people away if they couldn't pay, and he often did much of his work for free. Because of these generous actions, the family struggled with money, until Corrie came to work at the shop. In 1920, Corrie began training as a watchmaker, and two years later she became the very first female watchmaker to gain her license in the Netherlands. When Corrie entered the profession, her father found her to be an astute buisness woman, and he gladly let her take over the finances and books of the buisness. With Corrie's firm, but kind hand, the business began to flourish. It never made a large sum of money, but it gave enough to care for the Ten Boom family and the people they cared for throughout the years.

The Ten Boom family was close, even after Nollie and Willem were married, they stayed in Haarlem and the family got together often. Betsie, who was often sick due to being born with pernicious anemia, never married. Betsie, being the eldest, was describe by her sister as being rigidly honest, with a knowledge that God would always help and care for her if she follwed his ways. Corrie describes her elder brother, Willem, as being obsessed with politics, seeing the darker side of life, and graduating from theology school. Willem had four children, one of them, Christiaan, died at the age of 24 in Bergen Belsen concentration camp for his work in the dutch underground. Willem worked along side with Corrie in the dutch underground, helping to save the lives of many. Nollie had six children and also helped her family in their work with the dutch underground. Corrie Ten Boom never married. She did have one great love, a man named Karel, whom she dated and kissed and believed that she would marry. When Karel went off to school he married another and Corrie vowed that she would never love another man again. She was not sad by this fact, she had a full and amazing life, which she led to the fullest extent.

In 1923, Corrie Ten Boom helped to organize various clubs for girls. In the 1930s, these clubs became the very large Triangle club.^[1]

Activities during the Holocaust

The hiding place in Corrie's room. Six Jews were able to hide in the small space at a time.

In 1940 the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and banned Ten Boom's club organization. By 1942 she and her family had become very active in the Dutch underground, hiding refugees. Ten Boom was able to rescue many Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazi SS. The family's work in saving Jews was motivated by their staunch Christian beliefs. They helped Jews without forcing conversion, and they even provided Kosher food and honored the Sabbath.

The entrace to the hiding place, through the bottom of Corrie's closet.

Corrie credits her father's example in inspiring her to help the Jews of Holland. She tells of an incident in which she asked a pastor who was visiting their home to help shield a mother and newborn infant. He replied, "No definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child." She went on to say, "Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. 'Give the child to me, Corrie,' he said. Father held the baby close, his white beard brushing its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby's . 'You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family'" (Ten Boom, 1971, p. 99).

Corrie describes a typical evening in which they would use their secreted Bible to hold worship services: "At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity. But as night after night went by and no guard ever came near us, we grew bolder. So many now wanted to join us that we held a second service after evening roll call. . . (These) were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting night might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a sotto-voce chant by Easter Orthodox women. With each moment the crowd around us would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed."

"At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, and back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the light bulb" (Ten Boom 1971, p. 201)

Betsie, never strong in health, grew steadily weaker and died on December 16, 1944. Some of her last words to Corrie were, "...(we) must tell them what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here." (Ten Boom, 1971, p. 217)

However, the Jews they had been hiding at the time of their arrests had been hidden so well that they remained undiscovered and all except one survived the Occupation.

The Germans arrested the entire ten Boom family on February 28, 1944 with the help of a Dutch informant (Corrie would later discover his name to be Jan Vogel); they were sent first to Scheveningen prison, then to the Vught political concentration camp (both in the Netherlands), and finally to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany in September 1944, where Ten Boom's sister Betsie died. Ten Boom was released in December 1944. ^[2]

In the movie The Hiding Place, Ten Boom narrates the section on her release from camp, saying that she later learned that her release had been a clerical error: it so happened that the women prisoners her age in the camp were killed in the week following her release.

Post-war

After the war Corrie returned to the Netherlands to begin rehabilitation centres. She returned to Germany in 1946, and many years of itinerant preaching in over sixty countries followed, during which time she wrote many books.

The Hiding Place

Ten Boom told the story of her family and their work during World War II in her most famous book, The Hiding Place (1971), which was made into a film of the same name by World Wide Pictures in 1975. The book and film give context to the story of Anne Frank, who was also in hiding in the Netherlands during the war.

Religious views

Her preaching focused on the Christian Gospel, with emphasis on forgiveness.

In her book Tramp for the Lord (1974), she tells the story of how, after she had been preaching in Germany in 1947, she was approached by one of the cruelest former Ravensbrück camp guards. It was in a church in Munich where I was speaking in 1947 that I saw him—a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

Memories of the concentration camp 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 of skin.

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 Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: "A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!"

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 Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard there. 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. Fraulein—" again the hand came out—"will you forgive me?"

And I stood there—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."

Still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But 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 former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.

She was reluctant to forgive him, but prayed that she would be able to.  She wrote that she was then able to forgive, and that

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.

She also wrote (in the same passage) that in her post-war experience with other victims of Nazi brutality, it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.

She is known for her rejection of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture doctrine. Her writings claim that it is without Biblical foundation, and she has claimed that the doctrine left the Christian Church ill-prepared in times of great persecution such as in China under Mao Zedong.

Later years and death

In 1977, Ten Boom, then 85 years old, moved to Orange, California. Successive strokes in 1978 took her powers of speech and communication and left her an invalid. She died on April 15, 1983, on her ninety-first birthday. She was said to have been happy to be about to die on her birthday because she could "celebrate it with the Lord."

Legacy

Ten Boom was honoured by the State of Israel for her work in aid of the Jewish people by being invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, at the Yad Vashem, near Jerusalem. Oskar Schindler is also honoured there. Rabbi Daniel Lapin has commented with regret on how little Corrie ten Boom is known among American Jews, and also how she has been ignored in the U.S. by the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Ten Boom was knighted by the Queen of The Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war.

A museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family.

Ten Boom never married, and had no children.

She once said “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”

Bibliography

Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, The Hiding Place, Guideposts Associates, 1971. ISBN 0-340-17930-9, ISBN 0-340-20845-7
Corrie ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord, 1974. ISBN 0-340-86376-5, ISBN 978-0-340-86376-3
Corrie ten Boom, Not Good If Detached, Christian Literature Crusade, 1980. ISBN 0-800-71765-1,ISBN 978-0-800-71765-0
Corrie ten Boom, Amazing Love, Christian Literature Crusade, 1982. ISBN 0-875-08856-2, ISBN 978-0-875-08856-3
Corrie ten Boom, Defeated Enemies, Christian Literature Crusade, 1983. ISBN 0-875-08021-9, ISBN 978-0-875-08021-5
Corrie ten Boom, Common Sense Not Needed-Revised, Christian Literature Crusade, 1994. ISBN 0-875-08309-9, ISBN 978-0-875-08309-4
Corrie ten Boom, Marching Orders for End Battle, Christian Literature Crusade. ISBN 0-875-08762-0, ISBN 978-0-875-08762-7
Corrie ten Boom, Plenty for Everyone, Christian Literature Crusade, 1980. ISBN 0-875-08023-5, ISBN 978-0-875-08023-9

Footnotes

↑ http://www.pietyhilldesign.com/gcq/biopages/tenboom.html
↑ Ten Boom, Corrie, with John and Eliabeth Sherrill (1976). However, the Jews they had been hiding at the time of their arrests had been hidden so well that they remained undiscovered and all except one survived the Occupation.

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[1] ttp://www.pietyhilldesign.com/gcq/biopages/tenboom.html

[2] Ten Boom, Corrie, with John and Eliabeth Sherrill (1976). However, the Jews they had been hiding at the time of their arrests had been hidden so well that they remained undiscovered and all except one survived the Occupation.

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