Lessons from Corrie Ten Boom

Kristin Fry and her husband are serving as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Holland. This column was written after they toured the Corrie Ten Boom Huis in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Last week, after a long wait for tickets, we finally got to tour the Corrie Ten Boom House in Haarlem. Corrie Ten Boom is a famous Dutch woman who wrote about her faith experiences while working to protect Jews during the World War II German occupation of Holland, and the consequences of her courage: life in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her story is compelling and moving, with a witness of Jesus Christ throughout. Reading her most famous book, The Hiding Place, has been a faith-building experience for thousands, if not millions worldwide.

Corrie’s home, affectionately called the “Beje” (pronounced Bay-yay), is a formative part of her story. Here she was raised in a loving family, and here she became the first female Dutch watchmaker. During the war, hundreds of Jews found their protection either in, or passing through, the Beje. Because the house was old and strangely constructed (it was two narrow row houses ultimately joined together by a spiral staircase), it was the perfect place for an undetectable secret room—a hiding place. Dutch builders in the resistance created this room in Corrie’s bedroom, just large enough for 8 standing people.

When we toured this house, we found it much like any other older Dutch home: graceful antique furniture and walls filled with photos of family. But there were telling things too: a secret stair tread that hid illegal ration cards. Large, well-used Bibles. A button for a quiet buzzer, tucked beneath a watchmaker’s counter, and a fireside plaque which read, “Jesus is Victor.”

The guide, a lovely older Dutch woman who spoke perfect English, took us through the home and introduced us to the characters in Corrie’s story: her beloved parents and siblings. Her grandfather, who had made it his practice to pray daily for the Jewish people, the many people who lived and loved as longtime guests or visitors: aunts, foster children, people in hiding. This house, from the beginning, had always been a sheltering place. Our small group walked reverently from room to room.

One terrible day, the Nazis burst into the Beje, arresting everyone in sight—family, people in the adjoining watch shop, worship service attendees, and, of course, Corrie. Corrie was lying abed, sick with the flu, when she deliriously saw her Jewish friends dive into the hidden room and slide the secret door closed. Soldiers pounded on walls throughout the house, but the bricks kept their silence, and the hidden remained undiscovered. Two days later the six people were rescued, soaked with sweat and terribly dehydrated—but all alive.

Everyone arrested that day was ultimately released—except Corrie, her sister Betsie, and her 84-year-old father, Casper. When a Gestapo chief suggested that the old man was harmless and should go home, Casper declared solemnly, “If I go home today, tomorrow I will open my door again to any man who knocks.” The chief, snarling, ordered Casper back into line.

Corrie’s father and sister paid the ultimate price for their convictions: her father died 10 days after his arrest, unknown, in a hospital corridor. Betsie, ever willing to love, testify of Christ, and pray for others, weakened and died after 10 months of imprisonment. Strangely, Corrie was released two weeks later, given new clothes and a train ticket back to Holland. Years later she learned that her release had been a clerical error—only a few days later, all the women her age in the camp were gassed.

But her story is much bigger than that of her survival, remarkable as that was. It is the story of the power of Jesus Christ, strengthening her in the depths of her suffering, and, through her, healing many other broken lives both in Holland and Germany after the war. Christ was Corrie’s hiding place. He was always there, even in her deepest difficulties.

After the war, Corrie tells about one of her most wrenching struggles. Before her stood one of her former prison guards, thanking Corrie for her recent speech about forgiveness. He offered his hand, and in that moment, Corrie felt incapable of lifting her hand in return. “I breathed a silent prayer,” she later wrote. “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.” She reached out her hand…and was astonished to feel a wave of love through her arm to the former soldier, and deep into her heart. She concluded, “When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

The Beje today is a shell, a memory of the great souls that once lived within her. Thankfully, their stories continue to be told, reminding us that, as Betsie commented in Ravensbruck, “We must tell people that no pit is so deep that He is not deeper still. They will believe us, because we were here.”

Kristin Fry is practicing her Dutch and her bike riding each day as she enjoys life in Holland. She and her husband are serving as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.