The Yad Vashem, or World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, commemorates non-Jews who took great
risk to save Jews during the Shoha with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
Today’s protagonist is one of them.
Cornelia ten Boom, known as Corrie, and her close family, managed to save an estimated
800 lives during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
During the War, her profound religious faith and belief in God’s plans gave her the bravery
and resourcefulness to make it through situations worthy of a spy story.
But it was after the war that she achieved her greatest accomplishment - forgiving her
former enemies and teaching the world to do the same.
The young watchmaker Corrnelia Arnolda Joanna ten Boom was born
in Haarlem, near Amsterdam, on the 15th of April 1892 in a devoutly religious family.
Her father, Casper, was a watchmaker who ran his business from their own home, the Beje
house.
Corrie was the youngest of four siblings: her sisters Betsie and Nollie, and her brother,
Willem.
Her mother, also named Cornelia, and her father were members of the Dutch Baptist congregation
and a point of moral reference for the community.
Inspire by their faith, the ten Booms would offer shelter, food, even money to those in
need.
They also maintained very good relationships with the local Jewish community, whom they
considered “God’s ancient people”.
Corrie was always a busy girl, helping those in need, both in and outside her family.
From a very young age she and Betsie organised Bible clubs for the local youth and offered
tutoring to mentally disabled children.
When here elderly aunts moved in, she still found the time to look after them.
To make space for the aunties, Casper bought the house next to the Beje.
The levels of the two buildings did not match, and there was an alleyway between them, but
the two houses had to be connected: this resulted in a very odd layout with winding staircases
and empty spaces between walls.
We will soon see why this is important.
In her late teens, Corrie met and fell in love for the first time with a young man.
She was expecting him to propose, but his mother did not approve of the union, deeming
the ten Booms of a lower social status.
Her heart was broken.
She vowed to dedicate all of her love to Jesus.
But, as she pointed out: “Jesus has taken care so for me that I have
never become a frustrated old spinster”.
In 1918 mother ten Boom became bed ridden from a cerebral haemorrhage.
This added to Corrie’s long list of commitments, but her energy never failed her.
She dedicated herself to all housework and even to managing the family business.
She studied watchmaking, becoming the first Dutch licensed woman watchmaker.
Unlike Casper, who wasn’t very business minded, Corrie had a keen commercial sense
and with her management of the shop the family did better financially.
Unfortunately, after 3 years of illness, Corrie’s mother died in 1921.
The elderly aunts had also passed away shortly before.
With an empty house and plenty of spare time, Corrie and her family took the occasion to
help once more those in need: first, the Beje started welcoming the children left in the
Netherlands by Missionaries travelling to the Indonesian colonies.
Then, over much of the 1930s, Corrie established a youth club for teenagers, where she taught
religious studies, performing arts and handicrafts.
Invasion Unfortunately for her – and for the Netherlands
– and for Europe – over the border in Germany, another type of youth club was gaining
ground[TA1] . Europe and the whole world were heading towards
another war, but most people in the Netherlands, including the Prime Minister, believed that
Germany would respect Dutch neutrality, as was the case in WWI.
What they didn’t know is that General Von Manstein’s plan to invade France relied
on an initial attack through the Netherlands, to divert Allied forces from the real, main
invading force entering Belgium via the Ardennes forest.
And so, after conquering Poland, Denmark and Norway, the German military started to turn
their attention towards the Western allied powers.
The ‘Phoney War’ was about to give way to the actual one.
On the 10th of May 1940 the Wehrmacht launched a combined attack on the Netherlands, supported
by frequent bombing raids on the major Dutch cities.
One night, Corrie was woken up by the noise of bombers flying over Haarlem.
She stood up and went into the kitchen, where Betsie, also unable to sleep, offered her
some tea.
When Corrie returned to her room, she hurt her hand over something sharp: it was a piece
of shrapnel from an exploding bomb nearby.
The morning after she pointed out to Betsie that if she had not drunk tea with her the
night before, she could have been killed.
The older sister remarked “There are no ifs with God, being in the
centre of his will is our only safety” Despite a desperate resistance, German divisions
quickly overrun the country.
On the 13th of May the Dutch Government and the Royal Family were evacuated to Britain.
On the 14th the Country capitulated The Nazi occupation was harsh from the beginning,
with the Gestapo starting to round up Jews and Resistance fighters with the help of local
collaborators, as well as confiscating all radios.
The ten Booms managed to keep a clandestine wireless, listening to messages of hope coming
from the BBC and from to the Dutch Queen in exile in London.
They also listened to some of Hitler’s propaganda speeches.
As Corrie remembered “It was the voice of a demon”
Casper ten Boom was a pillar of the Haarlem community and so very soon his family was
approached by resistance fighters and Jewish citizens asking for help.
Casper, Corrie and Betsie faced a dilemma: their faith compelled them to protect Jews
but being part of the resistance implied taking a political stance which was against their
beliefs.
The Hiding Place The doubts were wiped out by two events.
First, Corrie found out that her brother Willem and his son Kik had already entered the clandestine
resistance and were already offering shelter to Jews on the run.
Even before the invasion, Willem had used a nursing home he was managing as a haven
for German Jews who had fled persecution.
Then, Casper had heard about a local Pastor who had refused to hide a Jewish orphan boy.
He decided to welcome the boy into the Beje, the first of many lives, up to 800, that the
ten Booms would save during the war.
Corrie had a knack for organising people around her.
She soon put this talent to fruition when she recruited 80 of the members of her various
youth and Bible groups to what became a very effective clandestine organisation.
Taking advantage of the uncommon layout of the Beje, and with the help of an architect
in the resistance, Corrie had a secret room - a Hiding Place - built behind a fake wall
in her own bedroom.
The place could hide 6 people at the time.
She also had installed a system of buzzers around the house.
In case of danger, a member of the family would ring the buzzers, allowing the refugees
to rush to the secret room where they would stand still and silent.
When the coast was clear, the refugees would be sent to a one of a vast network of safe
houses around the Country until they could flee abroad.
In one occasion, the ten Booms heard that the Nazis had set their sights on a Jewish
orphanage.
Dozens of babies were facing certain death.
Corrie organised a daring raid.
Among the people she helped, there were also German soldiers, deserters who did not want
to carry out further atrocities.
The ten Booms would give them civilian clothing and keep their uniforms.
In this case, Corrie handed out the uniforms to members of her organisation.
In this disguise, they simply entered the orphanage and stole 100 hundred babies!
As the number of people they helped increased, the family had to solve the problem of feeding
them.
Food was rationed through a system of cards, of which the ten Booms only held three.
By luck, or divine providence, the local man in charge of the ration cards was one Fred
Koonstra, whose mentally disabled daughter had been attending Corrie’s church services
for 20 years.
Corrie was not sure if she could trust him, but she boldly asked for 100 ration cards.
To her surprise, Fred agreed immediately.
But how could he justify 100 missing cards to his Nazi supervisor?
In a stroke of genius, Fred staged a realistic robbery, even asking a friend to beat him
up to make it more plausible!
The clandestine activities around the Beje increased with time, despite the threat of
the Gestapo ever present, and a police station only a few blocks away.
As Corrie feared that their phone was tapped, she devised a secret code.
The sentence “I need a watch to be repaired” meant that another person needed hiding.
The watchmaker shop was a perfect front for people coming and going at all time, after
all.
Casper devised another code: a triangular advertising sign on the shop window meant
that it was safe to come in, if placed back to front it meant that it was better to wait.
The arrest In February 1944 a man called Jan Vogel came
asking for a different type of help.
His wife, accused of being in the resistance, was in custody.
A sympathetic policeman had promised to free her, but had requested a bribe of 600 guilders.
Jan did not have the money and asked the ten Booms for a loan.
The following day, at 5am, the ten Booms were holding a Bible reading with many family members
and friends from the community attending, alongside six refugees.
The doorbell rang.
When Betsie opened the door, she was pushed aside by a Nazi officer.
Other soldiers burst in, led by Vogel.
He was a collaborator.
Betsie was able to hit one of the buzzers, and the six refugees - four Jews and two resistance
fighters – run to Corrie’s bedroom.
While the soldiers were negotiating the strange layout of the house, making their way upwards,
Corrie was able to hide the refugees behind the fake wall.
She later commented that the uncommon floorplans of the Beje were another sign of God’s providence,
which had come to help her in her predicament.
The Nazis accused her of hiding Jews, hitting her repeatedly, but she kept her mouth tight.
The soldiers searched the house but could find the secret room.
One of them was heard saying “If there is a secret room here, the Devil
himself built it!”
Corrie, Betsie and Casper were arrested alongside other 30 friends and taken to Scheveningen
prison.
As Corrie was ill with pleurisy she was put in solitary confinement to prevent contagion
One day in her lonely jail, Corrie received a letter from her sister Nollie, who was still
free.
The letter bore very sad news.
Casper, the elderly father ten Boom, had died ten days after imprisonment.
Corrie had not seen him since the day they had arrived in Scheveningen.
It was devastating for Corrie to learn that her father who had been the moral guiding
light to her and to so many people in Haarlem was no more.
Despite the grief, there were some good news, too.
Corrie noticed that the address on the envelope slanted towards the stamp.
Curious, she unpeeled it carefully and found a secret message underneath it
“All the watches are safe” – a code phrase meaning that all of their Jewish guests
were out of the hiding place and still alive.
Corrie had little time to grieve as she was summoned for interrogation.
The first hearing was with a German officer, a Lieutenant Rahms.
The officer was polite, albeit dismissive of Corrie’s activism in supporting and protecting
the mentally disabled, seen as ‘undesirables’ by the III Reich.
Caring for them was a waste of energy as “one normal person is worth all the ‘half-wits’
in the World!”.
To which Corrie replied “In God’s eyes, one ‘half-wit’ might
be worth more than a watchmaker.
Or a Lieutenant.”
And that’s how you put a Nazi in his place.
The next interrogator was a Dutch judge, collaborating with German authorities.
In Corrie’s own words, her “faith touched him, and he became a friend”.
But this friend still had to do his job.
The judge produced some documents found at the Beje: a list of names and addresses which
would immediately incriminate her remaining family members and resistance friends who
were still at large.
The judge remarked how dangerous those papers were to the safety of the organisation she
had set up.
Then, without adding a word, he simply turned to his stove, opened the door and threw them
into the flames.
After 3 months Corrie was finally taken out of confinement and reunited with her beloved
sister Betsie.
There was no hope to be set free, though, as they and all other prisoners were loaded
onto cattle trains and sent to the Dutch labour camp of Vught, where they were forced to make
radios for the Luftwaffe.
Then the 6th of June 1944 arrived: D-Day.
As the Allies pushed their way towards Flanders, the Nazis decided to empty their camps in
the Netherlands and relocate the prisoners in Germany.
Corrie and Betsie ended up in Ravensbruck, the infamous camp for women prisoners.
Ravensbruck The experience in the concentration camp was
just hellish.
Corrie, Betsie, and the other prisoners were subjected to endless days of labour, starvation,
illness and abuse by the guards.
And yet, every night, the two sisters would find the time and energy to organise prayer
groups in their barracks, with the help of smuggled Bible.
Every night, this would give the incarcerated women some peace, faith and hope.
And every night Corrie and Betsie feared an inspection from the guards, well knowing that
Bibles and prayer were forbidden in the camp.
But, in another stroke of luck – or divine intervention – word had spread that their
barracks were flea-infested and so the wardens kept at a distance.
In the late Autumn Betsie fell ill.
During this time, she discussed with Corrie a vision she had, a plan to heal the wounds
of the suffering in post-War Europe.
First, they were going to set up a sort of rehabilitation centre in the Netherlands to
provide support for those who had suffered during the war.
And the centre had to be opened also to Nazi collaborators, so as to reform them and reintegrate
them into society.
Then, Corrie and Betsie would then proceed to help the German people, as it was clear
that their Country was going to be devastated.
Betsie even had a mental image of a former concentration camp, painted in green and converted
into a welcome centre.
Betsie would not live to see her vision.
She died on the 16th of December 1944.
Now alone, and losing hope, on the morning of the 28th of December, Corrie was summoned
to the commander’s office, asked to fill in some forms and was simply … released.
She later discovered that this was due to a clerical error and that only one week later
all the women of her age group had been taken to the gas chambers.
Forgive, not forget The War had taken a huge toll on the ten Booms.
Casper, Betsie and brother Willem were dead.
Willem’s son, Kik, was missing in action.
Corrie, she would not surrender, though.
She immediately resumed her work with mentally disabled children, but most of all, she carried
out Betsie’s vision, her plan for reconciliation.
As she was setting up her home to rehabilitate former collaborators, she received a letter
from the man who had betrayed her and her family – Jan Vogel.
Awaiting a death sentence, Jan had written to Corrie asking her if she could forgive
him.
She could, and she did.
This was the first of many acts of forgiveness for her old enemies and tormentors.
Continuing Betsie’s vision, Corrie moved to Germany and succeeded in gaining management
of an ex concentration camp in Darmstadt.
As per her sister’s wishes, she had all the building s painted in bright green and
flowers planted around the houses.
The old site of death became a housing centre for German families left homeless by the Allied
bombing raids.
Corrie also started to tour churches from the Netherlands to Germany, giving talks about
her experiences in Ravensbruck.
On one such occasion she noticed a man standing at the back of the room who could not meet
her gaze.
She then recognised him: he was a former guard at Ravensbruck, one who had been particularly
cruel to her sister.
He had become a Christian and was now looking for forgiveness.
He stretched out his hand.
Corrie initially could not accept his hand, the memories of the man’s cruelties still
strong.
But she remembered from the Bible that “Hatred means murder in God’s eyes”
She was able to forgive the former guard.
This act would inspire her to continue her tours, relating her experience and preaching
the power of forgiving your enemies This was a powerful and courageous idea.
One cannot deny that the Nuremberg trials were what Nazi war criminals deserved and
yet the idea of private forgiveness can coexist with the notion of public justice – as philosopher
Paul Ricoeur put it, forgiveness is not amnesty: “Amnesty is organised forgetting and it
has nothing to do with the pacification that forgiveness can bring between two consciences”
[TA2] In the late 1960s Corrie moved to the US to
spread her messages across congregations of all faiths.
She was penniless and lived frugally, all the publicity she could afford was to personally
go from one church to another and ask if the community was interested in hearing her story.
Little by little, people started to take notice of this elderly lady, her oratory style and
her values.
Her admirers suggested that she wrote a book about her experience.
The Hiding Place was published in 1971, followed by a film adaptation in 1975.
Corrie continued to receive more and more invitations to speak worldwide, but she had
to slow down engagements due to her declining health.
One morning in 1978, Corrie did not wake up at dawn as usual.
Her assistant and friend Pam Rosewell Moore went to wake her up, as it was uncommon for
Corrie to oversleep in the mornings.
Pam found out that during the night Corrie had had a cerebral-vascular stroke, from which
she did not recover.
For the following 5 years she was paralysed, unable to talk, read and write.
Finally, on the day of her 91st Birthday, 15th of April 1981, Corrie ten Boom died peacefully.
According to Jewish tradition, only those who are specially blessed by God are granted
the privilege of dying on the same date of their birthday.
Well, I hope you find Corrie ten Boom’s life story interesting and inspiring.
We would like to hear your thoughts, what do you believe is more morally just, righteous
punishment or forgiveness?
Please comment below and as usual, thank you for watching.