Hidden Tenacity: Corrie Ten Boom
For fifty years she led a quiet, faithful life. Then the Nazis arrived.
When Corrie ten Boom died in 1983, at the age of 91, she was world famous. A hero to millions of Christians, she’d spoken in more than 60 countries. In 1971, she’d published The Hiding Place, her account of how her family protected Jews during World War II. Billy Graham’s production company turned it into a movie in 1975, greatly raising ten Boom’s profile.
And yet, well into her fifties she led an ordinary life in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. A faithful member of the Dutch Reformed church, she led various Christian groups for women and youth. A watchmaker by trade, she worked alongside her father, Casper, in the family shop. To her disappointment, she was unmarried. Nothing in her life would have hinted at future renown.
Then, in May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Completely outmatched, the Dutch surrendered four days later. While the ten Boom family recognized the menace of the Third Reich, no one could imagine the evil to come.
Thus, for a year-and-a-half, Corrie and her family carried on mostly as usual. But by 1942, with Jews disappearing throughout their city, it became clear this couldn’t be sustained. That May, when a Jewish woman named Mrs. Kleermacher knocked on the alley door of the ten Boom home, Corrie didn’t hesitate to let her in. Mrs. Kleermacher’s husband had already been arrested, and the Gestapo had demanded that she close her family’s clothing store. She had no choice but to hide, and the ten Boom family, already known for their compassion toward Jews, took her in without hesitation. Two nights later, an elderly Jewish couple arrived, also in need of a hiding place. Many more would soon join them.
A short summary can’t do justice to the extraordinary story of Corrie ten Boom and her family. You’ll have to read her books for that. Here, I want to point out a couple of things that stood out to me as I learned more about their experiences. As I mentioned earlier, I was struck by how ordinary most of Corrie’s life was before World War II.
Despite their previously normal lives, neither she nor her father seemed to wrestle with the decision to defy the Nazis and take Jews into their home. When they do this, it doesn't feel like the ten Booms have crossed a chasm, becoming superhuman believers on the other side. Rather, it seems like the next natural step for them in a life of deep commitment to Christ.
Even after many of the ten Booms were arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, they continued in the same patterns of faith that had sustained them all of their lives. Initially confined with around 30 others in a local gymnasium, Corrie recalls how the nights there ended like nearly every other in her life: with her father delivering God’s word. He spoke Psalm 91 in a deep, steady voice:
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and fortress: my God, in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings thou shalt trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
God’s unchanging word provided a sure foundation in this terrifying time and a stark contrast to the German occupation. Under the Nazis, fear and disorientation were the only constants. No one knew who to trust or which home the Gestapo might burst into next. This was by design, as it made resistance appear futile.
We all like to imagine that we would have stood faithfully against the Nazis. But even the boldest among us would have faced difficult choices. Given all we know today about the evils of the Third Reich, it doesn’t seem like it would have been hard to justify lying to the Gestapo. But Corrie’s sister Nollie couldn’t bring herself to speak untruth. When questioned by German soldiers, she admitted that she and her husband had been hiding Jews. Those hidden narrowly escaped, but Nollie was arrested.
On the other hand, acts of open defiance weren’t necessarily effective: Corrie’s nephew Peter was arrested after playing the forbidden Dutch national anthem on the organ at church. After his release (and before his next arrest), he opted for the path trod by most of the local resistance: undermining the Gestapo selectively and cleverly. Fred Koornstra, who was employed at the Food Office, even staged a robbery of his own workplace. This enabled him to give Corrie one hundred ration books to feed the Jews she was hiding.
I’m convinced that it was the prior decades of “ordinary” faithful living that prepared the ten Booms to remain steadfast in that fog of fear and moral complexity. Many of us likewise carry on reading the Bible, praying, gathering for Sunday worship, and receiving communion. Yet, even with faithful habits, we can wrestle with doubts: “Am I really changing?” Years can pass with seemingly little concrete evidence that God is at work in our lives. Yet all the while, God continues transforming us.
What the ten Boom family reminds us is that God is always capable of using you in remarkable ways. He will give you courage to persist through seemingly impossible circumstances. In fact, he’s already been preparing you, sometimes imperceptibly, for whatever story he has written for you.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:16
Casper ten Boom’s earthly life ended in a concentration camp. Corrie’s sister Betsie met the same tragic fate, and her brother died after the war from tuberculosis contracted during his time in prison. Were it not for a clerical error that led to her release from Ravensbrück in 1944, Corrie would almost certainly have died as well. Shortly after she went free, all of the women her age at that camp were executed. Yet because the Lord chose to spare Corrie, her family’s story of faith and courage is known today.
The members of the ten Boom family who died truly laid down their lives so that others could live. Four of the Jews who were in the ten Boom house during the raid escaped. That night they remained hidden in the secret room behind Corrie’s bedroom wall. Along with two members of the Dutch underground, they waited in hiding for more than two days, without food or water, until they were rescued by other members of the resistance. Three of them, it is believed, went on to survive the war.
Corrie not only survived but discovered more of God’s love and hope, even in her bleakest moments. In The Hiding Place, she later reflected on her time in solitary confinement in a small, damp cell:
“More time passed. I kept my eyes on the ant hole, hoping for a last visit from my small friends, but they did not appear. Probably I had frightened them by my early dashing about. I reached into the pillowcase, took one of the crackers, and crumbled it about the little crack. No ants. They were staying safely hidden. And suddenly I realized that this too was a message, a last wordless communication among neighbors. For I, too, had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me. I pressed a finger to the tiny crevice.”
Since she knew Psalm 32 by heart, she could reflect on its seventh verse throughout her imprisonment:
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.
May we all discover this truth. May we learn to trust it in all circumstances. And, as followers of Jesus Christ, may we know that whatever sufferings we face in this fleeting life, our everlasting deliverance is promised.
She was lovely. I’ve never seen a picture of her when she was young!
National Socialism ☠️ is still a horror!