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A Good Word

Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom was born in Holland in 1892, the youngest child in a loving Christian family whose hearts, hands, and home were always open to anyone in need. As she grew older, it was only natural that Corrie also reached out to those around her. In addition to working in her father’s watch repair shop, she started Christian clubs for girls, worked with the mentally retarded, helped care for foster children, and taught Bible lessons in the schools.

After Germany invaded Holland in World War II, helping the people who needed her aid became very dangerous. Germany’s cruel dictator, Adolph Hitler, sent soldiers to Holland to round up all the Jewish people and take them to prison camps, where they were later killed by the millions. Anyone found helping the Jews could suffer the same fate.

But Corrie and her family could not turn their backs on people in need. They became part of the Dutch “underground” movement, which hid Jews and helped them escape to safer places.

The ten Booms built a secret room in their home with a hidden panel to open it. They put in an alarm system so that they could quickly buzz a warning throughout the house. They also had the Jews who stayed with them practice disappearing quickly into the secret room.

Corrie and her team of eighty workers helped hundreds of Jews escape before a fellow Dutchman turned them in to the Germans. On February 28, 1944, German soldiers stormed into the ten Boom home. One of them asked Corrie where they were hiding the Jews. When she didn’t answer, he slapped her again and again. She and her family were arrested and taken to different prison camps. Her father, who was quite old, died ten days later.

After three months, Corrie was moved to Ravensbruck, a well-known death camp for women. There she was reunited with her sister, Betsie. Ravensbruck was their worst nightmare come true: long hours of very hard work; crowded, rat-filled, unheated buildings; little food; and cruel guards. Before the war ended, 96,000 women died there.

A guard once hit Corrie in the neck with a whip when she was too sick to push a heavy cart. But the hardest thing for her was seeing Betsie mistreated. Betsie had never been healthy. In prison she became much worse. Still, she was forced to keep working and to stand at attention for hours at a time in bitterly cold weather.

Their strong faith in God helped them get through each terrible day. They lovingly reached out to the other women, encouraged them to trust God, and prayed together. Even in that awful place, they felt God’s love. In fact, Betsie told Corrie that they would travel all over after they got out, telling people that no place is so dark that God’s love cannot shine into it. She also hoped to start homes in Holland and Germany where people broken by the war could heal.

Betsie never saw her dreams come true. She died in prison. But Corrie went on to carry out her sister’s wishes. Corrie was set free because of a typing error—which was said was a miracle—shortly before the other women her age were killed.

After the war, she went to Germany. She spoke to large groups there, telling them about the hope God had given her and how Jesus can help us forgive our enemies and even love them.

One day after speaking, she stood at the door shaking hands with people. A man walked up to her and told her he had become a Christian after the war. Corrie recognized the man. He had been one of the cruelest guards at Ravensbruck. The man said he knew God had forgiven him for everything he had done in the past, but he wanted her forgiveness, too.

As he held out his hand, Corrie remembered the misery he had caused Betsie and thousands of others. She wrestled with her answer. She didn’t think she could forgive him, but she knew God wanted her to. Silently she prayed, Lord, I can take his hand, but I can’t change my feelings. Only You can do that.

She took his hand in hers, and a sudden feeling of warmth went through her arm and then her whole body, melting the bitter memories. With tears in her eyes, she told the man who had once tormented her, “I forgive you with all my heart.”

Taken with permission from Courageous Christians, Moody Publishers, ©2000 by Joyce Vollmer Brown.

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