The remarkable life of Corrie Ten Boom

The Dutch international best selling author

Dec 17, 2024
Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom (April 15, 1892 – 15 April 1983), in 1922, became the first female certified watchmaker in  Holland. She worked and lived with her father and older sister above their shop (half a block from police headquarters). Together they hid Jews and members of the Resistance in their home, were eventually caught and sent to concentration camps, where her father and sister died. Incredibly, they saved an estimated 800 Jews. 

She is best known for her international best seller "The Hiding Place," which has sold over 3 million copies in the US, and the film by the same name. 

In 1944, the Gestapo arrested over 30 people hiding in the Ten Boom house. This was theoretically impossible since food was in very short supply. But Ten Boom explains the miracle that made this possible. When she went to pick up her family's ration cards, the man in charge (someone she knew) asked how many cards she needed. She was about to say "five," but "one hundred" slipped out and the man kindly handed her what she requested. 

A Bold Mission

She and her sister somehow conducted nightly worship services as inmates in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for women, and smuggled in a bible. All this was punishable by death. 

Three days before her sister died on 16 December 1944 at age 59, she told Corrie, "God showed me that after the war we must give to the Germans that which they now try to take away from us: our love for Jesus." She patted her hand and said, "Corrie, there is so much bitterness. We must tell them that the Holy Spirit will fill their hearts with God's love." 

Betsie whispered on, "This concentration camp here at Ravensbrück has been used to destroy many, many lives. There are many other concentration camps throughout Germany. After the war they will not have use for them anymore. I have prayed that the Lord will give us one. We will use it to build up lives." Her voice quivered, "The Germans are the most wounded people in all the world."

Ten Boom admits to thinking, "No, I will return to my simple job as a watchmaker...and never again set my boot across the border." But Betsie continued, "Then we will travel the whole world bringing the gospel to all--our friends as well as our enemies."   

The night after her sister died, Ten Boom couldn't sleep. She caught sight of a Russian woman searching for a place to sleep. "Thin and gaunt," she had a "hunted look" in her eyes. Russians were hated in the camp, so she offered the woman her sister's empty spot next to her in the cot. They could not communicate in any language, but when Ten Boom said, "Jesoes Christoes?" the woman exclaimed "Oh!" and made the sign of the cross, and "threw her arms around me and kissed me."

Twelve days later, due to an administrative error, Corrie was released. She was 51 years old. A week later, her entire age group was sent to the gas chambers.

Ten Boom returned to Holland to endure the "hunger winter." Nonetheless, she opened her home to people with disabilities who were in hiding from the Nazis.

After the war, Ten Boom opened a rehabilitation center in Bloemendaal for concentration camp survivors and Dutch collaborators with the Germans who now found themselves to be pariahs unable to support themselves. After 1950, it opened to anyone in need. 

In 1946, she returned to Germany and met with and forgave two German Ravensbrück guards, one of whom had been especially cruel to her sister.

(Some Jewish Holocaust survivors sought and found safe shelter in the home of a former labor camp overseer in the chaotic time immediately after the war -- a major lesson is that all divisions are man-made and therefore false. All divisions exist only because someone is attempting to divide and rule.)

Hebrews 11:8  "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going."

In chapter 4 -- "A Song In the Night" in her book "Tramp for the Lord," Ten Boom visits her old watchmaker's shop, no longer hers, after the war. Looking back on all that had happened the previous year, seemingly centries ago, in the stillness of the night she could hear her father's thoughts, "What an honor to give my life for God's chosen people, the Jews."

She writes, "Then the chimes in the cathedral tower pealed forth once again, this time with the sounds of Luther's famous hymn 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.' I listened and heard myself singing the hymn, not in Dutch, but in German: Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. How like you, Lord, I half-chuckled, that you would remind me of your grace by letting me hear a German hymn....I was free."  

Post-War Global Ministry

Corrie Ten Boom soon began travelling the world to deliver the gospel message of forgiveness, hope, love, and salvation through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

She visited over 60 countries and wrote many books  including "The Hiding Place" (1971), made into a film in 1975, and "Tramp for the Lord" (1972) written with Jamie Buckingham, which contains dispatches from her amazing travels throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, including the USSR, Cuba and China!

The film "Return to the Hiding Place (War of Resistance)" (released 2011 in the UK; 2013 in the US) has introduced Corrie Ten Boom to a new generation. Based on a book by Hans Poley, the sequel of sorts gives a broader view of her work and the people in her circle.

In the USA

Notably, chapter 5, "A Great Discovery" in her book "Tramp for the Lord" reveals that the first few weeks of Corrie Ten Boom's trip to the US were very disappointing. After finally securing the paperwork to enter the US, she was thrown out of the YMCA in Manhattan after just 1 week, the maximum stay permitted. Fortunately, a woman offered her her son's room while he was on a trip, but nothing was going according to plan.

"The Americans were polite and some of them were interested, but none wanted me to come and speak," Ten Boom writes. Resistance to her ministry only increased with time. "Why did you come to America?" they began to ask. "God directed me," was her honest answer, to which they retorted, "Nonsense...we must use common sense. If you are here and out of money, then that's your fault, not God's." 

Some common refrains were: "they were all busy with their own things. Some even said I should have stayed in Holland." And "we have ministers to tell us those things." And "too many Europeans come to America. They should be stopped." 

After prayer and soul searching, she finally attended a Dutch service. "Ten Boom?" the well-known minister said, recounting a story he'd read about a Ten Boom who never ran out of a bottle of vitamins in a concentration camp. Realizing this was the very same Ten Boom, she suddenly was in demand. The editor of a Christian magazine called "The Evangel" gave her an important contact in D.C. and soon she had more speaking opportunities than she could accept during her 10-month stay.

Years later in 1977 at age 85, Ten Boom would make  Placentia, California her home.

Honors

The old Ten Boom family watchmaker's shop is now the Ten Boom Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. In December of 1967, Israel's Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem added her name to the list of Righteous Among the Nations. She was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands for her work during the war, and King's College in New York City has named a women's house in her honor.