reflective paper 7 - 9 pages long (NOT a book review)

During the German blitzkrieg across Europe in May 1940, tanks and soldiers invaded the Netherlands. Corrie, who was 48 at the time, was determined to help her people, so she turned their home into a safe haven for people trying to escape the Nazis.

Dutch resistance members carried grandfather clocks into the watch shop. Hidden inside the long clock cases were bricks and mortar, which they used to build a false wall and hidden room in Corrie’s bedroom. Although it was only about two feet deep by eight feet long, this hiding place could hold six or seven people: Jews or members of the Dutch underground. The ten Booms installed a warning buzzer to signal their guests to hide, whenever the Gestapo (secret police) were searching the neighborhood.

The hideout worked well for nearly four years because people were constantly coming and going through the busy watch repair shop. But on February 28, 1944, an informant betrayed the operation to the Gestapo. Thirty people, including several of the ten Boom family, were arrested. However, the Nazis failed to find the six people hiding in the secret room. They were rescued two days later by the Dutch resistance movement.

Prison Meant Death

Corrie’s father Casper, then aged 84, was taken to Scheveningen Prison. He died ten days later. Corrie’s brother Willem, a Dutch Reformed minister, was released thanks to a sympathetic judge. Sister Nollie was also released.

Over the next ten months, Corrie and her sister Betsie were shuttled from Scheveningen to Vugt concentration camp in the Netherlands, finally ending in Ravensbruck concentration camp near Berlin, the largest camp for women in German-controlled territories. The prisoners were used for forced labor in farm projects and armament factories. Thousands of women were executed there.

Living conditions were brutal, with meager rations and harsh discipline. Even so, Betsie and Corrie conducted secret prayer services in their barracks, using a smuggled Dutch Bible. The women voiced prayers and hymns in whispers to avoid the attention of the guards.

On December 16, 1944, Betsie died at Ravensbruck of starvation and lack of medical care. Corrie later recounted the following lines as Betsie's last words:

"… (we) must tell them what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”

Two weeks after Betsie's death, ten Boom was released from the camp due to claims of a "clerical error." Ten Boom often called this occurrence a miracle. Shortly after ten Boom's release, all of the other women in her age group at Ravensbruck were executed.

50

As a servant leader

We must learn to forgive.