From 1940 to 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her family used their home in the Netherlands to hide Jews fleeing the Nazis. The ten Boom family had a secret. In their home above the family shop on Barteljorisstraat in Haarlem, they built a safe room. Corrie, her sister, and their father saved about 800 Jews from the Nazis.
The ten Boom family joined the Dutch resistance after Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Guided by their religious beliefs, they quietly helped desperate Jewish refugees. But in 1944, an informer led the Nazis straight to their door.
Corrie ten Boom barely survived her time in concentration camps, where her father and sister died. After the war, she set up a rehabilitation clinic for Holocaust survivors, preached forgiveness, and wrote about her experiences. This is her remarkable story.
The Early Life of Corrie ten Boom
Corrie ten Boom was born Cornelia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom on April 15, 1892. The youngest of four children, she grew up in a close-knit religious family. They were Calvinists in the Dutch Reformed Church, which emphasized service to others.
The entire ten Boom family, aunts included, lived above the watch shop run by Corrie’s father, Casper. As she grew older, Corrie became fascinated with watchmaking. “I had always felt happy in this little shop, with its tiny voices and shelves of small shining faces,” she wrote in her memoir, The Hiding Place.
After her mother’s death and a failed romance, Corrie decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. “I was finding a joy in work I’d never dreamed of,” she wrote. She had long helped her father with the shop’s administration but now wanted to learn watch repair.
Casper ten Boom was the perfect mentor. “Father’s patience, his almost mystic rapport with the harmonies of watchworks, these were things that could not be taught,” Corrie remembered.
Alongside working with her father, Corrie also enrolled in school to become a watchmaker. In 1922, she became the first licensed female watchmaker in Holland. “And so was established the pattern our lives were to follow for over twenty years,” she wrote. Besides helping her father run the shop, she started a youth club for girls offering religious instruction and classes.
But the peaceful life of the ten Boom family was fragile. War clouds were on the horizon, and soon, visitors to the watch store came worried about a looming Nazi invasion.
Corrie ten Boom’s Legacy And Postwar LifeThe Nazis Come To The Netherlands
In May 1940, everything changed for Corrie ten Boom and her family. The Nazis invaded on May 10th and by May 17th, Germany occupied the Netherlands. The country soon became dangerous for its Jewish citizens. In the early 1940s, thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. Adolf Eichmann, a follower of Adolf Hitler, noted with satisfaction, “In the beginning, you could say that the trains from the Netherlands were really rolling; it was quite wonderful.”
Corrie ten Boom vividly remembered the mood change in the country. Arrests of Jewish citizens became more frequent. When she had Jewish customers, she delivered their watches to spare them the risk of going out. “At any minute there might be a rap on this door,” she thought while visiting Jewish friends. “These children, this mother and father, might be ordered to the back of a truck.”
As members of the Dutch Reformed Church, the entire ten Boom family believed in the equality of all humans before God and especially respected Jews as “God’s ancient people.” When a Jewish woman named Kleermaker sought their help, they welcomed her. “In this household, God’s people are always welcome,” said Casper ten Boom. He, Corrie, and her sister Bestie agreed to shelter her.
Word of the ten Boom’s generosity spread quickly. More people came to their doorstep seeking help. As conditions in the Netherlands grew more dangerous, the family built a secret room in Corrie ten Boom’s bedroom. The room was no larger than a closet but could hold about six people and had a basic ventilation system. The family installed a buzzer to alert people to hide during security sweeps. Some people stayed for an extended period; others moved on after a few days.
Despite the constant danger, the ten Boom house was often light and merry. People hiding there played music together and even rehearsed a play. But on Feb. 28, 1944, the danger reached the ten Boom’s door. A Dutch informant betrayed the family, and the Gestapo raided their home. After searching the house and interrogating the family, Corrie, Bestie, and Casper were arrested. The Gestapo never found the Jews hiding in the secret room.
How Corrie ten Boom Survived The Nazi Camps
The Gestapo arrested 30 people who had been in the ten Boom home that day. Eventually, everyone was sent home except for Casper, Betsie, and Corrie ten Boom.
“I’d like to send you home, old fellow,” one of the guards at the Scheveningen prison said to Casper, who was then 84 years old. “I’ll take your word that you won’t cause any more trouble.” Casper replied, “If I go home today, I will open my door again to any man in need who knocks.” Ten days later, he grew ill and died in prison.
After a few months in prison, Betsie and Corrie were transferred to the Vught concentration camp in June 1944. By September, they were moved again to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. There, Betsie and Corrie lived under brutal conditions among social outcasts, Gypsies, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political enemies, prostitutes, the disabled, and the mentally ill. The Nazi guards routinely subjected prisoners to twisted experiments. Between 1939 and 1945, more than 100,000 women died there, including Betsie ten Boom.
Though they found solace in their faith, Betsie became ill at Ravensbrück and died on December 16, 1944, at the age of 59. “We must tell people what we have learned here,” Betsie said shortly before her death. “That there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been there.”
By extraordinary luck—a clerical error—Corrie ten Boom was released 12 days after her sister’s death. She didn’t learn about the mistake until later. After ten Boom left, all the women in her age group were sent to the gas chamber.
After leaving Ravensbrück, Corrie ten Boom returned home to a changed world. Her sister and father had died, and her city was utterly transformed. Despite this, Corrie ten Boom remained strong. After the war, she opened a rehabilitation center for concentration camp survivors. Inspired by her sister’s last words, she spread the message: “there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still” and “God will give us the love to be able to forgive our enemies.”
In 1947, Corrie ten Boom even forgave one of her former captors at a church in Munich. He approached her after a talk, saying, “You mentioned Ravensbrück. I was a guard there.” He didn’t recognize her, but she remembered him. Despite recalling the trauma, she forgave him when he asked for it.
“I knew I had to do it,” ten Boom wrote. “God’s forgiveness requires us to forgive those who hurt us.”
For the next 30 years, Corrie ten Boom traveled to over 60 countries sharing the message of forgiveness. By the time she passed away at 91, on April 15, 1983, she had been honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, an award for non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust. Her father Casper and sister Betsie were also recognized. Together, they had saved about 800 lives.
Corrie ten Boom died on her birthday. In Judaism, this is seen as a blessing for those who have fulfilled their mission on Earth.
After learning about Corrie ten Boom, you might be curious about whether Hitler was Jewish or want to read about Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust.