“ten Boom, follow me,” she ordered in a gruff voice.
Corrie climbed from the cot and reached for her coat.
“No, don’t bother with that,” said the guard. “Hurry up.”
As Corrie scurried down the corridor after the guard, she wondered where they were taking her this time. It couldn’t be back to the hospital in Scheveningen; she would need her hat and coat to leave the prison, and besides, she was feeling much better now.
The guard wound her way down several corridors, leading Corrie through areas of the prison she had never seen before. Every so often, Corrie heard a person talking or sobbing behind a cell door and wished she were able to stop and have a real conversation with another human being. But she kept on walking, and to her surprise, she was led outside after all. A blast of cold air wrapped itself around her as she stood in a small courtyard with four wooden huts crowded into it. All of the huts were painted gray and looked dull, like everything else in the prison, except for the hut on the far side of the courtyard. It was different. Around its dull, gray exterior was planted a row of yellow tulips. The tulips were past their prime, and the petals on many of the flowers were beginning to fall off, but that made no difference to Corrie. They were real flowers, and even if they were wilting, they were still the most beautiful things she had seen in a long time. Much to her delight, Corrie got to walk right past the tulips as the guard led her to the hut and motioned her to go in.
“Shut the door please, Miss ten Boom,” a soft voice ordered from the far end of the hut.
Corrie did as she was told and then turned to see who it was that had spoken. It was a medium-build man with sandy brown hair and dressed in full Nazi uniform, complete with a row of ribbons and medals. Much to Corrie’s surprise, the man was smiling at her.
“My name is Lieutenant Rahms,” he said courteously, removing his hat. “Please sit down.” He motioned for Corrie to sit in the armchair beside the woodstove.
“Thank you,” mumbled Corrie, unused to being treated with kindness.
“You look a little cold, and I have read in your files that you have not been well. Before we begin our conversation, let me put a few more logs on the fire.” The lieutenant reached into the woodpile.
Corrie felt the warm glow of the fire on her as he opened the door of the stove and pushed three pieces of wood into it. How wonderful it felt, and so did the armchair, which had a padded back and thick cushions. Corrie felt as though she were in a dream. Then suddenly she came to her senses. There was a reason the lieutenant was treating her this way. She had been warned about this before she ever got to prison. Some of the Nazi interrogators tried to get information out of members of the underground by torturing them, but other interrogators used kindness to lull their prisoners into thinking they had a friend in the Gestapo. There and then Corrie promised herself she would keep her guard up. Too many lives depended on her keeping quiet about the things she knew.
Lieutenant Rahms finished stoking the fire and sat down in a chair opposite Corrie. “Now, let me see,” he said. “There are a few matters we need to clear up. I am going to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer as best you can.”
Corrie nodded, amazed at the near perfect Dutch he spoke with only the slightest hint of a German accent.
The lieutenant reached into his breast pocket and casually pulled out a brown leather notebook. He flipped it open as he chatted. “Miss ten Boom,” he began, “as you know, many mistakes are made during unfortunate times like these. I don’t believe you should be in prison, and I want to help you find a way to get out of here. Would you like that?”
Corrie nodded. Who wouldn’t like that?
“But,” he continued in a soothing voice, “I can help you only if you tell me the whole truth. If you tell me everything you know, I’ll see what I can do for you. How would that be?” he asked smiling.
Corrie smiled weakly back at him, trying to appear calmer than she really was.
“Good,” replied the lieutenant. “Now, I am going to read you a list of names, and I want you to tell me which of them you recognize.”
Corrie nodded.
“Joel Colijn?” he paused, looked at Corrie and then went on. “Hans Frederiks?” The list went on and on.
Corrie relaxed and sank back into the warm embrace of the armchair as she listened. She had nothing to hide from the lieutenant; she really didn’t recognize a single name on the list. She supposed the names were all members of the underground, but everyone she knew in the underground was called Smit. Corrie had no idea of their real names. So there was absolutely nothing she could tell him about the names in his little book.
When the lieutenant had finished reading all the names, he looked at Corrie. “Are you sure you don’t recognize even one of these names? It would be a great help to me, and it would help you, too,” he said softly.
Corrie shook her head. “I don’t know any of them,” she said.
For the next hour Lieutenant Rahms asked her all sorts of questions about the underground. Corrie had the impression he thought she was deeply involved in the business of getting extra ration cards, either by organizing raids on food offices or by using forged papers. Of all the things the underground did, this was the one area Corrie knew the least about what went on. She had only distributed the extra ration cards other members of the underground had obtained. So again it was easy for her to say nothing about how the underground got their extra ration cards. There was little she could have told him even if she had wanted to.
Finally, Lieutenant Rahms stopped asking specific questions and looked Corrie in the eye. “I can see you are an honest woman,” he said. “Why don’t I sit here and you tell me about the things you were involved in before you came to this prison.”
Corrie eagerly sat up straight in the armchair. Now she had something to talk about. “Well, lieutenant,” she began. “My family and I have always been involved in telling others about Jesus Christ. Only the week before I was arrested, I visited one of the girls I had worked with for many years. She is mentally retarded, but I am sure she understands that God loves her.”
“What a stupid waste of time!” exclaimed the lieutenant. “Why would God love someone who is defective? What good is a religion that accepts half-wits into its midst? The Third Reich accepts only those among us who are worthy specimens.”
Corrie smiled. “I would like to tell you the truth, if I may, lieutenant,” she announced to him.
The officer leaned forward in his chair. “Of course, go right ahead,” he said, picking up a pencil.
Corrie took a deep breath. She knew it was crazy to say what she was about to say to a Nazi officer, but it was the truth, and he had asked for it. “You and I are human, and we look on the outside of a person, but God looks at a person’s heart. He knows whether there is light or darkness inside the person, and that is what is important to Him.”
Lieutenant Rahms did not say anything, so Corrie went on. “Some people have great darkness in their hearts. Are you one of those people, lieutenant?”
“Today’s session is over,” he replied coldly as he got up from his chair and flung the door open. “Guard,” he yelled, “take this prisoner back to her cell.”
Corrie took one last look at the tulips as she was led from the lieutenant’s office back to her cell.
For the rest of the day and well into the night, Corrie wondered whether she had done the right thing. She had made Lieutenant Rahms angry, and he was the only person who had offered to help her get out of prison. Had she gone too far in telling him the truth?
Surprisingly, the guard came for her the next morning and the following two mornings after that. Each time, Corrie was taken to the tulip-encircled hut, and each time, Lieutenant Rahms was waiting for her with an extra log to stoke the fire. However, he did not ask her any more questions about the underground. Instead, he asked lots of questions about God and the Bible. He told Corrie that his wife and children were in Bremen back in Germany, and every morning he hoped they had lived through another night. He also confided to her that some mornings he wished he hadn’t awakened at all. He hated his job at the prison, and he hated being a Nazi, but he could see no way out.
At last, Corrie understood what Betsie had been trying to tell her from the time the first German bombs had fallen on Holland. Many of the Germans were just as much victims of Adolf Hitler and his horrible Third Reich as were the Dutch. They, too, lived in fear for their lives and the lives of their families.
After four visits, Lieutenant Rahms announced he had finished his investigation and sent Corrie back to her cell for the last time. She didn’t expect to see him again, but she was wrong. About a week later, her cell door swung open, and the lieutenant himself was standing there. “Follow me,” he said kindly.
Corrie tried to straighten her matted hair as she stood up. She stepped into the corridor and followed the lieutenant. “Where are we going?” she felt comfortable enough to ask him, her heart racing wildly.
“I am taking you back to my office, where there will be a reading,” he replied.
“A reading?” Corrie repeated, thinking back to the wonderful evenings of play reading Leendert had organized for the guests at the Beje. But what could Lieutenant Rahms possibly mean by a reading?
“You told me your father died in this prison three months ago, did you not?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” answered Corrie.
“Well, the lawyer is here to read the will to the family. That is the legal way it is done in Holland.”
Corrie was not sure she understood. Why was he, a Nazi officer, worried about the legal way things were done in Holland? It didn’t make any sense—a German invader who cared about the laws of Holland? Maybe the lieutenant hadn’t been acting all the time after all; maybe he really did care.
Then another wonderful thought struck Corrie. Would she be at the reading alone, or did the lieutenant mean that her family would be waiting in his office? She didn’t dare ask him, but she felt a spring in her step as she followed him down the corridor. They rounded the last corner and stepped out into the familiar courtyard. Lieutenant Rahms opened the door into his office for Corrie.
“Nollie!” Corrie’s eyes grew wide with joy. “And Willem, Betsie, Tine, Flip. It’s really you, you’re here,” she said over and over again as she hugged and rehugged each of them.
Corrie turned to hear the door click shut. Lieutenant Rahms was gone. “He must be waiting outside, we’re alone,” she said, almost unable to believe her good fortune.
“Quickly, take these before he comes back,” Nollie said, handing Corrie and Betsie each a small Bible.
They both slipped the precious cargo into their coat pockets and thanked Nollie.
“Now tell me everything,” urged Corrie, turning around to make sure the door was still shut. “We might not have much time.”
Sitting arm in arm, the ten Boom family exchanged their news.
Willem had managed to find out a little about their father’s death. He had caught pneumonia within a couple of days of arriving at the prison. Finally, the other men in his cell had convinced the guards he needed medical help. But it was too late; he died lying on a stretcher alone outside the hospital. No one knew who he was, so as far as they had been able to determine, he had been buried in an unmarked grave. Corrie wept quietly as she listened.
Next Tine told them about Kik. He had been captured trying to smuggle a downed American airman to the North Sea coastline, where he was to be picked up and transported back to England. Tine and Willem had heard he’d been taken on a prison train into Germany.
“And what of the ‘clocks’ in the house?” Corrie wanted to know.
Flip told her the story. When everyone arrested at the Beje had been marched out of the police headquarters and onto the bus, Arnold had not been with them. Of course, he had been trapped by the raid and was one of those hiding in the Angels’ Den. His father was sure he had been at the Beje at the time of the raid, so he started asking questions among his friends. Did anyone know of somewhere at the Beje where a man in the underground might hide? Amazingly, one of the people he asked was the man who had built the hidden room, and once he found out who Arnold’s father was, he gladly told him about the hiding place in the third-floor bedroom. Next Arnold’s father talked to a Haarlem policeman whom he trusted, and a plan was hatched. The following evening, the Gestapo were going to hand over the job of patrolling the Beje to the local police. On the night of Wednesday, March 1, two days after the raid, the Dutch policemen who took over from the Gestapo found the entrance to the Angels’ Den and knocked on it. The wall slid open, and out came six people, four Jews, Mary, Martha, Eusie, and Ronnie, and the two members of the underground, Hans and Arnold. Hans and Arnold thanked the policemen for rescuing them and slipped out onto the rooftop of the Beje. They jumped onto the roof of the house next door and disappeared into the night. The four Jewish “guests” waited quietly inside with the policemen until an underground worker came and guided them to safety. Then the policemen slid the door of the Angels’ Den closed and went back to standing guard outside the Beje. As far as Flip knew, the Gestapo still hadn’t found the Angels’ Den.
