Corrie’s heart leapt at the opportunity. Hilversum was where Willem, Tine, and their children lived. On her eleventh night back in Holland, Corrie was ushered from the hospital into a large old truck. The truck lumbered through the backstreets of Groningen without its headlights on because it was too dangerous to use them.
Corrie prayed for a safe trip as the truck headed west. She knew they weren’t supposed to be traveling, and at any moment the truck could be stopped by the Nazis. And if it were stopped, Corrie would be found riding in a truck loaded with stolen vegetables. She dared not think what would happen then. But she had to get home to Haarlem, and if this was the only way to do it, she was willing to risk being caught.
The truck drove on through the night and pulled to a halt in front of Willem’s rest home just as the sun was beginning to rise. Willem’s rest home looked just as it always had. Corrie climbed down from the cab of the truck and looked up the path that led to the front door. She stood for a moment and then slowly walked up the path towards the familiar brick building. As she approached the house, she remembered the last time she and Willem had both been free together. It had been nearly a year ago at the Beje when he was holding his weekly prayer meeting just as the Gestapo burst into the house. Corrie knocked loudly on the rest home door.
Within minutes, Willem, Tine, and their children excitedly surrounded Corrie, smothering her with hugs and kisses. They peppered her with questions, and as she told them about how Betsie had died in Ravensbruck, tears welled from their eyes. Then Tine reported how they had not heard anything from Kik since he had been taken to Germany. But the sadness was tempered by some good news. Willem told how all the people who had been hiding in the Beje, except Mary, had managed to avoid capture by the Nazis. And the underground network in Haarlem was still working hard hiding people from the Germans.
Corrie stayed the next week with Willem and his family, but by the second day with them, she realized Willem was ill. He did not like to talk about it, but Tine told Corrie that Willem had become sick with tuberculosis in jail and hadn’t got any better after his release. Willem, though, carried on as if nothing had happened, working in the rest home and writing a book about the Old Testament. He also spent a lot of time figuring out how to get Corrie back to the Beje. He knew that she wouldn’t feel completely at home until she was there.
At breakfast one day in late January, Willem announced that everything was set for Corrie to go back to the Beje. No trains were running, but a car would pick her up at eleven o’clock in the morning and take her there. Sure enough, at exactly 11:00 a.m., a black limousine pulled up in front of the rest home. The family waved good-bye as Corrie stepped into the limousine for the most luxurious drive of her life. She was curious how Willem had arranged such a wonderful ride, but she knew better than to ask. “Don’t ask questions” was a lesson Corrie hadn’t forgotten from her involvement in the underground.
The car zoomed towards Haarlem. No other vehicles were on the road, which gave the trip an eerie feeling. But with no traffic, in no time the limousine was turning at the corner past St. Bavo’s Church into Barteljorisstraat. It rolled along the street and pulled to a halt in front of the clockshop. Corrie climbed out, and the car sped away. As it disappeared from view at the end of Barteljorisstraat, she took a deep breath. She had imagined this moment so many times, though always with Betsie standing beside her.
Before Corrie could open the door to the clockshop, it swung open, and Nollie rushed out. She enveloped Corrie with her arms. The two sisters hugged and clung to each other with tears of joy running down their cheeks. Finally, arm in arm they walked into the Beje. Waiting inside were Nollie’s three daughters, who eagerly welcomed Tante Corrie home. The five of them walked together through the Beje. First, they went into Corrie’s bedroom; the Angels’ Den was still hidden behind the linen closet and bookcase. The Gestapo had never managed to discover the entrance to it. Next, they went into Tante Jans’s old bedroom; the chair in which their mother had sat and looked out over Barteljorisstraat so many years before still sat by the window. In the kitchen, Betsie’s favorite recipe book was still propped up beside the stove. And in the clockshop, Casper ten Boom’s eyeglass lay on his workbench, right where he had left it. All the things were still there in the Beje, but the people who made it home were not. As Corrie walked through the house, both happiness and sadness mingled inside her. Corrie was happy to be free, happy to be back in Haarlem in the Beje, but sad because Betsie and her father were not there and would never be there again.
Together Nollie, Corrie, and the girls cleaned the house until it was spotless. But somehow, after all the dreams and longing to be back at the Beje, it didn’t feel like home to Corrie anymore. Even after she resumed her watchmaking career, she would sit down to replace the mainspring in a watch and not be able to concentrate on the task. All the time she felt as though she should be somewhere else doing something else.
Despite what she was feeling, throughout the spring of 1945, Corrie tried hard to pick up and go on with her life as it had been before the Gestapo raid. But her attempt to get back to normal was made even more difficult by the fact that northern Holland was still under German occupation. Hitler had pulled all his occupying troops out of Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and France, but for whatever reason, he was unwilling to loosen his grip on northern Holland. This left the citizens of Haarlem and other northern towns in a terrible situation. They had no food, no fuel, and no transportation. Dutch citizens were dying from starvation and the cold right in their own homes, while in many other parts of Europe, people were celebrating their liberation from German occupation.
Spring dragged on, and Corrie watched as so many people she knew became desperate to survive, almost as desperate as the prisoners she and Betsie had been with in Vught and Ravensbruck concentration camps. As she saw what was happening to them, she remembered Betsie’s words: “We must tell the people there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper.” As she recalled those words, Corrie knew what was missing from her life. She wasn’t supposed to be in the clockshop repairing watches. God wanted her out telling these desperate people about His love for them.
Within days, Corrie had begun speaking in homes and at church gatherings. It was difficult for her to relive the pain she had been through, but the stories she told about herself and Betsie gave many people courage to go on. And because of that, despite her emotional pain, Corrie knew she could not stop speaking about her experience.
Then on May 1, 1945, news quickly buzzed through Holland that Adolf Hitler was dead. The official word was that he had died fighting the enemy. The world would later learn he had committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.
All Holland held its breath. Surely it was only a matter of days now before the Nazis surrendered and gave up Holland. And it was. On Tuesday, May 8, 1945, Canadian tanks rolled into Haarlem. The bells of St. Bavo’s Church rang out, and everyone crowded into the streets.
Corrie had one thing to do before she joined the others in the street. She took her father’s portrait off the wall in the parlor and carried it down to the clockshop. Lovingly she set it in the front window of the shop. Then she climbed the stairs again and brought down the old family Bible that he had read from every morning and evening. She opened it at Psalm 91 and laid it in the window. Then she took orange (the Dutch royal color) ribbons and draped them across Casper ten Boom’s portrait. “Now,” Corrie said to herself, “he too is a part of this great day.” With that she slipped out the side door of the Beje and disappeared into the throng of celebrating Dutch people, free Dutch people, who were finally out from under the clutches of Nazi Germany.
Chapter 15
Help, Hope, and Healing
Even though the war was over, things did not return to normal in Holland. The whole Dutch way of life had been damaged. Almost every family in the country was missing a son or a nephew. And for the ten Boom family, their nightmare did not immediately end with the war. In 1946, Willem ten Boom died, having never fully recovered from the tuberculosis he contracted while imprisoned by the Nazis. He died without knowing what had happened to his oldest son, Kik. It wasn’t until several years later that Tine finally learned that their son had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Slowly, information began to come out about how brutal and terrible Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had really been. It was worse than anyone had imagined. Of the 115,000 Jews in Holland before the war, only about 8,500 had survived. And throughout Europe, between eighteen million and twenty-six million people had died in concentration camps. It was hard to get an exact number because so many people had just disappeared with no trace. But two numbers that were known were that at least six million Jews and four hundred thousand Gypsies had been killed. Some of the pictures photographers took of what the Allies found when they entered the concentration camps were so horrible that they were never published. When all the soldiers killed were added in, the Second World War claimed over fifty million lives and destroyed some of the world’s most beautiful cities.
Before he died, Willem was able to locate the unmarked grave in Scheveningen where Casper ten Boom had been buried. The ten Boom family had his body reburied in the war cemetery at Loenen, along with hundreds of other brave men and women who, working for the underground, had given their lives for their fellow countrymen. The “Grand Old Man” of Haarlem finally had the resting place he deserved. Corrie wept during the dedication service of his new grave. She mourned that Betsie’s body would never lie beside his.
Corrie stayed busy speaking after the war. More than ever, people needed to hear about how to forgive others and go on with their lives. She was especially concerned for the people who, like her, had been held captive by the Nazis and had witnessed unspeakable horrors. Many of them had been so terrified by what they saw and experienced that they found it hard to fit into normal life.
During this time, there was one particular meeting Corrie spoke at that she never forgot. It was like many of the other meetings, until the end, when a well-dressed woman came up to her.
“Hello,” said the woman. “I am Mrs. Bierens de Haan, and I live in Bloemendaal.”
Corrie nodded. She knew the area well. Years before she had regularly taken her Walking Club for strolls around the gardens of the palatial homes there.
“Do you still live in that little house with the clockshop downstairs?” asked Mrs. de Haan kindly.
Corrie frowned, wondering whether she should know this woman. “Yes, I do,” she replied. “How do you know about it?”
Mrs. de Haan smiled. “My mother used to tell me stories about her visits there. She would go to visit a woman who had been married to a pastor.”
Corrie smiled. “Tante Jans. She was always involving ladies in charity work.”
Mrs. de Haan nodded. “Yes, my mother was very interested in charity, and so am I. When you were speaking about the need for a place for those released from Nazi prisons and concentration camps to go to recuperate, I had the strangest impression that I should talk to you. My husband is dead, but we had five sons together. All five of them worked in the underground, and one of them, Jan, was captured and taken off to Germany. We have not heard a word from him since.”
“So you want me to pray for him, Mrs. de Haan? I would be honored to do that,” said Corrie, trying to anticipate where Mrs. de Haan was headed with the conversation.
