“No, that’s not it,” she said with a smile. “When I was listening to you, I felt God tell me two things. First, Jan would be fine and coming home soon, and second, when he comes home I should hand my home over to you for your work as a way of saying thank you.”
For a moment Corrie didn’t know what to say. It sounded like Mrs. de Haan thought she had made some sort of a bargain with God to get her son back. Corrie did not want to be a part of that. What if her son didn’t come home? Not many underground workers who were captured did. Quickly she tried to think of some way to let Mrs. de Haan down gently.
“That’s very kind of you,” Corrie began, “but back in Ravensbruck, shortly before she died, Betsie described to me the inside of a home. She was very specific about the details, and I believe in her memory I should do my best to find a home like the one she described.” Corrie paused to recall Betsie’s description. “The house she described had inlaid wood floors, and there were marble statues set in little nooks all along the walls. And the staircase was wide, and the windows were tall and went all the way to the ceiling….”
Corrie stopped midsentence when she saw the beaming smile that had spread across Mrs. de Haan’s face.
“Then that settles it,” said Mrs. de Haan. “I see you’ve been to my house already. I can’t wait for Jan to get home!”
Corrie was amazed by her reply, but not nearly as amazed as when Mrs. de Haan’s son Jan returned home alive and well a few days later. And nothing compared to how amazed she was when later that week she toured the de Haan home. It was exactly like the house Betsie had described to her in Ravensbruck. Corrie had thought that in her delirious mind Betsie may have been describing what she thought heaven was like, but in fact she had been describing the inside of Mrs. de Haan’s home. It gave Corrie goosebumps to walk across the inlaid wood floor and stare up at the statues set into nooks in the walls. It was a beautiful place, a perfect place for people to rest and get over the trauma of being held captive in a concentration camp.
True to her word, Mrs. de Haan handed over the fifty-six-room home to Corrie. Within a month, the house was filled with people. Some of them were newly released from concentration camps. Some were Jews who had spent the past five years hiding in attics and cellars. Others were Dutch people who had been bombed out of their homes and had nowhere else to go. Still others were orphans whose entire families had been wiped out by the Nazis.
Many people came to help Corrie with her work. Doctors and nurses, gardeners and housekeepers, all came to lend a hand. But many who came to help thought that Corrie should run the home more strictly. For example, at three o’clock every morning, one man got up and walked to Haarlem. He had spent a good part of the war in a concentration camp, and Corrie knew he needed to know he was free to go anywhere at any time. Some people thought the gates should be locked at night so he could not go out. Corrie, though, refused to lock anything. She had seen enough locks and barbed wire to last a lifetime, and so had many of the people who came to her for help at the de Haan house.
Meals, too, were served anytime anyone wanted something to eat. Again, some nurses suggested that Corrie have bells and proper mealtimes, but Corrie could not do it. The lives of the people she was helping had been entirely regulated by horns and bells for so long that they, like her, never wanted to hear either again. Corrie remembered how wonderful it had been when she got to the hospital at Groningen. She remembered the smell of the fresh sheets, the kindness of the nurses, the Bach music playing on the radio, and the shelves stocked with books. Kindness and beauty, they were the things the survivors needed most of all, and Corrie did all she could to provide them for the people who came to her for help.
Many people found healing and peace at the de Haan home, but one group of people could find no peace anywhere in Holland. It seemed no one wanted to help them. They were the men and women who had been a part of the National Socialist Bond (NSB), which had helped the Nazis control Holland. As soon as the war was over, their neighbors turned on them, showing all the anger and hatred they had not been allowed to express for five years. The members of the NSB were thrown out of their homes and spat upon when they went out in public. Corrie felt sorry for them and invited several to live in the de Haan house in Bloemendaal. This turned out to be a disaster. The people who had lost family members and friends because members of the NSB had betrayed them would not welcome them into the house. There were huge arguments, and in the end, Corrie had to give up the idea of forcing them to live together.
Corrie came up with another idea, however. She remembered the night her father had been arrested and his words to the Nazi official who had offered him his freedom. “Tomorrow morning I will open my doors again to anyone who is in need of my help,” he had said to the officer. Casper ten Boom would have let members of the NSB into his home; Corrie was sure of it. So in honor of him, she allowed those who had been in the National Socialist Bond to take over the Beje and live in it. Six or seven of them at a time went to live in the home of a man whom a member of the group had betrayed. There they found help and healing.
Gradually the people at Bloemendaal followed Corrie’s example and began to reach out to their fellow countrymen and women living at the Beje. But as she was urging people to forgive others, especially those who had been members of the NSB, Corrie was wrestling with her own thoughts and feelings. An old friend from the underground had told her where Jan Vogel was living. Jan Vogel was the man who had visited her the night before the raid, asking for six hundred guilders. Corrie knew she had to forgive him. Finally, one day, she felt strong enough to get out a pen and paper and begin writing him a letter. “I heard that you are most likely the person who betrayed my family and me. As a result, I was in a concentration camp for ten months. My father died in prison nine days after he was arrested. My sister died in Ravensbruck concentration camp….”
Corrie struggled to write the letter. “God, I do not have the strength to forgive this man; please give me Your strength,” she prayed as she wrote. Eventually, she finished the letter, telling Jan Vogel she forgave him for the terrible thing he had done to the ten Boom family and urging him to ask God to forgive him also.
By 1947, so many people wanted to help with the work at the de Haan house in Bloemendaal that Corrie had time to write and travel. It was during this time she wrote her first book, A Prisoner and Yet…. Most of the book was written in the early hours of the morning. Two years after being released from Ravensbruck, Corrie still awoke at 4:30 every morning, the time the prisoners had gotten up for roll call. The book told the story of Corrie and Betsie’s time at Vught and Ravensbruck. The message of the book was that God wants all persons to forgive those who have wronged them. After writing the difficult letter to Jan Vogel forgiving him, Corrie thought she was living the message of her book, that is, until she traveled to Germany to speak.
At a large church in Munich, she spoke about how God asks people to forgive one another and how, with His love, they can become like brothers and sisters, no matter what their nationality. When Corrie had finished speaking, many people came up to thank her for what she had said. She shook their hands and thanked them for coming and listening. Then, when the church was nearly empty, Corrie spotted a tall man with blond hair making his way towards her. In a flash she was back in the shower building at Ravensbruck. This man, an SS Guard, was standing by the door, hand on his gun, leering at the women prisoners as he made them strip. Corrie stood motionless as he approached her. She heard his voice as if it were a million miles away. “Thank you for your talk,” he said. “It is so wonderful to know God forgives all our sins, isn’t it?”
Corrie looked at the man standing in front of her. Instead of seeing his smiling face, she saw the faces of Betsie and her father. The man thrust out his hand to shake Corrie’s, and as he did so, hatred filled her heart. She would not and could not lift her hand to shake his.
“Oh God,” she prayed silently, “help me to live my message.”
As she prayed those words, it was as though a strong jolt of electricity had run through her body. Her arm stretched out as though she had no control over it, and she shook the man’s hand. As she did so, all the hatred she felt melted away, and she knew she had forgiven him.
“Yes, it is wonderful to know that God forgives all our sins!” she said, meaning every word.
Later, in Germany, another man came to see Corrie. He had heard about the work at the de Haan house in Bloemendaal. He was a member of the German Lutheran Church, and he told Corrie that the new German government wanted the church to open a similar home for Germans who had been devastated by the war and were still struggling to adapt to normal life. He asked Corrie if she would help to set it up. Corrie thought it was a good idea, until she heard where it was going to be located—in a former concentration camp called Darmstadt. She didn’t think she had the strength to go inside another concentration camp, even though it had been closed for two years, much less turn it into a place of recovery. However, Betsie’s words rang in her mind: “We must tell them there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper.” Despite her feelings, Corrie knew what she had to do, and she set about turning Darmstadt into a place of hope and healing.
The years sped by for Corrie. In 1953, Nollie died, leaving Corrie feeling very alone. Corrie was the last of Casper ten Boom’s children still alive. But she did not give up her work. More opportunities came for her to speak and share her simple message. All in all, she visited over sixty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan, Israel, and New Zealand. In 1956, she went on one of her speaking trips with Dr. Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision. They had just finished a series of meetings in Taiwan when he made a ridiculous suggestion. “Why don’t you meet with Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands?”
Corrie laughed. She decided that since Bob Pierce was an American, he didn’t understand that a Dutch commoner did not make an appointment to see the Queen.
“It’s not that easy,” she told him.
“Well,” replied Bob Pierce, “pray about it and see what happens.”
Corrie agreed to do that, but she knew she had done nothing extraordinary in Holland. Many thousands of Dutch people had been as brave as she had been, and some had suffered far more than she had suffered. Still, she would pray about it.
When Corrie got back to the Netherlands, she sent a letter to Wilhelmina, who now called herself Princess Wilhelmina because she had stepped aside from the throne so that her daughter Juliana could become queen. Three days later, the royal car was outside Corrie’s house waiting to pick Corrie up. Corrie sat in shock all the way to “’t Loo,” where the royal palace was located. Corrie and Princess Wilhelmina became good friends, and the princess invited Corrie back for many evening chats. Corrie told her all about her life and how God had given her a message of forgiveness to take to the world. She also told Princess Wilhelmina about her father and how he had prayed for her every morning of his life—how he would have loved to know that his youngest daughter actually sat in the palace and talked with Wilhelmina about God’s love!
As Corrie got older, she found it more difficult to travel alone, so she was joined by an assistant, Conny van Hoogstraten. Together they continued traveling the world, where Corrie would share her message with anyone who would listen.
On one of her trips to the United States, Corrie met a talented writing duo, John and Elizabeth Sherrill, who listened to her story and read her book A Prisoner and Yet…. The Sherrills asked Corrie if they could work with her on a book that would tell the whole story of the ten Boom family during the German occupation of Holland. Corrie agreed, and in 1971, The Hiding Place was published.
