The book was an instant hit, selling over two million copies. Suddenly, Corrie ten Boom was a well-known figure to Christians around the world. Although she found it difficult being famous, she was grateful that the fame helped to spread her message even farther afield. Wherever she went, she took a box of her books to give away to people, all sorts of people. At an airport, she would start a conversation with a skycap. “I bet you really know your way through this airport,” she would comment. The skycap would agree, proud that someone had noticed. “Well, that is wonderful,” Corrie would go on. “But it is more important that you know the way to heaven. Do you?” Then she would pull out one of her books, sign it, and hand it to the skycap with great flourish. “Here, read this, and if you have any questions, write to me.” She would tuck an address card into the book.
When she had settled into her seat on the airplane, she would stop a stewardess. “Would you please give this to the pilot?” she would ask as she handed the stewardess two copies of her book, one for her to keep and one for the pilot.
From the time The Hiding Place was published, Corrie was hardly ever back in Holland. She slept in a different bed almost every night as she busily kept up her travel schedule. However, in 1974, she got to return to Haarlem. The Hiding Place was being turned into a movie, which was filming in Holland.
Corrie took the cast and crew of the movie to visit the Beje. She led them along Barteljorisstraat and up to the familiar green door of the Beje. She opened the door and stepped back in time. The Beje was still filled with memories of her mother and father and Betsie. As she ushered the cast and crew inside, she stopped in her tracks. The was a noise coming from upstairs. She motioned for the others to stay put downstairs while she climbed the stairs to investigate. The noise grew louder and louder as she climbed. It was coming from her old bedroom on the third floor, and it was the sound of Hebrew chanting. Loud, sorrowful chanting. Corrie knew the voice could belong to only one person, Eusie!
She tiptoed to the door of her old bedroom and peeked in. There, side by side, stood Eusie and Hans Poley. Eusie was chanting, and Hans was listening with his eyes closed. When they had finished, Corrie walked into the room. All three of them embraced warmly.
“What are you doing here?” she finally asked.
“It has been thirty years since we were hiding here,” said Eusie, waving his hand towards the Angels’ Den. “When we sat in there hour after hour wondering whether we would be caught by the Nazis, I made a promise to God. I told Him that if I got out alive, I would come back to this place to sing praises to Him in my loudest voice. Not only did I make it through, but my wife and three children also survived. We are the only Jewish family I know who survived the war intact.” His voice cracked, and then he went on, “Today I came back to sing.”
Corrie smiled. Her father would have loved to hear the Jewish cantor’s voice resounding through the Beje once more.
Finally, the three of them descended the stairs. In the clockshop, the cast and crew were waiting eagerly for a report on the noise upstairs. Corrie introduced Eusie and Hans to the cast, who peppered them both with questions about their experiences hiding out in the Beje during the war.
Corrie continued to travel the globe, sharing her message of love and forgiveness. Occasionally, she would feel it was time for her to settle down and lead a quiet life, but then she would remember Betsie’s words: “We must tell them there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper.” Whenever Corrie heard those words ring in her mind, she knew she had to keep going.
In 1976, at the age of eighty-four, Corrie was still going strong. She and her assistant embarked on an eighteen-city tour of the United States that took seven months. Eventually, though, Billy Graham, who had befriended Corrie, convinced her she should settle down a little and stop her hectic pace, which would wear a woman half her age out! So in 1977, Corrie and her new assistant, Pam Rosewell, moved into a ranch-style house in the suburb of Placentia located in Orange County, California. Corrie might have agreed to stay put in one place, but she hadn’t said anything about stopping! She announced to Pam her latest plan. She would produce five new books and five new teaching movies in less than two years.
By her eighty-seventh birthday, Corrie had completed her plan. But the effort and energy required to do it had taken its toll on her body. One morning soon afterwards, Corrie awoke to find she could not move at all. Lying in bed, she knew what had happened. She had suffered a massive stroke, just as her mother had sixty years before. At first, everyone thought Corrie was going to die, but she didn’t. She recovered a little, but she could no longer speak. Then she had a second and a third stroke. Her old Dutch friend Lotte Reimeringer moved into the house to help Pam Rosewell take care of her. They played the music of Bach and Beethoven on the stereo and took turns reading to Corrie. They even read some of her own books to her. As they read, Corrie relived her happy childhood with Betsie, Willem, and Nollie. She could hear Peter’s wonderful organ music and see her mother doing embroidery. She remembered her father sitting in his favorite chair and experienced again the joy of running through the sand dunes with her Triangle Club girls. And she would smile and nod. What a wonderful life she had lived. Her experiences had made her famous, and her books and movies would have made her rich if she hadn’t given nearly all her money away to various causes.
Corrie had faithfully followed the encouragement Betsie had given her thirty-three years before. She had spent the rest of her life after being released from Ravensbruck telling people there was no pit so deep that God’s love wasn’t deeper. Finally, the woman who had lived to tell others about love and forgiveness died quietly in her bed on April 15, 1983, on her ninety-first birthday.
Corrie ten Boom was buried in Los Angeles, and her gravestone was inscribed, “Corrie ten Boom, 1892–1983, Jesus is Victor.”
