Corrie and her father knew more about what was going on in Germany than did many people in Holland because Willem had studied for his doctorate there. Although it had been thirteen years before, he had come back with a sad warning. He had even written one of his university papers on the roots of a terrible evil that was brewing in Germany. He thought that the poverty and shame of defeat that the Germans felt after World War I were a dangerous mix. He argued that the Germans were angry and bitter and as a result were looking for someone to blame for their problems. If their anger and bitterness were ever stirred up by the government, Jewish people could be in great danger. When Willem had handed his paper in, his professors laughed and congratulated him on his wonderful imagination. They assured him there was nothing to fear in Germany.
But Willem had not been able to stop thinking about the problems in Germany. He was certain they would one day spill over and infect the entire world. As early as 1933, Willem was telling his congregation about the hatred that was poisoning the German people. Whenever something didn’t go well for the new German leader, Adolf Hitler, he would find someone else to blame for it. Often it was Jewish people. Indeed, in 1933, Hitler banned Jews from holding public office, from working in the civil service, and from being teachers and journalists. Many Germans, even Jewish Germans, weren’t too concerned about this; there were still plenty of good jobs a Jewish person could take. However, those bans were just the beginning. By 1935, German Jews, many whose families had lived in Germany for hundreds of years, had their citizenship taken from them. They could no longer vote or marry non-Jews. By 1938, Jews were not allowed to be lawyers or doctors. Some Jews fled to America and other parts of Europe, but many others stayed in their homes, believing things could not possibly get any worse in a “civilized” country.
Willem, though, felt sure things would get worse for Jewish people in Germany. He tried to warn his congregation. Hitler was determined to breed a “master race” in Germany, which consisted of white, Christian, Northern European people. He called these people Aryans, and he wanted to “eliminate” anyone who wasn’t part of this race. Of course, Jewish people couldn’t be part of Hitler’s master race. Neither could gypsies or people with physical or mental disabilities. In Hitler’s mind, these people “infected” pure German blood and were the cause of all of Germany’s problems. Getting rid of them would make Germany the greatest power on earth.
But Willem ten Boom’s congregation had grown tired of his warnings, which sounded more like science fiction than fact to them. So Willem had lost his position as a local church minister. Instead, the Dutch Reformed church allowed him and his wife, Tine, to open a rest home for old people in Hilversum, about thirty miles southeast of Haarlem, on the other side of Amsterdam. The rest home housed mainly elderly Jewish people, but Willem had told Corrie that over the past four years an increasing number of young Jewish refugees from Germany had been making their way to his rest home. Each of them had a sad story to tell, and Corrie was sure that Willem wasn’t repeating the worst of the stories to her. Her brother did tell her stories of Jewish people being burned out of their homes, of Jewish rabbis having their beards burned off their faces, and of Jewish children who were so scared they didn’t speak for weeks after arriving in Hilversum. The stories brought tears to Corrie’s eyes. Corrie wondered how anyone could hate somebody else so much to do such things to them.
A few minutes before 9:30 p.m., eighty-year-old Casper ten Boom adjusted the knobs on the big radio, which he’d had now for sixteen years and which, like him, took a few minutes to warm up. They could have listened to the speech on the smaller, more modern radio they had downstairs, but somehow Corrie sensed they all wanted to hear it on something old and solid, something that reminded them of peaceful, quiet evenings spent listening to orchestras.
The radio hummed and crackled, and Corrie leaned forward to adjust it to the station a little better. At exactly 9:30 p.m., the voice of Holland’s prime minister filled the room. It sounded smooth and soothing. He assured the Dutch people that the country would never go to war. He reminded them that in the past when the rest of Europe had been at war, Holland had always remained at peace. He told the listeners that he’d spoken to both the British and the German government leaders, and no one had any intention of involving Holland in their war. Dutch people should remain calm and go about their daily business as they always did.
Corrie was listening so carefully to every word the prime minister said that she didn’t notice her father climb out of his chair. Nor did she notice him walk over to the radio, where he flicked it off, right in midsentence.
Corrie and Betsie, who was also listening carefully to the speech, looked at each other. What could their father be thinking? The prime minister hadn’t finished his speech yet. Without speaking, Casper ten Boom walked to the door, where he swung around to face his daughters.
“I could not listen to any more of those lies,” he said angrily. “The prime minister is a fool if he thinks Holland can stay out of the war. And all who believe him are fools as well. Germany will invade Holland. We will lose. Germany will overrun us. God help all those in Holland who do not call on His name.” With that he turned and headed up the stairs.
Corrie and Betsie sat in shocked silence. They had never heard their peaceful, kind father use such an angry tone of voice before. Had he really called the prime minister a fool? He never used language like that. So many times when they were children he had told them to speak well of others or not speak at all.
Finally, both Corrie and Betsie stood without saying a word and climbed the stairs, each to her own room. There was nothing to say, nothing to discuss. Most people in Holland went to bed that night with the assurance of the prime minister ringing in their ears. There would be no war in Holland. They were safe. Corrie and Betsie ten Boom went to bed with no such assurance. Deep down they knew their father was right. Holland would surely be invaded and destroyed, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
At 2:30 a.m. that night, a loud explosion awoke Corrie. At first she didn’t know what had awakened her, but within seconds there was another explosion and the glow of orange light through her curtains. She sat up and swung her feet to the floor. There was no doubt in her mind; her father was right: German bombs were falling; Holland was under attack. Corrie grabbed her robe and headed down the stairs. She passed her father’s room and listened carefully. In and out, in and out, she could hear his breathing. Amazingly, he was still asleep. She grabbed the railing and ran down the stairs a few more steps to Betsie’s room. Corrie found her sister sitting on the edge of her bed and rushed into her arms. The two of them clung to each other, waiting for the noise to stop, but it went on and on. Finally, after ten minutes, Betsie spoke. “Let’s go into the front room and look out the window.”
Corrie nodded.
Holding hands, just as they had when they were young girls, Corrie and Betsie crept into the front room. They edged their way to the window and peered out.
“They must be bombing the airport,” whispered Betsie, pointing in the direction of the bursts of orange light.
Corrie nodded again, still too shocked to speak.
They stood at the window for several minutes. With each blast more orange light pulsated through the room, making the objects that had stood there for over a hundred years look strangely out of place. Finally, Betsie pulled on Corrie’s arm. “Let’s pray,” she said, as she sank to her knees in front of the piano stool.
Corrie knelt beside her and began to pray. She prayed for the people who were being hurt or killed by the bombs that were falling, she prayed for her father, for Willem and Tine and their children, and for her sister Nollie, her husband, Flip, and their children. She also prayed for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. She even said a prayer for the prime minister. When Corrie was finished, she waited for Betsie to take her turn.
Betsie began, “God, we bring before You the German pilots up in those planes dropping bombs on us right now. We pray their eyes will be opened to the evil ways of Hitler. God bless them, and let them know You are with them always.”
Corrie opened her eyes and stared at her sister as if she were a stranger. For the second time in a single night, Corrie was surprised by the actions of someone she thought she knew well. First her father had angrily turned off the radio and called the prime minister a fool, and now her sister was praying for the Germans! She closed her lips tight. She would not say anything to upset Betsie right now, but there was no way on earth she would say “amen” to such a ridiculous prayer!
The next morning, Casper ten Boom came down for breakfast at exactly 8:15, as he always did. He read a chapter from the Bible and went to work in the clockshop at nine o’clock. However, he didn’t get much work done. A never-ending procession of people dropped by. Corrie and Betsie spent that day and the next four days ferrying pots of steaming coffee from the kitchen to the workshop and salesroom. Corrie carried the small radio from the dining room, where it was kept, into the salesroom. There was more news. The prime minister of Great Britain, seventy-one-year-old Neville Chamberlain, had resigned, and Winston Churchill had become the new prime minister. When Corrie heard this, she hoped that Churchill would be tougher on Hitler than Chamberlain had been. Most of all, though, she wanted to hear what the radio stations had to say about Holland. Unfortunately, the German and English stations each said the same thing: Holland was hopelessly outnumbered by German tanks and manpower, and it would be only a matter of time before German tanks rumbled across the eastern border and occupied Holland. Luxembourg and Belgium to the south were also under attack.
Some visitors to the clockshop wanted Corrie’s father to pray for them; others just seemed to want to sit at the Beje, as if somehow the peace of the ten Boom home could protect them from what lay ahead. But it could not.
Five days after the prime minister had promised peace, it came, but not in the way he had intended. The Dutch put up a good fight, even though they were hopelessly outnumbered by the Germans. But May 14, 1940, became the blackest day in the history of the Netherlands. Adolf Hitler, frustrated by the way the Dutch were resisting his efforts, ordered the city of Rotterdam bombed. By the end of the day, one thousand Dutch men, women, and children were dead, and over 78,000 were homeless. Twenty-one churches and four hospitals were among the buildings that lay in ruins. When Hitler threatened to reduce the nearby city of Utrecht to rubble as well, the Dutch prime minister signed a surrender. The day before, Queen Wilhelmina had fled to Great Britain aboard a British warship. In London she set up Radio Orange (orange was the color of Dutch royalty). Throughout the rest of the war, Radio Orange broadcast news in Dutch every night, and Queen Wilhelmina often spoke to the people, encouraging them to keep fighting. When the country surrendered, many Dutch soldiers escaped to England, where they hoped to regroup and one day take back their homeland from the Germans.
At first nothing changed too much in Holland. There were German soldiers on the streets and in vehicles. Their huge truck wheels going through the puddles formed by summer showers splashed Corrie as she rode her bicycle to Nollie’s house. And everywhere it seemed that people were speaking German. There was also a curfew, but it was for ten o’clock at night, and since none of the ten Booms were ever out that late, it didn’t affect them at all. There were rules, though, which forbade group meetings, so the Triangle Club had to stop. And everyone was issued ration cards. The products that were available for purchase with the cards were listed in the newspaper on Saturday. Betsie had always been a creative cook, stretching the food money as far as it would go, so no one at the Beje really noticed the difference. Strangely enough, the clock business was booming. German soldiers were always in the clockshop looking for some souvenir to send home. The ten Boom clockshop sold more clocks and watches in the first year of occupation by the Germans than it ever had in a single year before.
