After a slower than usual train ride from Haarlem, Corrie, Betsie, and their father arrived at the Dutch Reformed church in Velsen. The service had already begun, so they had to squeeze into the very back pew. Since the start of the occupation, churches all over Holland were fuller on Sundays than they had ever been. Sometimes a congregation would be so large it spilled out onto the street.
The service followed the usual pattern—an opening hymn, then a prayer, another hymn, and then the sermon, during which the pastor made some comments—not too many and not too strongly worded—about the occupation. Corrie understood perfectly why the caution. There were bound to be German spies planted in the congregation. As they stood to sing the last hymn, Corrie thought back to some of her brother Willem’s sermons. It was a good thing he was no longer delivering them on Sundays. The way he spoke about the Nazis, he would have been rounded up and imprisoned a long time ago.
As the hymn finished, Corrie closed the hymnal and sat down with the rest of the congregation. But to everyone’s surprise, the swell of organ music continued. Corrie gasped. Was Peter not paying attention? She hoped he would realize his mistake quickly. But he appeared not to. He kept right on playing, more loudly than before. As Corrie listened, she realized he was no longer playing the hymn. Instead, she recognized the tune of “Wilhelmus,” the national anthem of Holland. Corrie put her face in her hands in horror. Everyone knew that the Germans had banned the playing and singing of the anthem months ago.
While Corrie sat worrying about Peter’s being arrested and thrown in jail, she felt her father beside her rising to his feet, and then she heard his clear, strong voice pick up the tune of the anthem. As though waiting for a leader, other members of the congregation rose and joined in, until the whole congregation was on its feet. The rousing words and tune of “Wilhelmus” filled every corner of the church. It was a wonderful moment, and even Corrie was filled with pride and patriotism. But as the last refrain of the anthem faded from the pipes of the ancient organ, Corrie again worried about the price her favorite nephew would have to pay for such an act of disobedience against the Nazis.
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. Three days later Peter was arrested and sent to prison in Amsterdam. Corrie cried for him as she cried for all of Holland’s young men. She wondered what would happen to them all before the nightmare that had overtaken Holland had ended.
With Peter in prison, Corrie worried that the whole family was now being watched. How long would it be before Peter’s father, Flip, lost his job as school principal or someone visited Willem and Tine to examine the records of the old-folks home? Willem had tried hard to disguise the fact that most of the people he looked after were Jewish, but it was difficult. Because the Dutch government had not taken seriously the threat of an attack by the Germans, it had not destroyed any official documents. When the Germans took over Holland, waiting for them were carefully detailed records of every person’s political and religious beliefs. If the Germans decided to look into the records for Willem’s rest home, it would be an easy matter to find enough evidence to arrest him and take him away.
There wasn’t much time in May or June to dwell on what had happened to Peter. Bad things were happening too quickly in Holland. Early in June, Willem came to visit the Beje. He seemed to have more reliable information about the Jewish situation than anyone else, but still Corrie found it hard to believe what he was telling her. Was it true the Nazis had ordered all Jews to report to be shipped off to work camps?
“What about the old and the mentally feeble? Surely the Nazis don’t want them?” she asked Willem.
Willem nodded. “I think they have something other than work in mind for these people. They want to wipe Jews from the face of the earth.”
Corrie closed her eyes. The Nazis had such hatred. Where did it come from, and more important, would it ever end?
Three days after Willem’s warning about what lay ahead for the Jews, Mrs. Kleermaker arrived at the clockshop. It was about ten minutes before eight in the evening, and she was carrying a bag and wearing what looked like four or five sets of clothes. When Corrie first opened the door, Mrs. Kleermaker was so scared she could hardly speak. But after drinking a cup of weak coffee made from ground figs, she slowly began to disclose the details of her story.
Her husband had already been arrested several weeks before, and her son had become a diver. (Diver was the new Dutch word for a person who had gone underground to avoid being captured by the Nazis.) Mrs. Kleermaker herself had been in her house when she’d seen suspicious-looking Dutch soldiers standing around the front door. In a panic she had put on her warmest clothes, gathered a few special belongings, and fled out the back door. She was too scared to return home and wanted to know whether the ten Boom family could help her; she had nowhere else to turn.
She didn’t need to say any more. Casper ten Boom may not have sewn the patch with the yellow Star of David onto his coat, but he, along with his daughters, was ready to help any Jewish person in need. He invited Mrs. Kleermaker to stay at the Beje until “more permanent” arrangements could be made.
Within a week, the situation repeated itself. This time there were two frightened people standing at the door. They were ushered into the dining room and calmed down with some hot coffee made from ground figs.
As Corrie poured them a second cup of coffee, she was amazed at the composure of the two people in the face of such madness. Their families had lived in Holland since the sixteenth century when the Inquisition had driven their forefathers from Spain and Portugal. Now they were being hunted down like dogs by a police force that had once been loyal to a peace-loving queen. It was as though they were all on the right stage but some people were reading from the wrong script.
Nor was there much time to dwell on how awful things had become in Holland; there were too many practical matters to be dealt with. The most important of these matters, and the one that needed immediate attention, was getting enough food. Instead of three people living at the Beje, there were now six, and because the three guests were Jewish, they didn’t have ration cards. The ten Booms could not grow vegetables in a garden, because the Beje was on a busy corner in the center of town and there wasn’t an inch of room for a garden anywhere around it. Somehow they would have to find another way to get enough food for them all to eat.
As Corrie thought about the problem, she realized she didn’t know what to do. The only thing she could think of was to talk to Willem about the situation. She knew he was involved with the underground; perhaps he had a contact who could help. The next day she caught the train for Hilversum. As she rode along, she decided it would be best for the three “guests” to move into the country if possible. There they would be freer to move around outside. They could even help the farmers and earn their keep. Regardless of how much the Nazis asked the Dutch farmers to send to the German front, Corrie knew that the farmers would find some way to keep enough food back to feed themselves and their helpers.
When Corrie arrived at Willem’s rest home, she found her brother bent over a bookkeeping ledger in his office. She walked in and shut the door deliberately behind her. “I’ve come to discuss a particular problem,” she announced.
Willem raised his eyebrows. “What has my daring little sister been up to now?” he asked in a lighthearted voice, though Corrie could hear his concern underneath his laughter.
“We have certain guests staying at the Beje, and we are having trouble feeding them all,” she said.
Willem caught on immediately. “How many are we talking about?” he asked.
“Three at the moment, but there’s nothing to say there won’t be three more by the time I get home,” Corrie replied honestly.
Willem tapped his fingers on the desk. “I have certain contacts,” he said. “I think I might be able to find homes for them, if they have ration cards.”
Corrie looked at her brother in shock and blurted out, “Ration cards, of course they don’t have ration cards. They’re Jewish!”
Willem reached across the desk and laid his hand on Corrie’s arm. “They don’t have ration cards now, but they could have them by next week,” he said, more as a statement than a question.
Corrie’s thoughts whirled; she tried to grasp what he could possibly mean, but she couldn’t.
“There are ways to get ration cards,” Willem went on. “For instance, you could steal them….”
His words hung in the air.
“Could you?” Corrie finally gasped, stunned at her brother’s suggestion.
“No,” he replied gently. “Every move I make is watched by the soldiers. What I meant was you, Corrie. You could steal them.”
Two hours later as she walked back down Barteljorisstraat towards the Beje, Corrie had still not recovered from the shock of her brother’s suggestion. What was Willem thinking? Here she was, a fifty-year-old spinster clockmaker who’d never stolen so much as a paper clip from a bank, and she was supposed to steal ration cards from under the Germans’ noses. For a moment, as she hurried down the street, she wanted to yell “No!” She didn’t want her world turned upside down like this. If she were caught, she would be sent off to a labor camp for sure, and so would Betsie and her father. They were all too old and too set in their ways for such a thing.
However, by the time Corrie unlocked the side door to the Beje and let herself in, a peace had settled over her. These desperate Jewish people had come to them for refuge, and they would not be turned away. Whatever it took, wherever it led, Corrie ten Boom promised herself she would find a way to help these people.
Chapter 5
The Secret Room
Corrie tossed and turned in bed that night in her room on the top floor of the Beje. She tried to imagine herself bursting into the Food Office and demanding ration cards or else. Or else what? What else could she do? Then, as the bells of St. Bavo chimed midnight, an entirely new thought struck her. She didn’t have to steal the ration cards on her own. There were many loyal Dutch men and women who would help her. Finally, she drifted off to sleep with a plan beginning to take shape in her mind. She remembered that the husband of a woman from church worked in the Food Office in Haarlem. His name was Fred Koornstra, and perhaps he could help.
The next afternoon, Corrie pushed her old bicycle out into the alley and began the short ride to the Koornstras’ house. Like all the other bikes out that afternoon, hers made a terrible clatter over the cobblestones. A year before, the Germans had made all the people in Holland hand over their bicycle tires to be shipped to Germany to help with the war effort. Corrie supposed the rubber in them had been used to make truck tires.
As she peddled hard against the wind, Corrie thought about what she was doing. She didn’t know the Koornstras very well. What if they were on the Nazis’ side? What if they turned Dutch underground workers in for the reward money? As she rode along, she prayed that something would happen to stop her from reaching their house if it was not safe for her to do so. Nothing happened, and soon Corrie found herself asking Fred Koornstra for help. He listened without saying much, and Corrie began to fear she’d gone too far. But as it turned out, he was thinking hard to come up with a plan. In the end, Fred Koornstra decided he would find a friend to break into the Food Office when only he and one other worker were there. His friend would tie up Fred and the other worker and steal some ration cards.
Corrie thanked Fred and waited to see what happened. The following Wednesday she heard the news. The Food Office had been broken into, and one hundred ration cards were gone. The two clerks in the office at the time had tried to fight off the robber, but they were both badly beaten and tied up.
