The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Hiding Place

Corrie Ten Boom

Published 1971

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This has been on my to-do list for two weeks. Today we are stuck at home awaiting Hurricane Ian, and everything has been shut down for at least two days;  I suppose this is a good time to write.

The Hiding Place is a gem. This is a memoir, a history, and a faithful testimony to God's grace, mercy, and power combined into a fast-paced Holocaust narrative. Corrie Ten Boom lived in Holland during the occupation of the Nazis and participated in smuggling and hiding Jews in, out, and around Holland. She lived with her elderly father and older sister, Betsie, running a very successful watch and repair business on the ground floor of their three-story home. They were Christians, and they consistently and daily practiced their deep faith of loving their neighbors. Hence it was no surprise that during the occupation, Corrie, Betsie, and her father, as well as the extended family quickly became involved in the "underground," doing all they could to protect Jews from the Nazis. 

But the story is not about the underground operation. It is about what happened after the operation was exposed and they were all arrested. After three months in solitary confinement, only Corrie and Betsie were sent to a political concentration camp and later Ravensbrük. It was then that Corrie began to understand and learn more about the Hand of God, particularly through the faith of Betsie. Keep in mind, Corrie grew up in a faithful household and very well knew the Lord; however, it is through trials that faith grows and matures, and that is the lesson of The Hiding Place.

LESSONS AND THEMES

Normally, I like to do a narrative of the books I read, including spoilers, but I am not in a position to do that right now, given all that is going on about me. But I want to stress how important this story is to people, even today. This is truly what loving one's neighbor looks like. Even the world likes to use the phrase; and I ask you, "Is this what their version of 'love your neighbor' looks like?" I doubt this is what they mean. 

Love your neighbor is so difficult and impossible without God. Loving your neighbor means sacrificing your comfort, safety, and well-being in exchange for the comfort, safety, and well-being of others. Loving your neighbor means forgiving your enemies. How many of us can do that? Betsie demonstrated to Corrie how to pray for the ones who beat them, cursed them, and hated them. Betsie showed Corrie how to love their enemies. Forgiveness is a major theme of the story, and with forgiveness is love, as well as God's power.

Of the examples about forgiveness, love, and God's power, Corrie said: 

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness and more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on HIS. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. 

Other exceptional truths from this story include how perfect God's timing is; how He uses people and events for His purpose; how He rewards obedience, especially for telling the truth; and how we cannot do anything difficult apart from Him. Naturally, we do not want to do anything hard; but if we first obey, God gives the power to do so, and later our hearts will follow. (This is why follow your heart is bad advice.)

Taken from the preface of my copy, there are other lessons to learn from The Hiding Place, such as 

• handling separation
• getting along with less
• security in the midst of insecurity
• how God can use weakness
• facing death
• dealing with difficult people
• what to do when evil wins.

On that last point, Corrie asked within the story this pertinent question: "How should a Christian act when evil [is] in power?" If that is not a relevant question today, I am not sure I know what is. 

I will share this: the title The Hiding Place has two-fold meaning. The first is that the Ten Booms used their home to hide Jews, yes. However, the most beautiful meaning is another major theme, and it is that God is our hiding place. 

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path . . . Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word . . .

WHO SHOULD READ THIS?

The Hiding Place is essential reading for Christians to be encouraged about how to live in an evil world; however it is good for non-Christians to read, too, because so many complain that they know Christians who live as hypocrites. Many do. And it may be because they are not truly Christian. If you want to know what a true Christian looks like, learn from the Ten Booms. Don't get the wrong idea from a hypocrite. 

Finally, I will leave you with a statement Corrie made about recalling the past. She said:

But this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see. 

(Don't listen to those who shun history - or the past. History is absolutely necessary to the present! Learn it!) 

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Hiding Place

Corrie Ten Boom 

Published 1971

Dutch Biography

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The Hiding Place is about the ten Boom family, of Holland, who, with the aid of an underground organization, smuggled nearly 800 Dutch Jewish men, women, and children to safety, preserving their lives during WWII. They - the ten Boom family - paid the ultimate price with their own lives.

Corrie ten Boom was in her 40s when Hitler invaded Holland, and life changed drastically for her family and their watch repair business. Food and supplies became scarce and were rationed, curfews were set, young Dutch men were kidnapped and forced into the German army, and all forms of communication were confiscated. 

The ten Booms witnessed Jewish businesses close, Jews forced to wear the yellow Star of David, and finally, the disappearance of people. It was then that Corrie and her family wanted to do something to help God's people, as they referred to them. 

The ten Booms worked with the Dutch underground resistance smuggling Jews to the country, to homes where people willingly hid them. She managed to receive stolen ration cards, though she hated lying and stealing; nonetheless, it helped feed the extra people passing through her home. 

Eventually, the ten Booms had a secret space built inside Corrie's bedroom wall so they could hide the Jews staying with them. It was to be the hiding place. 

They knew it was only time before a raid, and they were prepared. In February, 1944, Corrie and her family, as well as 30 members of the underground, were arrested, but not before the six Jews in the ten Boom home fled into the hiding space. There they safely remained for three days until someone from the underground was able to rescue and secure them in another location. 

As for Corrie and her sister, Betsie, it was a different ending, an ordeal I struggle to put it into words. The specifics are horrifying, but I do suggest you read this for yourself.

What I rather write about is Corrie's character, and Betsie's, too. The ten Booms were a Christian family...the kind that followed Christ's example. Lying and stealing were frowned upon, but when  [man's government]* violated God's law, it was right to disobey government. And they did everything they needed to do to save the Jewish people who were targeted by the German occupation. 

*Sidebar: This was not a legitimate government because Holland was invaded, and a usurper was making his own perverse law the law of the land.

When I first read The Hiding Place several years ago, it made sense that the book was named after the hiding place in Corrie's bedroom; however, after this second read, I realize there is a second meaning. Corrie noted Scripture her father quoted: 

Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word . . . Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe . . . 

 For I too had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me. 

Jesus was their hiding place; He is our hiding place. 

Corrie and Betsie remembered this throughout the year they were in prison, and it sustained them in the most amazing ways. Considering her situation, she reflected how the Gospels were a "pattern of God's activity," and, she wondered, "if defeat was only the beginning..."

     . . . what conceivable victory could come from a place like this."

Soon, Corrie learned that Betsie was safe in a separate cell, and that all of their other family members and friends had been released. Through a letter, she read that "all the watches in the closet [were] safe," which was code for "All six Jews left hiding in the closet were safe and placed in other locations. They escaped and were free!" She also found out that her father had died ten days after his arrest; though difficult to absorb, she found it a comfort to know he was now seeing Jesus face to face.

After four months at the Dutch holding prison, Corrie and Betsie were reunited and sent to Scheveningen prison, in Holland, for political dissidents. For the first time, Corrie marveled what kind of person her sister was because she prayed for the prison guards. "Betsie saw a wounded human being."

Corrie, if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes...

Some how the sisters found out who had exposed their underground operations to the Gestapo.  Corrie said she could kill him, but Betsie had been praying for him. When Corrie was alone with her thoughts, she felt convicted that she had been guilty of the same sin, murder, because she murdered him with her heart and mouth. That night she forgave him.

When the world was closing in on Germany, in 1944, the prisoners were moved again, into Germany. Ravensbruck was the notorious women's extermination camp. It was here that one thing became evident to Corrie and Betsie "...from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope."

The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loves us."

The bunks in their barrack were infested with fleas, something Betsie said they should be thankful for..."Give thanks in all circumstances." Corrie was sure that there was no way she could be thankful for fleas, but Betsie clarified that it did not say to be thankful only in pleasant circumstances. Fleas were part of the world God had placed the sisters.

Since Corrie and Betsie had smuggled a Bible into Ravensbruck, they held nightly Bible meetings in their barrack with the other women. Initially, they were extremely careful not to alert the guards; but soon after, it was apparent that no guard would ever enter their barracks. Why? Fleas! (Be thankful in all things.)

Meanwhile, Betsie was physically perishing. Her health had been weak since they were arrested. Corrie did all she could to care for her sister's health, while her sister was always more concerned with the health and well being of others. It also seemed, the weaker she became, the bolder her witness.

When Corrie was thinking about how to help the prisoners after their release, providing a place for people to go, to care for and love them...Betsie was thinking about a place to help the German guards, "to show them that love is greater." Betsie loved their enemies and prayed for those who persecuted them.

Corrie wrote about how she struggled with the sin of selfishness and self-centeredness. She called it "the ploy of Satan." During a brief time when Betsie was in the "hospital" - which was not really a hospital, and I doubt there was actual medical help anywhere on the grounds - Corrie had to lead Bible meetings without her sister. She came to the story of Paul and his affliction. Three times he requested God to remove it from him, and three times God told Paul to rely on Him. It was then that Corrie understood that her sin had been a false belief in her own strength and power to transform, when it was all Christ.

I am sad to say that Betsie died shortly after this, and only twelve days before Corrie was released. Later it was learned that her release was probably a mistake, and furthermore, two weeks later, the women in her age group from her barracks were sent to the gas chamber.

Getting home was not easy. It seemed the whole world was void of love and care; but Corrie did make it back to her family home, to learn the fate of loved ones and more sad news.

In 1945, she opened a rehabilitation home in Holland for hurting people. Some had spent time in concentration camps and others spent years in hiding. Some were prisoners of the Japanese in Indonesia. Everyone had to learn forgiveness and to work out the sorrow within him.

One day, after a speaking engagement, a former S. S. guard of Ravensbruck came up to shake Corrie's hand, and Corrie froze.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man: was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. 

Suddenly, when she raised her hand out to meet his, she felt "a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed [her]." Corrie learned that it is not our forgiveness or goodness that "the world's healing hinges, but on His."

When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Isn't that beautiful? And it is true, too.

There are no 'ifs' in God's kingdom. I could hear [Betsie's] soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don't let me go mad by poking about outside it.

Is this book for you?

I am very tempted to say that everyone should read this book. It is written in a way that anyone who reads it, junior high age and up, can understand it. It speaks to the heart. It is about hatred and forgiveness, suffering and caring and true love. It is about the human condition. It is about changing hearts. It is about perseverance and doing hard things. It is a testament of God using others to do His work in this sin-filled world, so that it is not so ugly. And it is historical -- one gets a first hand account of the results of Nazi-Germany's evil and destruction beyond the Jewish people. It affected everyone. Yes, actually, everyone needs to read this book.