Today is the birthday, in 1892, of Cornelia Arnolda Johanna “Corrie” ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker, who worked with her father, Casper ten Boom, her sister Betsie ten Boom and other family members to help many Jewish people escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in her home.
In May 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. In May 1942, a well-dressed woman came to the Ten Booms’ with a suitcase in hand and told them that she was a Jew, her husband had been arrested several months earlier, her son had gone into hiding and Occupation authorities had recently visited her so she was afraid to go back. She heard that the Ten Booms had previously helped their Jewish neighbors, the Weils, and asked if they could help her too. Casper readily agreed that she could stay with them although the police headquarters was only half a block away.
Corrie and her sister Betsie opened their home to Jewish refugees and members of the resistance movement, and as a result, they were among those who were sought after by the Gestapo and its Dutch counterpart. The refugee work which Ten Boom and her sister did at their home became known by the Dutch Resistance, which sent an architect to the Ten Boom home to build a secret hiding place and an alert buzzer that could be used to warn the refugees to get into it as quickly as possible. Thus the Ten Booms created “The Hiding Place” (Dutch: De Schuilplaats).
They had plenty of room, but wartime shortages meant that food was scarce. Every non-Jewish Dutch person had received a ration card, the requirement for obtaining weekly food coupons. Through her charitable work, Ten Boom knew many people in Haarlem and remembered a family with a disabled daughter, whose father was a civil servant who was now in charge of the local ration-card office. She went to his house one evening, and when he asked how many ration cards she needed, “I opened my mouth to say, ‘Five,'” Ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place. “But the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was: ‘One hundred.'”
Ten Boom’s involvement in the Dutch resistance grew beyond gathering stolen ration cards and harboring Jews in her home. She soon became part of the Dutch underground resistance network and oversaw a network of smuggling Jews to safe places. All in all, it is estimated that around 800 Jews were saved by Ten Boom’s efforts.
On 28 February 1944, a Dutch informant, Jan Vogel, told the Nazis about the Ten Booms’ work; at around 12:30 p.m. of that day, the Nazis arrested the entire Ten Boom family. The group of six people hidden by the Ten Booms, made up of both Jews and resistance workers, remained undiscovered. Though the house was under constant surveillance after Ten Boom’s arrest, police officers who were also members of the resistance group coordinated the refugees’ escape. Ten Boom received a letter one day in prison, “All the watches in your cabinet are safe,” meaning that the refugees had managed to escape and were safe.
Corrie and Betsie were sent from Scheveningen to Herzogenbusch, a political concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught), and finally to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, a women’s labor camp in Germany. Betsie’s health continued to deteriorate, and she died on 16 December 1944 at the age of 59. Corrie was released. Afterward, she was told that her release was because of a clerical error and that a week later, all the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers.
After the war, Ten Boom returned to the Netherlands to set up a rehabilitation center in Bloemendaal. The refuge housed concentration-camp survivors and until 1950 exclusively sheltered jobless Dutch who had collaborated with the Germans during the Occupation, after which it accepted anyone in need of care. She returned to Germany in 1946 and met with and forgave two Germans who had been employed at Ravensbrück, one of whom had been particularly cruel to Betsie. She died on her 91st birthday, 15 April 1983, after suffering a third stroke.
Corrie ten Boom in scouting uniform (around 1921). The triangle on her uniform refers to the name of the scouting group: “the triangle girls”.
That POST…
thanks, Debra…
Today is the birthday, in 1965, of Linda Perry, songwriter, producer, singer, 4 Non Blondes, (1993 UK No.2 single ‘What’s Up’, 1993 UK No. 4 album ‘Bigger Better Faster More!). Wrote ‘Beautiful’ for Christina Aguilera, plus Jewel, Courtney Love, Gwen Stefani, Sugababes, Robbie Williams, Melissa Etheridge, Gavin Rossdale have all recorded her songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc
