Baker Books
Corrie ten Boom
(1892-1983)
“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”
—Corrie ten Boom
More Online Resources
Corrie ten Boom Museum in the Netherlands
(former home and shop)
Biography and Links on Wikipedia
1974 Interview with Pat Robertson on YouTube
Includes excerpt from the movie "The Hiding Place"
Corrie ten Boom: Forgiving to release love
Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie operated a watchmaker’s shop with their father during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, but they also conducted a secret venture.
As a devout Christian family, they protected Jews from their Nazi persecutors. By the time they were arrested and taken away to concentration camps in February 1944, they had assisted in the escape of 800 Jews.
Corrie’s 1971 autobiography, The Hiding Place, written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, and the film by the same name by Worldwide Pictures (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) documented their daring escapades and revealed the secret compartment where they hid their guests.
Through an informer, the Gestapo discovered the ten Booms’ underground work and arrested the ten Boom family and took them away. However, as the police entered Betsie was able to press an alarm bell and all the Jewish guests ran upstairs into the hiding place and later escaped.
Corrie’s father Casper, 84, lived only ten days after the arrest. Her sister Betsie died at Ravensbruck, the notorious concentration camp. A nephew, Kik, died from abuse and starvation in another camp. However, through a clerical error Corrie was released from Ravensbruck and later traveled worldwide to tell people about the miracles of God’s deliverance.
In December 1967 she was honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel—non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
Do you pray for the Jews, the nation of Israel, and their enemies? Would you give your life so that other people could be saved and live?
Corrie ten Boom traveled to more than 60 countries telling her story. At the end of one of her talks, she recognized a former guard from Ravensbruck in the audience. She had been teaching the Gospel of forgiveness in Jesus Christ, but here in front of her was someone who had been the epitome of evil. She remembered his cruelty to her and her sister Betsie and the leather crop that always swung from his belt.
As this man reached out his hand to Corrie after her message, he quoted from one of her favorite Scriptures that she used in her messages that “all our sins” are in “the depths of the sea” (Micah7:19). She could sense that he did not remember her. He told her that he had become a Christian since Ravensbruck and he knew that God had forgiven him, but he asked her to forgive him, too.
For a few seconds she froze. Terrible memories flooded her mind. She said afterwards, “I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.”
Corrie had established a home for victims of Nazi brutality in Holland, and she had discovered that only those who were able to forgive their enemies were able to return to a normal life. The others remained captive to their bitterness and lack of hope.
With great effort she reached out and shook his hand. At once she felt healing warmth come over her and a flood of God’s love overwhelmed her. She said to him, “I forgive you, brother, with all my heart!”
