Corrie ten Boom

Dutch humanitarian

• Born: April 15, 1892
• Birthplace: Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Died: April 15, 1983
• Place of death: Placentia, California

Also known as: Cornelia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom

Significance: Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who hid Jews and other endangered individuals in her home during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the 1940s. After World War II, she became an evangelical speaker to audiences around the world.

Background

Cornelia ten Boom, better known as Corrie ten Boom, was born April 15, 1892, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The youngest child of Casper ten Boom, a watchmaker, and Cornelia “Cor” ten Boom, a former kindergarten teacher, she had two sisters and a brother. She grew up in a deeply religious home where the beliefs of the Dutch Reformed Church and scripture were woven into the fabric of everyday life. She grew up in Haarlem, living with a tightly knit family that included several aunts.

When she was seventeen, ten Boom became an au pair to a wealthy family in Zandvoort. Disillusioned after improper advances by her employer, she returned home to care for her frail mother and aging aunts. The next year, she enrolled in a Bible school but failed her exams on her first try. Eight years later, she passed the exams.

In 1920 she went to Basel, Switzerland, to learn to be a watchmaker, apprenticing in a watch factory. When she returned to Haarlem, she worked with her father in his watch shop. In addition to her work, her activities involved caring for her mother and aunts, attending Bible study, and teaching Sunday school.

Humanitarian Work

After her mother and aunts died in the 1920s, the once-crowded ten Boom home grew quieter. One of ten Boom’s sisters, Arnolda (“Nollie”), and her brother, Willem, had left to start their own families, but ten Boom and her sister Elisabeth (“Betsie”) remained in the family home along with their father. Determined to help others in need, they opened their home to young German children displaced by World War I. In 1925 they opened their home to the children of missionaries who were unable to accompany their parents on missions. For several years they cared for these children and fostered several others.

As part of her child care responsibilities, ten Boom provided sports and music instruction, discipline, and spiritual guidance. Her reputation for planning youth activities led to a society matron asking her to start a youth club for girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Its purpose was to discourage teens from being attracted to immoral lifestyles. Ten Boom agreed, and the club became so popular that she had to recruit dozens of leaders to help with the growing membership. Eventually the club served as a springboard for the Girl Guides movement in Europe. Ten Boom became a leader in the Girl Guides movement and cofounded a national board of directors in Holland. She later withdrew from the Girl Guides due to their lack of emphasis on Christian faith and started the Netherlands Girls’ Club.

After the Germans occupied the Netherlands in 1940, ten Boom grew concerned about the German administration’s anti-Semitism and harsh rule. Between 1941 and February 28, 1944, the home became a refuge for Jewish people and members of the Dutch resistance. Ten Boom built a secret room behind a false wall in her bedroom and the group regularly practiced drills where they gathered their belongings and fled to this hiding place.

On February 28, 1944, the Gestapo arrived at the home and arrested everyone they found, including ten Boom, her father, all three of her siblings, and her nephew Peter. Four Jews and two resistance fighters managed to escape to the hiding place. The remaining thirty individuals were sent to a prison in Scheveningen. Three months later, ten Boom and Betsie were sent to the Vught concentration camp. Later they were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The sisters sustained themselves through the deprivation and harshness of their imprisonment by quoting Biblical verses and praying.

In late December 1945, ten Boom was released from Ravensbrück. Betsie had died just a few weeks earlier. Prior to her death, Betsie had shared her vision of a large home with beautiful wood floors, a large flowering garden, and quiet rooms where displaced persons and former concentration camp prisoners could recuperate. After convalescing in a hospital and briefly returning to her home in Haarlem, ten Boom found a house in Bloemendaal matching her sister’s description and set out to fulfill her sister’s vision. In order to raise funds for the house, she began giving lectures where she spoke about her experiences in the concentration camps and her Christian faith. Thus began her career as an evangelical speaker. She spoke to crowds in over sixty countries, sharing her message about Christ and forgiveness. She also wrote several books about her experiences and Christian faith. The best known, The Hiding Place (1971), was made into a 1975 movie of the same name. In 1967 ten Boom was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, a designation granted by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, to non-Jews who put themselves at risk to aid Jews during the Holocaust.

In her eighties, ten Boom suffered several strokes and spent the last five years of her life paralyzed and unable to speak. On her ninety-first birthday, she died in Placentia, California.

Impact

Ten Boom’s legacy includes the individuals she saved and her writings about her wartime experiences and her faith. More than thirty years after her death, her books continue to be read, with a book of previously unpublished meditations, I Stand at the Door and Knock, released in 2008 and plays based on The Hiding Place performed by numerous groups. Her house in Haarlem was converted into a museum in 1988.

Personal Life

Ten Boom retired from international evangelism in her early eighties and moved to California, where she lived with a caretaker, Pamela Moore (who, following ten Boom’s death, wrote a book about her time with ten Boom). Ten Boom continued to speak at local churches until the stroke that rendered her unable to speak.

Bibliography

Carlson, Carole. Corrie ten Boom: Her Life and Faith. New Jersey: Revell, 1983. Print.

“Corrie ten Boom.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 18 Aug. 2015. Web. 24 Jan. 2016.

Ferreira, Patricia M. “Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Savior.” International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. Intl. Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2016.

“The Righteous Among the Nations: Boom ten Family.” Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, 2016. Web. 24 Jan. 2016.

“History.” Corrie Ten Boom House Foundation. Corrie Ten Boom House Foundation, n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2016.