She was a fifty-year-old watchmaker living with her elderly father and sister. Then the Nazis came, and her house became a hiding place.
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Who Corrie Ten Boom was
Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who, with her family, helped hundreds of Jews escape the Holocaust. She survived a concentration camp and spent decades speaking about forgiveness.
The struggle
Corrie was born in 1892 in Haarlem, Netherlands. She never married and worked in her father’s watch shop. Life was quiet, predictable, and small.
When Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940, the ten Boom family began sheltering Jewish refugees in a secret room in their home. They built a hidden closet in Corrie’s bedroom wall. Over two years they helped an estimated eight hundred people escape deportation.
In February 1944 the Gestapo raided the house. They arrested Corrie, her father Casper, her sister Betsie, and other family members. Casper died ten days later. Corrie and Betsie were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp.
The turning point
In the camp, Corrie and Betsie smuggled a Bible and held secret prayer meetings. Betsie died there. Corrie was released in December 1944, days before all women her age were sent to the gas chambers — likely due to a clerical error.
After the war, Corrie opened rehabilitation homes for concentration camp survivors and even for former Nazis. In 1947, while speaking in Munich, she encountered one of the cruellest guards from Ravensbrück. He asked for her forgiveness. After a moment of struggle, she extended her hand.
“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”
The principle
Courage is not the absence of fear. It is action in the presence of fear, followed by the refusal to let hatred harden you. Corrie saved lives, survived evil, and chose forgiveness.
Apply it today
You may never face a concentration camp, but you will face moments when doing the right thing is dangerous or costly. Decide in advance what you stand for. And when wronged, remember that forgiveness is a choice that protects your own future.
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