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The Hiding Place, in detail
Corrie ten Boom's memoir of her family's decision to hide Jewish people in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and of the arrest, imprisonment, and concentration camp ordeal that followed, has been continuously in print since its 1971 publication and is one of the most widely read Christian testimonies of the twentieth century. It was written with assistance from Elizabeth and John Sherrill and draws on Corrie's own diaries and the recollections of surviving family members.
The ten Boom family were Dutch Reformed Christians who ran a watch repair shop that had been in the family for generations. Corrie's father Casper was a man of deep and unperformative faith who, when asked after the occupation began whether harboring Jews was worth risking his children's lives, replied that it would be an honor to give his life for God's people. The family's decision to help was not primarily political; it was theological. They believed they were commanded to do it.
The hiding place itself was a false room built behind a bedroom wall by a network of resistance workers. It could conceal six people and was equipped with a ventilation system and food supplies. The ten Booms hid over 800 Jewish people over two years before being betrayed in February 1944. Casper ten Boom died ten days after his arrest; his son Willem died shortly after the war; Corrie's sister Betsie, her closest companion through the camps, died in Ravensbrück concentration camp in December 1944, weeks before liberation.
Betsie's death and Corrie's survival form the memoir's climax. In Ravensbrück, Betsie developed the conviction that after the war they would open a house to help those damaged by the experience of the camps, and she articulated this vision to Corrie repeatedly in the final weeks of her life. Corrie survived and spent the rest of her life doing precisely what Betsie had described. The memoir ends not with liberation but with the beginning of that mission, and its argument is that Betsie's vision, formed in the worst place imaginable, was more accurate than any vision formed in safety.
The big ideas
- 1.
Faith that costs nothing is faith that proves nothing. The ten Boom family's decision to hide Jews was predicated on a theological conviction that was tested almost immediately to its limits.
- 2.
Betsie ten Boom's spiritual radiance under extreme suffering is the book's most challenging and most discussed element. Whether it is edifying or unnerving depends substantially on the reader's prior convictions.
- 3.
Forgiveness as a concrete practice: the book's most famous passage describes Corrie's post-war encounter with a former Ravensbrück guard, and her inability to shake his hand until she prayed for the ability to do so.
