Thoughts From Allen R. Hunt on Corrie Ten Boom

Dear Friends,

Most of you have probably heard bits and pieces of the story of Corrie ten Boom mustering up the strength to forgive the man who was the cruel camp guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp during WWII. I had as well. But there were parts I never knew until I read this excerpt from the same book I quoted from last time – Everybody Needs to Forgive Somebody, by Allen R. Hunt.

I struggled with shortening it, as I know long posts simply get skipped over. Yet, in the end, I included what I felt was necessary for those unfamiliar with her story to understand the immense struggle it took her to forgive. May you be blessed (and challenged) as you read. And if you have not seen the movie, “The Hiding Place” I would strongly encourage you to see it! Enjoy.

“Casper ten Boom ran a watchmaker’s shop in the lowest floor of his house in the Nazi occupied city of Haarlem, in Holland. Upstairs his daughter Corrie emerged as a chief organizer of an underground movement to rescue Jews. In the first few years of the war, they helped nearly 800 Jewish people to escape arrest and certain death at the hands of Hitler’s regime…

They had created a ‘hiding place’ in the wall of Corrie’s bedroom in the event of an unexpected knock at the door from the Gestapo. It was a raid which would finally come on February 28, 1944 (just 10 months before the Allies liberated Holland). Miraculously, all the Jews hidden behind the wall in her room escaped. Sadly, however, the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned the entire ten Boom family. Corrie’s father Casper, age eighty-four, died ten days later. Corrie and her sister Betsie were transferred to the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin, where Betsie died 10 months later (as Holland was being liberated). A nephew, Kik, died from abuse and starvation in another camp.

Yet, remarkably, Corrie was released from Ravensbrück through a clerical error. She quickly returned to Holland where she was determined to help those who had suffered. After the war ended, Corrie began receiving invitations to speak about her inspiring experiences of rescue, courage, and survival. As she was completing one of those talks, she was stunned to see a man whom she immediately recognized as one of the feared guards she had known at Ravensbrück. Her mind immediately flashed back to her own suffering and the loss of her family. In her own words, “One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and visored cap with it’s skull and crossbones. It came back like a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man…’ He had not merely been a Ravensbrück guard, he had been one of the cruelest guards of all.

The man threw out his hand to greet Corrie. “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!” The moment of confrontation forced Corrie to reflect on her own speech, in which she had spoken so easily about forgiveness. A forgiveness that seemed so easy to describe now presented itself in a very difficult form right in front of her. She fumbled in her pocketbook rather than take that outstretched, cruel hand. She looked for anything to allow her heart and her mind to settle down. As she remembered her dead sister, the fear that had captivated them at the camp, the horrors of so many people starving to death, or being executed in the gas chambers, a sheer revulsion for those who had imprisoned her washed over her… “I remembered him,” she said, “and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.”

The guard spoke to Corrie. “You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk. I was a guard there.” While he did not recognize her out of the thousands of women prisoners there, she remembered him vividly. His words prattled out. “Since that time, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein, will you forgive me?”

Again, he extended his hand. But Corrie found herself sucked into a vortex of emotions and memories. “I stood there – I whose sins had again and again been forgiven – and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed like hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.” The gravity of the moment paralyzed Corrie, who now found herself incapable of responding to a man who asked her that simple question: “Will you forgive me?”

“I had to do it – I knew that. The message ‘God forgives’ has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ says Jesus, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’” It was clear. Corrie not only had to forgive this man, she needed to forgive him.” For his sake and her own sake. The door to a healthy future felt locked, but she knew forgiveness provided the key, if only she could muster up the strength to offer it.

Corrie said, “I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war, I had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their enemies were able to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and horrible as that.” Choose forgiveness and unlock your door to a new life, healing, and your future. Deny forgiveness and remain locked in the prison cell of your bitter memories that will ultimately destroy you.

“And so woodenly, mechanically,” says Corrie, “I thrust my hand into the one outstretched to me. As I did an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, and sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.” “I forgive you, brother!” she cried. “With all my heart.” And then she adds, “For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”

In light of her words, but even more so in light of her experience, have you also experienced the healing that comes to those who forgive? The healing that comes to those who obey God’s repeated commands to forgive – as hard as it might be for some at this point to even contemplate doing it.

What person might you need to forgive? What person or persons just flashed through your mind? What event did you just remember for the first time in a long time? God will always give us the strength to do what He calls us to do. A strength that comes from Him to enable us to do the things He asks of us. Things we could not do if left to ourselves, or without the help of His enabling grace.

Lord Jesus, Give Us Such Divine Enabling Grace, Pastor Jeff