The Ten Boom Family

Corrie ten Boom during the Holocaust Period

It was between 1943 to 1944 when Nazis conquered Holland. Corrie ten Boom and her family allowed the Jews and members of the Dutch underground to hide in their house for safety. On February 28, 1944, Casper's family was betrayed. The Nazi secret police set a trap and waited throughout the day, seizing everyone who came to the house. By evening, over 20 people had been taken into custody. Casper, Corrie, and Betsie were all arrested. Corrie's brother Willem, sister Nollie, and nephew Peter were at the house that day, and were also taken to prison.

Corrie Ten Boom and the other prisoner's condition in the concentration camp were unbearable. They were beaten and starved and maltreated by Hitler's men. Despite all these, Corrie Ten Boom was determined to spread Christianity. None of her family survived the war but she went on to spread Jesus love and be a role model to all.

Corrie Ten Boom died on her 91st birthday, April 15, 1983. It is interesting that Corrie's passing occurred on her birthday. In the Jewish tradition, it is only very blessed people who are allowed the special privilege of dying on their birthday. She is worth remembered this International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012. More of her story when you visit http://tenboom.org .

Holland’s First Female Watchmaker

Ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, in Haarlem, in the Netherlands. Before her first birthday, her grandfather died and left his home and watchmaking business, founded in 1837, to her father. The family, which included older sisters Betsie and Nollie, and a brother, Willem, moved into the the ten Boom hiding Place on Barteljorisstraat 19, and her father took over the storefront business below. The family lived in a quirky warren of rooms above the shop over three separate floors, and Corrie Ten Boom, she and her sister Betsie shared a room at the back of the house on a high third floor. During their youth, the household also included three aunts, who helped care for the four ten Boom children.

Like Betsie, ten Boom never married, and eventually joined her father’s watch sales and repair business. She also became the first licensed woman watchmaker in the Netherlands. The family members were devout Christians, active members of the Dutch Reformed church, and ten Boom followed in the footsteps of one of her aunts and participated in several charitable aid projects in Haarlem. The ten Boom home and business served as a hub of activity in their neighborhood, and they regularly provided a meal to beggars and took in foster children. All the local children were especially fond of ten Boom’s pious but genial father, Casper, nicknamed “Opa,” or grandfather.

Keeping Alive the Corrie ten Boom Tradition of Care

The Jerusalem Prayer Team is a direct outreach of the Corrie ten Boom Fellowship. The family ten Boom started a weekly prayer meeting for the Jewish people in 1844, after a moving worship service in the Dutch Reformed Church of Rev. Witteveen. Willem ten Boom felt the need to pray for the Jewish people, so he started the weekly prayer meeting where the family and others who stopped by specifically prayed for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). These meetings took place every week for one hundred years, until February 28, 1944, when Nazi soldiers came to the house to take them away for helping local Jews and hiding them in a secret room. On that day, the family was together for a Bible study and prayer meeting. Following the tradition of the ten Boom family, Jerusalem Prayer Team continues to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and encourages Christians to exercise their faith by helping the Jewish people – God’s ancient people.

Read more about Corrie ten Boom and the Ten Boom Hiding Place at http://jerusalemprayerteam.org/hidingplace.asp

Keeping Alive the Corrie ten Boom Tradition of Care

The Corrie ten Boom Fellowship and its sister organization, The Corrie ten Boom Foundation of Holland, are also charged with carrying forth the vision of the ten Boom Family. Specifically, that vision is to care for and protect the Jewish people and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which was a 100-year weekly tradition in the ten Boom household.

The ten Boom family were devoted Christians who dedicated their lives in service to their fellow man. Their home was always an “open house” for anyone in need. During the Second World War, the ten Boom Hiding Place home became a refuge, a hiding place, for fugitives and those hunted by the Nazis. Like the famed Oscar Schindler, the ten Booms were instrumental in saving nearly 800 Jews from the Nazi death camps, and were imprisoned themselves for their efforts. Life in the camp was almost unbearable, but Corrie and her sister, Betsie, spent their time sharing Jesus’ love with their fellow prisoners. Many women became Christians in that terrible place because of Corrie and Betsie’s witness to them. Four members of the ten Boom family gave their lives for the family’s commitment, but Corrie came home from the death camp. She realized her life was a gift from God, and she needed to share what she and Betsy had learned in Ravensbruck. At age 53, Corrie began a worldwide ministry that took her into more than 60 countries in the next 32 years.
The Jerusalem Prayer Team is a direct outreach of the Corrie ten Boom Fellowship. The family ten Boom started a weekly prayer meeting for the Jewish people in 1844, after a moving worship service in the Dutch Reformed Church of Rev. Witteveen. Willem ten Boom felt the need to pray for the Jewish people, so he started the weekly prayer meeting where the family and others who stopped by specifically prayed for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). These meetings took place every week for one hundred years, until February 28, 1944, when Nazi soldiers came to the house to take them away for helping local Jews and hiding them in a secret room. On that day, the family was together for a Bible study and prayer meeting. Following the tradition of the ten Boom family in the ten Boom Hiding Place, Jerusalem Prayer Team continues to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and encourages Christians to exercise their faith by helping the Jewish people – God’s ancient people.

Oscar Schindler

Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908 at Zwittau/Moravia (today in the Czeck republic).

His middle-class Catholic family belonged to the German-speaking community in the Sudetenland. The young Schindler, who attended German grammar school and studied engineering, was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and take charge of the family farm-machinery plant. Some of Schindler’s schoolmates and childhood neighbors were Jews, but with none of them did he develop an intimate or lasting friendship. Like most of the German-speaking youths of the Sudetenland, he subscribed to Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten German Party, which strongly supported the Nazi Germany and actively strove for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and their annexation to Germany . When the Sudetenland was incorporated into Nazi Germany in 1938, Schindler became a formal member of the Nazi party.

Shortly after the outbreak of war in September 1939, thirty-one-year-old Schindler showed up in occupied Krakow. The ancient city, home to some 60,000 Jews and seat of the German occupation administration, the Generalgouvernement, proved highly attractive to German entrepreneurs, hoping capitalize on the misfortunes of the subjugated country and make a fortune. Naturally cunning and none too scrupulous, Schindler appeared at first to thrive in these surroundings. In October 1939, he took over a run-down enamelware factory that had previously belonged to a Jew. He cleverly maneuvered his steps- acting upon the shrewd commercial advice of a Polish-Jewish accountant, Isaak Stern - and began to build himself a fortune. The small concern in Zablocie outside Krakow, which started producing kitchenware for the German army, began to grow by leaps and bounds. After only three months it already had a task-force of some 250 Polish workers, among them seven Jews. By the end of 1942, it had expanded into a mammoth enamel and ammunitions production plant, occupying some 45,000 square meters and employing almost 800 men and women. Of these, 370 were Jews from the Krakow ghetto, which the Germans had established after they entered the city.

A hedonist and gambler by nature, Schindler soon adopted a profligate lifestyle, carousing into the small hours of the night, hobnobbing with high ranking SS-officers, and philandering with beautiful Polish women. Schindler seemed to be no different from other Germans who had come to Poland as part of the occupation administration and their associates. The only thing that set him apart from other war-profiteers, was his humane treatment of his workers, especially the Jews. Read more...

In 1962 a tree was planted in Schindler's honor in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. Oskar and Emilie Schindler were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1993.

Just like Oskar and Emilie Schindler, Corrie ten Boom and her family were able to save countless Jews from the Nazi horror during the war in the hiding place. Israel honored Corrie ten Boom by naming her Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts. Ten Boom...

The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place is a 1971 book on the life of Corrie ten Boom, written by ten Boom together with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. The title refers to the physical hiding place, the ten Boom hiding place, where the ten Boom family secreted Jews hiding from the Nazis.