Corrie ten Boom
April 15, 1892 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker and Christian writer who helped hide hundreds of Jewish people from the Nazis in her family's home in Haarlem during World War II, was subsequently arrested and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and — after surviving — spent the remainder of her life traveling the world to speak about forgiveness, faith, and the experience of darkness and grace.
A Watchmaker's Daughter
Born on April 15, 1892 in Amsterdam and raised in Haarlem, ten Boom grew up in a devout Reformed Christian family. Her father Casper ran a watch shop that became a gathering place for the local community, and the family had a long tradition of charitable work and sheltering those in need. Corrie became the first licensed female watchmaker in the Netherlands in 1922. When Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940, the family's faith and their longstanding commitment to sheltering the vulnerable drew them immediately toward the Dutch Resistance.
The Hiding Place
The ten Boom family built a hidden room behind a false wall in Corrie's bedroom — "the hiding place" — where Jewish people and members of the Dutch Resistance could conceal themselves from Nazi searches. Over several years they helped an estimated 800 Jewish people escape. In February 1944 the family was betrayed and arrested. Corrie's father Casper died ten days later in prison. She and her sister Betsie were sent to various concentration camps, ending at Ravensbrück in Germany, where Betsie died in December 1944. Corrie was released on December 28, 1944 — a later investigation revealed it was due to a clerical error; women her age in Ravensbrück were being executed that same week.
Did You Know?
Years after the war, ten Boom came face to face with one of the cruelest guards from Ravensbrück — the man who had overseen the humiliation and suffering of prisoners including herself and Betsie. The guard, who had become a Christian, sought her out at a speaking engagement and asked for her forgiveness. In her memoir, she describes the struggle to actually forgive him — that the words would not come until she prayed for help — and then the warmth that followed. She called forgiveness not a feeling but an act of will.
A Worldwide Ministry
After the war, ten Boom established a rehabilitation home for concentration camp survivors near Haarlem. She went on to travel to 64 countries as a speaker and author, writing more than a dozen books including her celebrated memoir The Hiding Place (1971), which was adapted into a film in 1975. Her message — centered on forgiveness, the reality of God's presence in suffering, and the imperative to shelter the persecuted — reached tens of millions of readers and listeners. She was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. She died on her 91st birthday, April 15, 1983 — a coincidence she had long said she hoped for.