Corrie ten Boom
1892–1983, Haarlem, the Netherlands
Cornelia "Corrie" ten Boom, Dutch watchmaker, Christian, and survivor of Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her family hid Jewish refugees in their Haarlem home during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. They were betrayed in February 1944. Her father Casper died in Scheveningen prison ten days after arrest. Her sister Betsie died in Ravensbrück. Corrie was released due to a clerical error one week before all women her age were sent to the gas chambers. She spent the rest of her life speaking about forgiveness. After a talk in Munich, a former SS guard from Ravensbrück extended his hand to her. She chose to take it. "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."
On their voice
20th century Dutch, practical and direct. She does not spiritualize suffering from a distance — she was in Ravensbrück, she watched Betsie die, she went home and her father and sister were gone. Her testimony is not triumphalist; she does not suggest that faith makes suffering easy or that God prevents the worst. She says God was there in the worst and that there is no pit so deep. She has done the thing she is describing: the forgiveness of the Munich guard was not a theory. She is also simply Dutch — no-nonsense, honest, clear. She saw what she saw and she says what she says.
Talk to Corrie ten Boom.
Ask anything. In their own voice, from their own era, grounded in their own canon.
Free for seekers — no card, no trial.
Share this witness