The Corrie ten Boom museum

Yesterday, while in Haarlem, David, Corianne, Neeley and I went to the Corrie ten Boom museum.

Following is a brief history I copied and pasted from www.corrietenboom.com:

During the Second World War, the Ten Boom home became a refuge, a hiding place, for fugitives and those hunted by the Nazis. By protecting these people, Casper and his daughters, Corrie and Betsie, risked their lives. This non-violent resistance against the Nazi-oppressors was the Ten Booms’ way of living out their Christian faith. This faith led them to hide Jews, students who refused to cooperate with the Nazis, and members of the Dutch underground resistance movement.

During 1943 and into 1944, there were usually 6-7 people illegally living in this home: 4 Jews and 2 or 3 members of the Dutch underground. Additional refugees would stay with the Ten Booms for a few hours or a few days until another “safe house” could be located for them. Corrie became a ringleader within the network of the Haarlem underground. Corrie and “the Beje group” would search for courageous Dutch families who would take in refugees, and much of Corrie’s time was spent caring for these people once they were in hiding. Through these activities, the Ten Boom family and their many friends saved the lives of an estimated 800 Jews, and protected many Dutch underground workers.

On February 28, 1944, this family was betrayed and the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) raided their home. The Gestapo set a trap and waited throughout the day, seizing everyone who came to the house. By evening about 30 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.

Although the Gestapo systematically searched the house, they could not find what they sought most. They suspected Jews were in the house, but the Jews were safely hidden behind a false wall in Corrie’s bedroom. In this “hiding place” were two Jewish men, two Jewish women and two members of the Dutch underground. Although the house remained under guard, the Resistance was able to liberate the refugees 47 hours later. The six people had managed to stay quiet in their cramped, dark hiding place for all that time, even though they had no water and very little food. The four Jews were taken to new “safe houses,” and three survived the war. One of the underground workers was killed during the war years, but the other survived.

So the pictures accompanying are things like us crawling into the hole in the linen closet that the Jews would crawl into in order to hide in the space in the wall.

One thing that really impacts me is what this kind of situation would like in our modern contemporary Christianity. As depicted in the book and movie The Hiding Place, many Christian leaders “warned” the ten Booms about their activities and how wrong it would be to rebel against the authorities like this. If my memory serves me correctly, they depict their pastor refusing to have any involvement with sparing the lives of innocent people because it would violate the laws, and people believed the war would end very soon. Nobody really believed the work camps were actually extermination camps. How true it is today that we think there’s nothing to be done to swing the tide of unholiness in our land, so let’s just have our worship services and fight over doctrines while letting the world around us perish into an eternal separation from God.

People were way more concerned with their own safetey than they are with doing what is right. In our culture, we have too many Christians that cringe at the idea of publicly standing up for righteouesness in the Western World for what is right. How many of us think of activism as being too “extreme or fanatical.” But as I see it, the ten Boom family is remembered by history for their bravery. I don’t remember the name of her pastor or other cowards that wanted to compromise and cooperate with the enemy in the time of WW2 in order not to offend or be a disturbanc. The ten Booms never prided themselves for being heros. They were normal people that we are proud of.

At our last team meeting in Ede, Frank Pot from Rotterdam was sharing how there was this train carrying German Jews that would be driven to a concentration camp multiple times a week, and on Sunday, it would drive by this church around 15 minutes after their service was over. The Jews on the train, would scream and shout at the top of their lungs “save us! save us! you believe in God–do something to stop this” when they drove by this church every week on Sunday. The ‘Christians’ were annoyed at the disturbance, and so they began their services fifteen minutes later in order to drown out the noise every week when that train would come by sending a bunch of innocent Jews to their horrific death. They didn’t want their lovely worship service disturbed by such noise. What kinds of ways do we drown out the noise of 50 million aborted fetuses that never got a chance to scream for their lives to be spared? What kinds of deaths are young people slipping into in our generation? What do we do about it? Turn up our lovely music to block it out?

Anyway, it might not be something as drastic as hiding people in your closet from a wicked government. But it just might be time for some pastors to get themselves thrown in jail if need be for their politically incorrect stances in a politically correct society. I’ve never heard any ministers in Canada even hint at homosexuality being a sin from the pulpit. What is the fear?

In fact, for further familiarity with the whole situation of lying to a wicked government in order to save lives, check out a debate paper I presented at FIRE a few years ago entitled “Is it always a sin to lie?” comparing the actions of Corrie, who hid the Jews and spared many lives, to her hurt, versus Nollie ten Boom, who believed that there were no ifs ands or butts about it, and squeeled the instant Nazi officers asked her where Jews are. Last time I checked, there are no Nollie ten Boom musems.

Anyway I might finetune this entry more later, there’s too many people around me right now to concentrate on my thoughts.

Be blessed for now.