Corrie ten Boom: The Watchmaker Who Hid the Hunted

Corrie ten Boom lived above her family's watch shop in Holland, where her father mended clocks and taught her the trade. The ten Booms were quiet, kind people who loved God and loved their neighbours — and one day that love was put to a terrible test.

Armies had marched into Holland, ruled by men who hunted down the Jewish people to imprison and kill them, only because they were Jews. When frightened Jewish families came knocking at the watch shop, the ten Booms did not turn them away. They took them in and hid them.

Corrie's brave helpers built a secret room behind the wall of her own bedroom — so cleverly that no one could tell it was there. When soldiers came searching, the hidden families would slip through a little door and stand silent in that narrow space until the danger passed. In this way the ten Booms saved many lives.

But one day they were betrayed. Soldiers arrested the whole family and sent Corrie and her sister Betsie to a dreadful prison camp, a place of cold and hunger and cruelty. Even there the two sisters told the other prisoners about God's love, and Betsie kept saying that no pit is so deep that God's love is not deeper still. Betsie died in that camp. Corrie lived, and was set free.

After the war, Corrie travelled the world telling her story. The hardest part came when she met, face to face, one of the cruel guards from the camp — now sorry for what he had done, holding out his hand. Everything in her wanted to turn away. But she remembered that God had forgiven her, and she prayed for the strength to forgive him — and she took his hand. Corrie ten Boom spent the rest of her long life teaching the world that there is no one God cannot forgive, and no hurt His love cannot heal.