Barracks 28

“in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus to you-ward.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (ASV)

Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp for women in the Nazi system. Tens of thousands died there of hunger, disease, exhaustion and beatings, and in its final months in a gas chamber. When Corrie and Betsie arrived in September 1944 it was already badly overcrowded. The first women they passed were skeletons reaching out for bread. For the first nights the new arrivals had no shelter at all. The sisters cut Betsie's hair short because of the lice, and lay together under one blanket, comforting each other with the psalms. Betsie reminded Corrie that God gives his beloved sleep. Then it rained.

When they were finally processed, everything was taken: clothes, blankets, food. They came out in a thin dress and wooden shoes. But Corrie had hidden their woollen underwear and her small Bible in a corner during the showers, put them on under her dress, and walked past guards who were searching every prisoner. She was not searched. She believed all her life that God had hidden her.

They were moved to Barracks 28. It was built for a few hundred women. By the end, Corrie wrote, it held about fourteen hundred. Bunks were stacked three high, slats were missing, windows were stuffed with rags, and the place crawled with lice. Here, with their hidden Bible, the sisters began what Corrie came to believe was the reason they had been sent there. They held Bible readings every day, sometimes twice. One Sunday Corrie preached nine times, crawling along the top bunks under the ceiling to groups of young women who had asked her to come. Dutch, Belgian, French, Polish and Russian women listened, Protestants and Catholics together. When they had no shared language, the sisters just said the name of Jesus, and faces lit up.

You may know the famous story about the fleas: Betsie insisting they thank God even for the fleas, and the sisters later discovering that the guards stayed out of their barracks because of them, so the Bible readings went on in peace. That story appears in The Hiding Place in 1971. Corrie's 1945 book is a bit different. It mentions lice, and says other women avoided the barracks because of them, and that supervision grew slack as the camp overflowed. Corrie may simply have left the fleas out in 1945, or the story may have sharpened in the retelling. Either way, the lesson was Betsie's. Her whole life in the camp was thanksgiving “in everything.” Notice Paul says in everything, not for everything, as if evil were a gift.

There was also the vitamin bottle. Corrie was allowed to keep a small bottle of liquid vitamins, about half full. She gave drops to the starving women around her every day, and by her account it kept giving for weeks, far longer than it should have, until the women called it the widow's cruse, after the jar of oil that didn't run out for the widow in Elijah's time. When a friend smuggled in a new supply, it ran dry. This story is in her 1945 book, so it wasn't invented later. No one can test it now, and you can judge it for yourself. What isn't in doubt is the other miracle: in a camp where survival seemed to mean looking after yourself, she gave her precious vitamins away every day.

Corrie called that every-woman-for-herself attitude “the Ravensbrück that destroys.” She thought selfishness was more dangerous than cruelty, because it can pass for common sense. She didn't exempt herself. She admitted that once, watching a little birthday feast for a dying girl, she caught herself praying to be offered some, and was ashamed.

Most of us will never be tested like that. But we can practise the habit of looking for God's hand in everything, and giving thanks, and giving first.

One thing to do this week: each night this week, write down three things you can honestly thank God for, including one from inside the hardest part of your day. Then give away something you'd rather keep: time, food, attention, or money.