The Angels’ Crib

“Thou art my hiding-place; thou wilt preserve me from trouble; Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance.”

— Psalm 32:7, ASV

An Architect Called Smit

By the spring of 1943 it was clear that the Beje needed more than good intentions. People were living in the house for weeks and months, and at any moment the police might come to the door. A raid by the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS security service, often came without warning, and there would be only a minute or two to hide. The family needed a hiding place that could not be found.

The man who built it is known only by an alias. In The Hiding Place Corrie calls him Mr. Smit, a well-known architect who worked for the underground and came to the Beje to survey the house. The Dutch regional history of the house says he was found through a local resistance man named Herman Sluring, whom Corrie’s book calls “Pickwick.” The architect’s real name has never been established, and the museum does not give it. He belongs to the large company of people in the Dutch resistance whose work survives and whose names do not.

According to the museum and the Dutch sources, the hiding place was built in the spring or early summer of 1943. The architect chose Corrie’s own bedroom, at the very top of the house. It was the highest point, farthest from the street door, which gave precious seconds of warning. Along one wall of the room he built a second wall of brick, plastered and aged to look exactly like the original, with a narrow space between the two. The Dutch war-graves foundation, which maintains the memorial at the house, gives the space as about two and a half metres long and seventy centimetres deep. Against the new wall stood a linen cupboard. Under its bottom shelf was a small sliding panel. A person could crawl through the panel into the space behind, and the panel could be closed from inside and hidden with boxes and linen.

The family called it the Engelenbak, the “Angels’ Crib.” It was the highest seat in an old Dutch theatre, the gallery nearest the angels. It was not a place to live. It had no light and no room to sit comfortably for long. There was a grille for a little air, a mattress on the floor, a supply of water, and some dry biscuits. It was meant to hide people for hours, not days. In the event, six people would stand in it for two and a half days.

Drills with a Stopwatch

A hiding place is useless if people cannot reach it in time, so the household practised. A system of buzzers had been installed so that a warning could be given from the shop. Corrie would sound the alarm without notice, often at night, and time the guests with a stopwatch as they raced upstairs, hid every trace of themselves, and crawled one by one through the panel. Their best time, she recorded in 1945, was seventy seconds. Afterwards they went over whatever had given them away, and Corrie rewarded everyone with cream puffs, which made the drills almost something to look forward to.

It is a tender picture, and a terrible one. Grown men and women were rehearsing how to vanish into a wall in the middle of the night, because they were being hunted. The cream puffs were Corrie’s way of making the unbearable bearable.

The Guests

Over the months, Corrie wrote in 1945, more than eighty people passed through the Beje for shorter or longer stays. There were never fewer than seven and never more than twelve in the house at one time. A small group stayed permanently, and some of them can now be identified from the independent record.

“Eusie” was Meijer Mossel, a cantor from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, a man with a fine voice and, as Corrie remembered him, the high spirits of an overgrown boy. “Mary” was Margaretha Jacqueline van Itallie, born in Leiden in 1900, who had run a travel agency before the war. She taught Italian to the household in the evenings. “Thea,” named in Corrie’s later book, has been identified by Yad Vashem as a nurse named Hansje Frankfort-Israels. Hans Poley was the student who had arrived in May 1943 as the first permanent guest. He later wrote his own memoir of the house, drawing on his wartime diaries. Corrie’s nephew Peter van Woerden, Nollie’s son, a gifted young musician, was often there. So were young resistance workers such as Reynout Siertsema. Other names that appear in Corrie’s books, such as Martha, Henk, Leendert, and Meta, have not been identified independently, and may be pseudonyms or first names only.

“The Gayest Underground Address”

What stands out in Corrie’s earliest account is not the fear but the life. Her first chapter opens with music in the drawing room: a violin sonata played by a young man in hiding, and Eusie singing so passionately that Corrie had to warn him the whole street would hear. People said, she recorded, that the Beje was the gayest underground address in the Netherlands.

The household held its own evening classes. Mary taught Italian, Eusie Hebrew, and Hans astronomy, and old Casper, well into his eighties, came to learn with the rest. The family cat bore the grand biblical name Maher-shalal-hash-baz, from Isaiah 8:1. There were jokes, music, and even a pretended birthday party when a window cleaner’s ladder appeared unexpectedly at the window. Under the laughter, Corrie knew that sooner or later the house would be discovered, and she kept a small Bible about her person against that day.

“Thou Art My Hiding-Place”

The verse at the head of this chapter is from Psalm 32: “Thou art my hiding-place; thou wilt preserve me from trouble; Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance” (Psalm 32:7, ASV). The psalm is David’s song of a forgiven sinner who has found in God a refuge from the storm. “Surely when the great waters overflow they shall not reach unto him” (Psalm 32:6, ASV).

The Angels’ Crib was a real hiding place, and a well-made one. It would do exactly what it was built to do. But the household knew that no wall of brick could finally protect them. They practised their drills and trusted God, and they did not confuse the two. The Beje was, in Corrie’s phrase, full of songs, violin sonatas and Jewish chants and hymns and birthday songs, even while its guests practised vanishing into a wall. “Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance.” The songs came first. The deliverance, for most of them, would come later, and by a harder road than any of them imagined.

For Reflection

The Beje in 1943 held two things at once: careful, practical preparation for disaster, and a stubborn, joyful life in the meantime. The household drilled with a stopwatch, and it also held classes, concerts, and cream-puff suppers. It did not deny the danger, and it did not let the danger have the last word.

That is a good pattern for Christian life under pressure. We are to be wise and prepared, and to do the practical things that love requires. But we are also to live joyfully, because our final hiding place is not a wall we have built. It is God himself.