A Reader’s Guide to Corrie ten Boom

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:15

Corrie ten Boom wrote a great many books, most of them short, all drawing on the same store of stories and convictions, and all still in copyright. What follows is a guide to hearing her for yourself, arranged for usefulness rather than completeness. Obtain her books from their rightful publishers.

Begin here

The Hiding Place (1971), written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. The book through which most of the world knows her, and the natural place to start. It tells her childhood, the family and the shop, the underground years, the raid, the prisons, Ravensbrück and Betsie. It is beautifully written, and some of its dialogue owes as much to the Sherrills’ craft as to her memory; read it as a mature testimony rather than a transcript. The 1975 film of the same name, made by World Wide Pictures, is a faithful companion to it.

Tramp for the Lord (1974). The sequel, telling stories from her decades of travel, and one of the two places where she tells of the encounter with the former guard. Episodic and warm.

Her earliest account

A Prisoner and Yet, first published in Dutch in 1945 and in English in 1947. Written within months of her release, before she was famous and before any collaborator shaped it. Short, raw and sometimes unpolished, it is the closest record we have to the events in her own words, and the best check on the later retellings.

Her teaching and devotional books

Amazing Love (1953). An early collection of stories from her first years of travel, including her preaching to former camp guards. Not Good If Detached (1957). More stories and teaching from the travelling years. In My Father’s House (1976). Her memories of the years before the war — the family, the shop, the aunts, and the faith that was formed there; the best companion to the early chapters of this volume. Corrie ten Boom’s Prison Letters (1975). Letters from Scheveningen, Vught and Ravensbrück, with the letter to the informer. Each New Day. A book of short daily readings, and a good gift. Clippings from My Notebook. A late collection of the sayings, poems and quotations she had gathered over the years, many of them from other writers — a useful reminder that not every line now attributed to her began with her.

In the Ochorus library

Six of her recorded addresses are in the Ochorus library: How to Forgive, Power in Prayer, The Greatest of These Is Love, The Love of Christ, Total Surrender and Tribulation. Transcribed from talks in her later years, they give her voice more directly than any summary can. How to Forgive and Total Surrender are the best places to begin. Portraits of Courage – Corrie ten Boom, also in the Ochorus library, is a careful biography that compares her earliest account with her later books and sets out what the independent records confirm.

Approach with care

Defeated Enemies (1962) and her other writing on spiritual warfare and deliverance reflect her later charismatic associations, and not all readers will be persuaded. Her booklets on the last days, such as Marching Orders for the End Battle, should be read alongside Scripture and with the cautions of chapter eighteen of this volume. And beware of her online reputation. Many sayings, poems and letters circulate under her name that she did not write — the weaving poem she learned in America, a line about God having no panic that she credited to another, and an unverified letter on the rapture among them. If you want to quote her, find the words in one of her books.

About her

Pamela Rosewell Moore, who travelled with her and nursed her through her last years, wrote The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom, a tender account of the time after her strokes. Hans Poley, one of the young men hidden in the Beje, published Return to the Hiding Place (1993), a memoir based on his wartime diaries, which gives an independent view of the household. Carole C. Carlson’s Corrie ten Boom: Her Life, Her Faith is a sympathetic popular biography. The museum that keeps the house in Haarlem, opened in 1988, preserves the family’s papers and its own careful chronology. Read more than one account.

Three counsels for reading her

Read the earliest and the latest together. The 1945 account keeps The Hiding Place honest; The Hiding Place fills out what the 1945 account leaves bare.

Read with the Bible open. She claimed no authority of her own and argued constantly from Scripture, sometimes loosely. Check her texts in their setting, and keep what is plainly true.

And read her to be changed. She told her stories to get people to do something — to receive Christ, to forgive, to lay down a burden. One chapter obeyed will do more than the whole shelf enjoyed.

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. PSALM 32:7