Corrie ten Boom — Prayer in the Shadow of the Death Camp

Who She Was Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, in Haarlem, the Netherlands, into a watchmaker’s family known throughout the city for their Christian faith and hospitality. She trained as a watchmaker — becoming the first licensed female watchmaker in the Netherlands — and lived a quiet, devout life until the Nazi occupation of Holland. In 1942, the ten Boom family began hiding Jewish refugees in a secret room behind Corrie’s bedroom, sheltering over eight hundred people over two years before being betrayed and arrested in 1944. Corrie and her beloved sister Betsie were transported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where Betsie died in December 1944. Corrie was released in a clerical error just days before women her age were sent to the gas chambers, and she spent the next thirty-five years of her life traveling to sixty-four countries, telling what she called the greatest story in the world — that there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.

Her Core Teaching on Prayer Corrie ten Boom’s teaching on prayer was born, not in a library, but in a flea-infested barracks in the worst death camp the Nazi regime operated. What she discovered in those conditions was a truth she spent the rest of her life reporting: that prayer is not a practice that depends on circumstances, and that the God who meets us in prayer is not diminished or distanced by the darkness of our situation. If anything, she found Him closer in the darkness than in the light.

Her sister Betsie had taught her, in the barracks, to give thanks in everything — even for the fleas, which, they discovered, were the reason the guards avoided their dormitory and allowed the Bible reading and prayer meetings to continue uninterrupted. This was Paul’s instruction taken to its literal extreme: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7, NIV). The peace that Paul described as transcending understanding was precisely what Corrie and Betsie experienced in Ravensbrück — a peace that made no rational sense given their circumstances, and was therefore undeniable evidence of God’s active presence.

After her release and the launch of her global speaking ministry, Corrie returned repeatedly to the experience of the camp to ground her teaching on prayer in the most incontrovertible evidence she had: personal survival. She had walked through what the Psalmist called the valley of the shadow of death — not metaphorically but literally — and the Shepherd had been there.

Psalm 23:4 was not poetry to Corrie ten Boom: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4, NIV). The rod and staff had comforted her when the guards’ weapons were raised against her.

She had been there. She knew.

One of the most powerful dimensions of Corrie’s prayer life was her practice of forgiving, in prayer, those who had wronged her — including the German guard she met after the war who had been her captor at Ravensbrück and who asked for her forgiveness. She wrote of that moment with searching honesty: she could not feel forgiveness, but she chose to act on it, extending her hand in obedience to Christ’s command, and then experienced the warmth of genuine forgiveness flooding through her afterward. She drew on 1 Peter’s instruction: “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7, NIV). Prayer, for Corrie, was the act of releasing — anxiety, bitterness, fear, and grief — into the hands of the One whose capacity to carry it was infinitely greater than her own.

She testified throughout her ministry that what she had discovered in the death camp was that no depth of darkness could extinguish the love of God or interrupt the prayer of a surrendered heart.

This was her version of Paul’s great declaration: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39, NIV). She had tested this promise in conditions designed specifically to disprove it. It did not fail.

Corrie’s encouragement to those facing their own darkness was always the same: pray now, in the midst of it. Do not wait until the circumstances improve. The God who met her in Ravensbrück meets His children wherever they are. She loved Isaiah’s promise: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31, NIV). She had found this proved in the worst place on earth. She spent thirty-five years proclaiming it to the rest of the world.

A Prayer: Lord, You met Corrie in the valley of shadows, and You promise to meet us in ours. When our circumstances terrify us, remind us that You are already present in them. When bitterness threatens to take root in our hearts, give us the grace to release it into Your hands. Teach us to pray the prayer of thanksgiving even in the flea-infested barracks of our own lives, and let us discover Your peace on the other side. Amen.