Corrie Ten Boom (Her gospel of ‘forgiveness’)

I came to know of Corrie Ten Boom long ago, I can’t remember at what age I was in then. I happened to stumble on a book by her but I can’t remember what its title was. I just remember her name and that the book was sort of a journal, bits and pieces of her writings and quotations. I lost the book but I can’t remember why or how. Another fragmented piece lost in my past but I’ve certainly, somehow preserved her name in my memory.

I bet a lot of our women today doesn’t even know Corrie Ten Boom and may have not heard of her at all until this post. Well, Cornelia “Corrie” Ten Boom (Amsterdam, April 15, 1892 – Orange, California, April 15, 1983) was a survivor of the Dutch-Christian Holocaust during World War II and helped Jews escape the Nazis.

Corrie wrote many books and a few of them were about the holocaust. The entire Ten boom family were arrested on February 28, 1944 for helping and hiding Jews in a secret room in their house. Her father died in captivity in prison. Corrie's sister Betsie died on December 16, 1944 in Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. Before she died, she told Corrie,

"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

After the war, Corrie set up rehabilitation centers for concentration camp survivors and jobless Dutch who previously collaborated with Germans during the occupation. Her teachings focused on Christian gospel with emphasis on forgiveness.

“In her book Tramp for the Lord (1974), she tells the story of how, after she had been teaching in Germany in 1947, she was approached by one of the cruelest former Ravensbrück camp guards. She was reluctant to forgive him, but prayed that she would be able to. She wrote that,

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.”

HONORS

Israel honored ten Boom by naming her Righteous Among the Nations.

Ten Boom was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in recognition of her work during the war, and a museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is dedicated to her and her family.

The King's College (New York) in the Empire State Building recently announced the addition of a new women's house called The House of Corrie ten Boom.

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.