Seventy-six years ago today, on December 16, 1944, Betsie ten Boom died in a concentration camp.
For decades, Casper ten Boom and his daughters, Betsie and Corrie, had operated the family watch shop in Holland and faithfully loved and served those around them. But under a swastika-shaped shadow, their obedience to Jesus would change considerably, as their home and shop was quickly transformed into the hub of underground operations for their community. While they continued to fix watches and serve tea (when they had the rations), they also filled their days with safehouse information, asylum-seeking Jews, stolen ration cards, and other “illegal” activities.
Betsie ten Boom is not as well-known as her sister Corrie, who later wrote The Hiding Place and traveled the world giving talks about her family’s experiences. But it was Betsie who Corrie so often pointed to as the example, and it was her encouragement that spurred Corrie’s later ministry.
Now in the 21st century, and 2020 at that, it seems the news keeps darkening. As we try to navigate how to live in a world that so often celebrates evil, we can find encouragement in remembering that many Christians before us have persevered through dark days and unprecedented times. Their example can point the way for us.
Loving Her Neighbors
Even before war came, Betsie ten Boom hardly led a daydream life. An aging spinster, prone to pneumonia and other illnesses, she lived with her father and sister in a generations-old house, where she kept the home and stretched the family’s tight budget. For decades, they lived out the exact same routines and stage of life in a small town with few options for any kind of advancement or adventure.
But there were people. People Betsie could love.
And Betsie loved well. She brewed coffee for nearby policemen to enjoy when they came inside to warm themselves. She sewed and mended for foster children that lived with the family for a time.
One day, to her sister Corrie’s surprise, Betsie would even love the concentration camp guards, praying that they could learn to love just as they had learned to hate. Over and over she told Corrie that one day, when they were free, they would help these people who mistreated them.
Trusting Her Savior
During the Nazi invasion, air raid sirens and battles often filled the night air, and often the noise kept the sisters awake. One night Corrie, hearing Betsie in the kitchen, left her bedroom and joined her sister until the horrible racket stopped. Finally, Corrie went back to bed in the dark – cutting her hand on a 10-inch piece of metal shrapnel that had landed on her pillow. Betsie helped her bandage her hand.
“‘Betsie, if I hadn’t heard you in the kitchen—’
But Betsie put a finger on my mouth. ‘Don’t say it, Corrie! There are no “ifs” in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety.’”
Even in a concentration camp deep in the heart of Germany, there were no ifs. Betsie reminded Corrie that even the fleas in their barracks were under God’s sovereignty, and the sisters later learned that those fleas kept the wardens at a distance, providing the sisters with greater freedom to hold Bible studies with other prisoners. Despite the suffering they were enduring, Betsie knew her God was in control.
Forgiving the Unforgivable
On February 28, 1944, the Ten Booms were arrested. At eighty-four years old, Casper only survived ten days of his captivity, dying alone and unidentified in a hospital hallway.
Betsie and Corrie would eventually go on together to the women’s concentration camp Ravensbruck. Together they faced deprivation, miserable living conditions, long hours standing at attention, and the daily agony of cruel injustice. Once a guard beat Betsie during a work detail. Corrie’s anger flashed, but Betsie urged her to not retaliate, even as the blood oozed from her wound: “‘Don’t look at it, Corrie. Look at Jesus only.’”
Months into their captivity, the sisters learned the identity of the Dutch man who had colluded with the Nazis and betrayed the Ten Booms, and Corrie brimmed with hatred for the man who had brought such suffering literally to their doorstep. Her father was dead because of this man, and it was because of that traitor that Betsie was slowly dying. At last Corrie could no longer keep her anger bottled in. She turned to Betsie one night, asking,
“‘Doesn’t it bother you?’
“‘Oh yes, Corrie! Terribly! I’ve felt for him ever since I knew—and pray for him whenever his name comes into my mind.’”
As Betsie grew weaker, she kept insisting that she and Corrie had work to do after the war. She planned to have rehabilitation homes – with green paint and window boxes – for concentration camp survivors as well as for people who had helped the Nazis.
“They placed the stretcher on the floor and I leaned down to make out Betsie’s words, ‘…must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.’”
Hope for All of Us
Betsie would never again return to her beloved Holland. She wouldn’t see VE Day or liberation of the camp. After nine months of captivity, Betsie ten Boom died on December 16, 1944, at the age of 59.
The day before Betsie died, Corrie went to visit her at the makeshift camp hospital. She wasn’t allowed inside, so she found a window and tapped on it to get Betsie’s attention.
Betsie turned toward her, struggling to mouth something. Corrie could only make out some of it, a phrase that turned out to be Betsie’s last known words: “…so much work to do…”
Two weeks after Betsie’s death, Corrie was released. Finally, they were both free, though in different ways. Corrie carried out the work Betsie had envisioned, opening up homes for survivors of Nazi cruelty as well as homes for Dutch people who had collaborated with the Nazis and now faced ostracism from their countrymen.
Corrie traveled the world telling of God’s work during WWII. She spoke of Betsie’s love for others, her trust in God, and her forgiveness toward those who had ultimately caused her death. In our 21st-century mixed-up world, Betsie’s example still shines as a beacon pointing the way down our path. We remember her love. Her trust in her Savior. And her forgiveness.
Like Betsie, we don’t know what our future holds, but we hold fast to our hope in the same God who carried her through one of the darkest times of world history. The Ten Boom story reminds us all, as Betsie said, that no matter what horrors we face ahead of us, there is no pit so deep that God’s love isn’t even deeper.
And we have so much work to do.
All quotes taken from “The Hiding Place,” by Corrie ten Boom and John & Elizabeth Sherrill, 2006.
Cover image credit: JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
Photo credit for image of the Ten Boom family: https://renovare.org/articles/this-too-is-in-his-hands