I tried to comprehend what Noelle was saying. This young woman, of whom I was so frightened, was a new Christian. And her family had cut her off. “How terrible for her.”
“I know. She’s in good hands, though. You saw how Hannah takes in women like Zahida at the farm. It will be a good place for her, and she will be surrounded by other Christians.”
I thought of the timid brunette who had sat across from me while we ate lunch and who was so grateful for each bite she took. The women in that home were being taken care of as well as taking care of themselves. Hannah saw to it that they were protected. They were little lost sheep, welcomed into a loving fold.
“What your sister-in-law is doing is amazing.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted you to experience it. I wanted you to walk into that home without any expectations. That’s where Zahida will be by this evening. It will be very good for her. I’m so grateful for Hannah.”
I nodded my agreement.
“I have just had an inspiration.” Noelle put on her car’s blinker. “We’ll go to Haarlem instead of Amsterdam. We’re close enough, so why not? I have the information on the Ten Boom house. It was a watch shop, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently the clock shop is still there, in front of the house. I’m hoping we can take a tour and see where the hiding place was located. I printed out the information, and it is all there in my purse, if you want to pull it out.”
I reached to the backseat and removed the folded papers from Noelle’s purse.
“You were right about how the Ten Boom family took in Jews as well as those involved in the underground resistance during the occupation years. As a result of their efforts, it’s estimated that about eight hundred Jews were spared. That’s really something.” Noelle shot a glance at me. “Are you okay with doing this instead of going to Amsterdam?”
“Yes, definitely. I much prefer it when you’re in the driver’s seat.
The traffic let up, and we were in Haarlem sooner than I had expected. I read Noelle the instructions on the papers regarding the parking available in a lot by the train station. The covered parking structure reminded me of the one at the airport.
“Let’s hope no out-of-control utility trucks come careening around the corner this time.”
“That was a close one, wasn’t it?” Noelle said.
She took the papers from me and told me she didn’t know exactly where the house was located since she never had been there. At the first street corner, she spotted a sign that said “C. ten Boomhuis,” and we were off! Noelle, with her fast-paced stride, and me, puffing to keep up.
We headed for the older part of town, where the buildings became quainter and more photoworthy. I commented on their charm, and Noelle pulled out her camera.
I did the same and enjoyed the approach to the Ten Boom watch shop even more because I was capturing photos of the area and trying to imagine how this corner of Haarlem had looked during the war.
One of the tall, narrow buildings that came into view displayed a sign with a clock on it high above the door. As we walked closer, I saw that the sign read “Ten Boom Museum.”
The lower level of the building was a typical, Old-World-style, brick storefront, as I had seen in a number of the towns we had driven through. A long window framed the front of the shop where several people were standing, looking in at the display of watches in the shop.
An alleyway ran down the left side of the building. I paused to gaze at the windows on the second floor that faced the street. They were trimmed in white and stood out against the dull, buttery sandstone brick. Two of the windows were very large and narrow and were topped by a much smaller one directly above them. The housetop slanted inward the way a church spire rises to a point. But instead of a point, this structure rose in the shape of a chimney.
“You okay?” Noelle turned around to come back to where I stood.
“I was trying to imagine what it must have been like, coming here to this place, in search of protection.”
Noelle seemed to catch my fervent interest in the Hiding Place for the first time. “Like Zahida going to the farm today.”
“Only everything had to be carried out in secret. I can’t imagine what it was like during the war.”
“I’ve met many people who lived through it, and you’re right. Our generation can’t imagine the horror. I hope we can get in on a tour. I didn’t make reservations.”
I snapped several pictures and caught up with Noelle. Down the alley that ran along the side of the house, we found a green door with the tour times posted.
Noelle checked her watch. “Perfect! The next tour is in five minutes.”
Noelle opened the door, and as we entered, my heart swelled with emotion. This was a dream come true. My affection for Corrie ten Boom ran deep. And here I was, entering her home.
Our tour guide, an older man with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, led us into the main room above the watch shop. Accompanying Noelle and me were two women from Japan and a couple from South Africa. When all of us said that we spoke English, he seemed pleased to be able to deliver his presentation in only one language.
We formed a small circle and were told how this living room area was the largest place in the house and the spot where the large Ten Boom family would gather. During the occupation this was referred to as the Liberation Room since they were able to assemble here with those they were hiding from the Nazis.
The simple white walls were accented by dark wooden beams in the low ceiling and the dark wood furniture placed around the room in an open fashion. Several chairs, a piano, a round table, and a fireplace with a clock and two candles on the plain mantel were among the few remaining “eyewitnesses” of the many conversations that had taken place in this unassuming room.
We stood while our guide told us of the Ten Booms’ “open house” ministry. They spent their lives welcoming visitors to their table as well as taking in foster children and hosting children of missionaries.
Noelle caught my eye and gave me a nod when he mentioned the foster children.
“This open-home attitude continued even after the Nazi occupation. Corrie’s father, Casper, emphasized to his four children, wife, and the three aunts who lived with them the importance of honoring God’s chosen people,” the tour guide said.
“Corrie and her sister Betsie did not marry,” the guide went on to explain. “The two women lived here and were in their fifties on that fateful day: February 28,1944. That was the day the family was betrayed to the Gestapo for assisting Jews as well as those in the underground resistance. The home was raided and the family taken to prison.”
Our guide nodded toward a photograph of Casper, the patriarch of the family. “He was eighty-four years old when he was taken to Scheveningen Prison. When asked if he knew he could die for helping Jews, Casper replied, ‘It would be an honor to give my life for God’s ancient people.’ He did in fact die only ten days after the arrest. Please, follow me now to the dining room.”
We shuffled solemnly to a more compact room where it was explained that around this small dining table the nine members of the Ten Boom family gathered for daily Bible reading and prayer.
“This was a place of love and laughter, of prayer and ultimately of sacrifice. You will notice the open Bible on the table. This is Casper’s Bible. It is open to his favorite passage, Psalm 91. Does anyone here read Dutch?”
Noelle nodded.
“Would you care to read the first few verses of the psalm?” he asked.
Noelle stepped close to the table, and with her hands demurely folded in front of her, she read in Dutch.
The guide thanked her. He lifted a card from his pocket. “This passage in English might be familiar to some of you. Would you care to read it to us?” He was looking at me.
I took the card from him and read, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my
refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.’”
“Thank you.” Our guide went on to explain that Corrie, after being the only family member to survive the Nazi death camp near Berlin, went on to spend the rest of her life traveling around the world and telling people about God’s love.
“Tante, or aunt, Corrie, as those who loved her liked to call her, wrote a number of books, as you see in the case there on the wall. In 1975 a Hollywood film was released based on one of Corrie’s books, The Hiding Place. Let us go single file now to Corrie’s bedroom so you can see the actual hiding place.”
Noelle and I lingered at the end of the group, examining the books in the case.
“I’ve read all her books,” I said.
“You have?”
I nodded. “The first time I read one of her books was after my mother had gone to a church service where Corrie spoke. I finagled my way out of going, and my mother let me stay home. Whatever it was that Corrie said at that church service had a powerful effect on my mother. She always regretted not pressing me and our whole family to go.
“Several years ago when Wayne, the kids, and I watched the movie The Hiding Place at home, I told our children I almost had a chance to meet Corrie. They thought I meant during the war, as if I were that old.” I chuckled to myself at the memory and added, “I do regret that I never got to meet her.”
“You will.” Noelle gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll meet her, and so will I. In heaven. We’ll go together to her new home there. How would that be for a visit?”
At that moment, standing in the Ten Boom home, I had a tender flash, which is completely different from a hot flash. It was one of those heartwarming moments when heaven suddenly seems real. What follows is an unexpected calm, accompanied by a feeling of anticipation, or maybe it would be more accurate to call it a longing for home, as in heaven.
The truth at the center of that tender flash was the realization of how much there is to look forward to in eternity. I spend so much of my time focusing on what I can see and what I can control, yet real life—eternal life—is outside of time and beyond all limitations.
“You’re right. I will get to meet her. We both will.”
“It will be like a blink of time before we’re all together,” Noelle said. “That’s how Jelle’s mother talked about looking forward to heaven. She kissed all of us a few hours before she died, and then she said, ‘See you in a minute.’”
Noelle and I caught up with the rest of the tour group. I thought about that concept—of stepping outside of time. Is that what it would be like to enter heaven? Would it be a mere blink of an eye from the moment a loved one crossed into eternity and when we join that person?
We followed single file down the narrowest hallway I had ever been in. Earlier we had been told Corrie’s grandfather had built the house in 1837, which meant the building was already more than a hundred years old when World War II broke out. Everything was much closer quarters than I had pictured when I read Corrie’s books and watched the movie.
Once we were assembled in the bedroom, we were shown the closet with the false wall at the back. We were told that on the day of the Gestapo raid, four Jews and two Dutch underground workers slipped through the sliding door at the back of the linen closet and crawled into the tight space behind the false wall.
Holding out his hand, our guide explained, “The wall here has been opened so you can see how much space was available for the six people who went into hiding here. They had only a few modest provisions, as you can see there, and a vent to the outside for fresh air. Even though the guards checked the house thoroughly, they didn’t find the valuable human treasure hidden behind this wall. Those six people waited in silence for forty-seven hours after the raid until they were rescued by the underground. All six of them left this house safely.”
I waited to be the last one in the group to look into the cramped space and to try to imagine how those six people must have felt, waiting for deliverance. How did they do it? Two days without water, light, or any way to know if they would be found.
As I stepped forward and peered into the hiding place, my eyes filled with tears. How terrified those people must have been. Thoughts of fear, hate, and prejudice pressed against my chest.
I always had thought of myself as an open person when it came to ethnic diversity. Two of our daughters were from Korea, and both our foster sons were of African American descent. I didn’t think I had a limited view of race.
However, the piercing and uncomfortable truth was that only an hour or so earlier I had been afraid of another human—a young Middle Eastern woman. Why? She was dressed like someone who lived in a part of the world I had come to think of as enemy territory. Her culture, religious background, and homeland might well have been on the list that my government and my cultural community would consider enemies.
So I was afraid of her. Yet she was only a frightened young woman. Frightened of me because I was an American. Did Noelle tell her I was just another woman? a friend? and above all, a Christian? That was the bond all of us had that went far beyond national and political lines of intolerance.
Our guide’s steady voice ushered me back to the moment. “Many visitors to this room say they are glad such desperate occurrences are not happening in our world today. However, that is not true. Persecution continues. We might not be aware of where or how others are in a hiding place this very moment in another part of the world, but it is a fact.”
The guide paused. I turned back to face the rest of our small group, aware that I too had prejudices.
The guide continued in the spirit of hope that had accompanied his summaries in each room so far. “Corrie was fifty-three when she was released from Ravensbrueck. This was shortly after her sister, Betsie, died in that same concentration camp. For the next thirty-three years Corrie traveled around the world repeating two truths she and her sister had learned while in prison. Do any of you know what those two themes were for Tante Corrie?”
The woman from South Africa spoke up in a soft voice. “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”
The guide nodded. “Yes. That is the first. The other truth she taught was ‘God will enable you to forgive your enemies.’”
The two women from Japan reservedly dipped their heads.
“I personally know this is true because my parents also died at Ravensbrueck. Their only crime was this: my parents were Jewish.”
With his brow lowered he said, “I was four years old at the time they were taken. My mother managed to secretly entrust me to a Dutch family in the south. They were Catholic, and yet they took me in, kept me hidden until the war ended, and raised me as their own.”
The room had gone very still. I drew in a breath of steadying air. All of this—the tour, the room, the horrors of the war—seemed true, intimate, and very personal as the guide continued with his story.
“I know that what Corrie believed is true. God will enable you to forgive your enemies because that has been my experience. As a young man, I met Corrie and heard her story. At the time I refused to open my heart to the same love that had given her such freedom. Many years later, after I married, my wife was given one of Corrie’s books. I read it when no one was looking. I knew that anger and bitterness toward the Nazis had eaten holes in my life.”
With a softening around his eyes, he concluded, “I asked God to enable me to forgive my enemies, and He did. That very day. I have not been the same since because, on that day, God also forgave me for my hatred and prejudice. He welcomed me into His family through His Son, the Messiah.”
Noelle and I exchanged glances. I could tell she was as deeply touched by his personal account as I was.
“We celebrated Corrie’s birthday earlier this week. She was born on April 15—She also passed away on April 15, on her ninety-first birthday. This is part of her story I feel honored to tell because, in the Jewish tradition, only those who are greatly blessed are allowed the special privileg
e of dying on their birthday.”
I could have stayed in that room for a long time, just standing, thinking, and taking inventory of my feelings. I knew I needed time to sort out all the thoughts and images we had been presented. This was a place of simple serenity as well as betrayal and fear.
We then climbed to the very top of the house and entered a small room with a steeply slanted ceiling. For quite some time our small group lingered in the compact quarters, viewing an extensive display of family photos, plaques, and papers related to the house and to Corrie and her travels.
After reading a special poem written for Corrie, I looked at a photo taken of her during her traveling years. Viewing her image up close, I saw a woman whose unshakable love for God seemed to shine through every pore on her character-chiseled face. I wondered if my love for God was about to be shaken and tested.
What if I have cancer? How much time do I have left? What will happen once I return home? Why is this happening to me? Why now?
Noelle purchased several books and looked at me with my folded arms guarding all the mixed feelings in my stomach.
“You ready for some lunch?”
I followed her out into the alleyway even though the last thing I felt like doing at the moment was eating.
Once we were outside, Noelle suggested we walk to the market square about a block from the Ten Boom house. I followed as if in a trance.
Noelle stopped at the first café she came to. The menu was posted under glass by the restaurant’s front door.
While Noelle skimmed the menu, I stood fixated on the massive, Gothic-style church in the far corner of the square. I never had seen such a large cathedral. It had to be several hundred years old and was majestic in its girth and structure.
“No.” Noelle stepped away from the posted menu. “This is not what we want.”
The sun had broken through the thin clouds, and dozens of bicyclists pedaled across the uneven, wide-open square. Several tables covered with bright yellow umbrellas lined up on one side of the church.