User talk:Jesusfreak1324

Corrie Ten Boom: A Woman Heroe
Could you hide Dutch refugees and Jews, hiding from the Nazis so that they wouldn’t be sent to concentration camps, in your house? Could you risk your life, every single day, just for the well being of others? Could you make life threatening decisions, all for the Lord, and know the whole time that you could be sent to death camps, where you would be starved, gassed then burned, or tortured until you died? This is how Corrie Ten Boom lived, but with a whole different mindset. All of this, to her, was an honor for the Lord, an opportunity to live for him, to love him, and to serve him. Corrie Ten Boom (Corneilia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom) was born on April 15th 1892 in Haarlem, Netherlands to a devoted Christian family. She had four brothers and sisters whom loved her very much, one of which was Betsie, her younger sister. They all lived in a house that they called the ‘Beje’ which was above her father’s watch making shop. Like her father, Corrie began watchmaking, and became the first certified woman watchmaker in all of Haarlem. Corrie had a sweet childhood, loving parents, siblings that normally bickered, but an amazing Christian upbringing, which would lay out the foundation for her life. Corrie was really dedicated to Christ, and to doing good works and good deeds. Her whole life revolved around the Lord, church every week, bible studies, and plenty of family meetings with talks about the Bible and the Lord. She held girls clubs, for able bodied girls and disabled little children. She loved to talk about the Lord…and people enjoyed listening to her! During Corrie’s lifetime, a tyrant named Hitler came to power. He hated the Jews, and even wrote a book about it, called my struggle. He made concentration camps that the Jews would be tortured in, they would receive little water, and hardly any medical attention. It was atrocious, with many things that are so grotesque and horrible that you can’t picture how anyone could come up with such torture. During the Second World War, in the May of 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands and took away Corrie’s girls’ clubs. The Nazis stormed into the Netherlands, taking away Jews’ rights, putting them on trains to be sent to death camps, Nazis would raid houses, kidnapping men from the age of 17 to 30, and force them to work for the army, they were shutting down businesses that were owned by Jews, and many other things to simply wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. (All of these atrocities were direct orders from Hitler, THE number one tyrant in history) The ten Booms decided to take a stand in a non-violent way. They decided to create their ‘Beje’ into a secret hiding place for Dutch Refugees and Jew hideaways…which was helpful for so many people. At first the ten Boom family did little things, like lying to Nazi officers and telling Nazi officers off in the wrong direction…but then little things led to big things. In 1943 and 1944 there were usually seven to eight people living in the ten Boom home. At least four Jews and two or three members of the underground Dutch organization. Sometimes people would stay with Corrie’s family for only a few hours, then moving on to the next “safe house” where they could have safety, food, and rest. Corrie ten Boom became the leader of the organization. Corrie and the Dutch organization would search for refugees, and once they found those people in need they would care for them and nurse them back to health if they were malnourished. Since there wasn’t much food, the ten Boom family had to get rations cards. Corrie went to the man that gave them extra ones because they had refugees in their house. Astonishingly, instead of five rations cards, (the number of people in Corrie’s family) she needed five hundred! So many people needed food, and it is amazing to see how much the ten Boom family had helped in the war! The main hiding place in the ten Boom’s house was in Corrie’s room. Behind a false wall, was a room with a bed, some water, and provisions would be donated daily so the families could survive. The Ten Boom family would have drills to know what to do in case the Nazis came into their house, sort of like a fire drill. Once, when Corrie had the flu, she woke up in bed because she heard the sound of pounding footsteps. The first thought that crossed her mind was “We didn’t plan a drill today,” but then she realized it was not a drill. The Jews came rushing into her room, getting through the false wall as fast as they possibly could. But one was left behind. An older woman, Mary Italle, had asthma, and was struggling to get to the false room. Corrie jumped from her bed and got the woman into the hiding place just a split second before the Nazis rushed into her room. The Nazis interrogated the family, for they were very suspicious. Mostly because many people came rushing to warn the family of danger, but they came a little too late. The Nazis were brutal, and beat the two girls every time that they said they weren’t in an underground project. Then they were arrested, put in vans, and sent off to the city jail. The suffering that they had just went through was tiny compared to the suffering they would encounter in the future. The ten Boom family waited in a large room with several other convicts waiting for their fate. All of them were loaded onto a van and Corrie was taken to solitary confinement, because she still had the flu. (They didn’t want anyone else to catch it…) Her other family members were put into the normal jail. When Hitler’s birthday came, all of the prison workers went out to party and celebrate. For Corrie this was a perfect time to find out about how her family was doing. She called out Betsies name, and Betsie was still in prison. She called out Willem, and he was released. She called out her sister Nollie’s name, and she was released also. It was a very happy time for Corrie, because knowing that at least some of her family members were safe and at home was a gift from the Lord. But there was one small problem, when she called out her fathers, name, he did not answer. Corrie learned a few days later that he had died in prison. She prayed to God that he would give her strength to live on her life, even though she was in prison, facing certain death. She always had faith in him no matter what! After Corrie got over sickness, she had her first hearing. She sat in a small hut, and had a one on one talk with lieutenant rhams, who at first tried to make her talk by being kind to her. But very soon Corrie and lieutenant Rhams became friends, and did not talk about her situation. She respected him as a person, and talked to him about the bible and about God. He had a horrible life, and an abusive childhood. He called it “Great darkness.” They would talk for hours on end, and Rhams enjoyed ten Boom’s company very much. The man considered receiving the Lord, but Corrie was never able to find out if he did. Soon after this, Corrie, Betsie, and a few other female prisoners were transported to Vught, a concentration camp in Holland. The concentration camps were not at all like jail at all. In fact, being at jail was heaven compared to concentration camps. The conditions were atrocious, little food, some water, freezing cold, emaciated people walked around with glazed looks on their eyes…the rules were strict, and if they were broken, your life was on the line. If you broke a rule the entire camp was punished. Some of the punishments included standing at attention for hours…to days on end. They would also be sent to bunkers, places where prisoners would stand with their hands tied above their heads. Betsie was a shining example for Corrie, who learned forgiveness from Betsie in the concentration camps. After they would be hit, or abused, or mistreated by any of the Nazi workers, Betsie would always say, “I feel sorry for them,” or “May God forgive them.” At first, Corrie hated the Nazi workers, and didn’t understand Betsie’s compassion for the very people that were mistreating them. But soon, she saw that Betsie was right, and began to understand, that forgiving them was the right thing to do. After a few months in Vught, Betsie and Corrie were transported to Ravensbruck in Germany. This was one of the most notorious death camps in the German area, which made Corrie and Betsie terrified, but they trusted in God to help them through this tough time. They were stuffed into a small, cramped, and smelly van, and when they got there they were happy to stretch their legs. But their destination was not too pleasing. At Ravensbruck you were not called by your name, you were a number, a lifeless “it” worth nothing to anyone, just Jewish slime or Jewish helper slime. They were made to take off all of their clothes in the death camps in front of the Nazis, and no mercy was given. They were violent, striking a perso in the face for no reason. Roll call was at 4:30, which it was so hard to get up when they had been working hard all day long with only a small piece of stale bread and murky water. Many would be sent to gas chambers and then burned. But luckily, that did not happen to Corrie or Betsie. Yet \worse was to come. “Barracks 8 was in the quarantine compound. Next to us--perhaps as a deliberate warning to newcomers--were located the punishment barracks. From there, all day long and often into the night, came the sounds of hell itself. They were not the sounds of anger, or of any human emotion, but of a cruelty altogether detached: blows landing in regular rhythm, screams keeping pace. We would stand in our ten-deep ranks with our hands trembling at our sides, longing to jam them against our ears, to make the sounds stop."It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy."But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of health and hope."Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the Word of God. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.""I would look about us as Betsie read, watching the light leap from face to face. More than conquerors...It was not a wish. It was a fact."We knew it, we experienced it minute by minute--poor, hated, hungry. We are more than conquerors. Not "we shall be." We are!"Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory."Sometimes I would slip the Bible from its little (sack) with hands that shook, so mysterious had it become to me. It was new; it had just been written. I marveled sometimes that the ink was dry...I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus' arrest--how soldiers had slapped Him, laughed at Him, flogged Him. Now such happenings had faces and voices."Fridays--the recurrent humiliation of medical inspection. The hospital corridor in which we waited was unheated and a fall chill had settled into the walls. Still we were forbidden even to wrap ourselves in our own arms, but had to maintain our erect, hands-at-sides position as we filed slowly past a phalanx of grinning guards."How there could have been any pleasure in the sight of these stick-thin legs and hunger-bloated stomachs I could not imagine. Surely there is no more wretched sight than the human body unloved and uncared for."Nor could I see the necessity for the complete undressing: when we finally reached the examining room a doctor looked down each throat, another--a dentist presumably--at our teeth, a third in between each finger. And that was all. We trooped again down the long, cold corridor and picked up our X-marked dresses at the door."But it was one of these mornings while we were waiting, shivering in the corridor, that yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me."He hung naked on the cross."...The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh--at the time itself, on that other Friday morning--there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now."'Betsie, they took His clothes too.'"'Ahead of me I heard a little gasp. 'Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him...'"Every day the sun rose a little later, the bite took longer to leave the air. It will be better, everyone assured everyone else, when we move into permanent barracks. We'll have a blanket apiece. A bed of our own. Each of us painted into the picture her own greatest need."The move to permanent quarters came the second week in October. We were marched, ten abreast, along the wide cinder avenue...Several times the column halted while numbers were read out--names were never used at Ravensbruck. At last Betsie's and mine were called...We stepped out of line with a dozen or so others and stared at the long gray front of Barracks 28. "Betsie and I followed a prisoner-guide through the door at the right. Because of the broken windows, the vast room was in semi-twilight. Our noses told us, first, that the place was filthy: somewhere, plumbing had backed up, the bedding was soiled and rancid."Then as our eyes adjusted to the gloom we saw that there were no individual beds at all, but great square tiers stacked three high, and wedged side by side and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle slicing through."We followed our guide single file--the aisle was not wide enough for two--fighting back the claustrophobia of these platforms rising everywhere above us...At last she pointed to a second tier in the center of a large block."To reach it, we had to stand on the bottom level, haul ourselves up, and then crawl across three other straw-covered platforms to reach the one that we would share with--how many?"The deck above us was too close to let us sit up. We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw...Suddenly I sat up, striking my head on the cross-slats above. Something had pinched my leg."'Fleas!' I cried. 'Betsie, the place is swarming with them!'"We scrambled across the intervening platforms, heads low to avoid another bump, dropped down to the aisle and hedged our way to a patch of light."'Here! And here another one!' I wailed. 'Betsie, how can we live in such a place!'"'Show us. Show us how.' It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie."'Corrie!' she said excitedly. 'He's given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!'"I glanced down the long dim aisle to make sure no guard was in sight, then drew the Bible from its pouch. 'It was in First Thessalonians,' I said. We were on our third complete reading of the New Testament since leaving Scheveningen."In the feeble light I turned the pages. 'Here it is: "Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all...'" It seemed written expressly to Ravensbruck."'Go on,' said Betsie. 'That wasn't all.'"'Oh yes:'..."Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.'""'That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. "Give thanks in all circumstances!" That's what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!' I stared at her; then around me at the dark, foul-aired room."'Such as?' I said."'Such as being assigned here together.'"I bit my lip. 'Oh yes, Lord Jesus!'"'Such as what you're holding in your hands.' I looked down at the Bible."'Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all these women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages.'"'Yes,' said Betsie, 'Thank You for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!' She looked at me expectantly. 'Corrie!' she prodded."'Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed suffocating crowds.'"'Thank You,' Betsie went on serenely, 'for the fleas and for--'"The fleas! This was too much. 'Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.'"'Give thanks in all circumstances,' she quoted. It doesn't say, 'in pleasant circumstances.' Fleas are part of this place where God has put us."And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.""They started arriving soon after 6:00 o'clock, the women of Barracks 28, tired, sweat-stained, and dirty from the long forced-labor details. The building, we learned from one of our platform mates, had been designed to hold four hundred. There were now fourteen hundred quartered here with more arriving weekly as concentration camps in Poland, France, Belgium, Austria, as well as Holland were evacuated toward the center of Germany."There were nine of us sharing our particular square, designed for four, and some grumbling as the others discovered they would have to make room for Betsie and me. Eight acrid and overflowing toilets served the entire room; to reach them we had to crawl not only over our own bedmates but over those on the other platforms between us and the closest aisle, always at the risk of adding too much weight to the already sagging slats and crashing down on the people beneath."Even when the slats held, the least movement on the upper platforms sent a shower of dust and straw over the sleepers below--followed by a volley of curses. In Barracks 8 most of us had been Dutch. Here there was not even a common language and among exhausted, ill-fed people quarrels erupted constantly."There was one raging now as the women sleeping nearest the windows slammed them shut against the cold. At once scores of voices demanded that they be raised again. Brawls were starting all up and down that side of the room; we heard scuffling, slaps, sobs."In the dark, I felt Betsie's hand clasp mine. 'Lord Jesus,' she said aloud, 'send Your peace into this room. There has been too little praying here. The very walls know it. But where You come, Lord, the spirit of strife cannot exist...'"The change was gradual, but distinct. One by one the angry sounds let up."'I'll make you a deal!' The voice spoke German with a strong Scandinavian accent. 'You can sleep in here where its warmer and I'll take your place by the window!'"'And add your lice to my own!' But there was a chuckle in the answer. 'No thanks.'"'I'll tell you what!' The third voice had a French burr. 'We'll open them halfway. That way we'll be only half-frozen and you'll be only half-smothered.'"A ripple of laughter widened around the room at this. I lay back on the sour straw and knew there was one more circumstance for which I could give thanks. Betsie had come to Barracks 28."Roll call came at 4:40 a.m. here as it had in quarantine. A whistle roused us at 4:00 when, without even shaking the straw from clothes and hair, the stampede began for the ration of bread and coffee in the center room. Last comers found none."After roll call, work crews were called out. For weeks Betsie and I were assigned to the Siemens factory. This huge complex of mills and railroad terminals was a mile and a half from the camp. The "Siemens Brigade," several thousand of us, marched out the iron gate beneath the charged wires into a world of trees and grass and horizons. The sun rose as we skirted the little lake; the gold of the late fall fields lifted our hearts."The work at Siemens, however, was sheer misery. Betsie and I had to push a heavy handcart to a railroad siding where we unloaded large metal plates from a boxcar and wheeled them to a receiving gate at the factory. The grueling workday lasted eleven hours. At least, at noontime we were given a boiled potato and some thin soup; those who worked inside the camp had no midday meal."Returning to camp we could barely lift our swollen and aching legs. The soldiers patrolling us bellowed and cursed, but we could only shuffle forward inches at a step."Back at the barracks we formed yet another line--would there never be an end to columns and waits?--to receive our ladle of turnip soup in the center room. Then, as quickly as we could for the press of people, Betsie and I made our way to the rear of the dormitory room where we held our worship "service." Around our own platform area there was not enough light to read the Bible, but back here a small light bulb cast a wan yellow circle on the wall, and here an ever larger group of women gathered."They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28."At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity. But as night after night went by and no guard ever came near us, we grew bolder. So many now wanted to join us that we held a second service after evening roll call. There on the Lagerstrasse we were under rigid surveillance, guards in their warm wool capes marching constantly up and down. It was the same in the center room of the barracks: half a dozen guards or camp police always present. Yet in the large dormitory room there was almost no supervision at all. We did not understand it."One evening I got back to the barracks late from a wood-gathering foray outside the walls. A light snow lay on the ground and it was hard to find the sticks and twigs with which a small stove was kept going in each room. Betsie was waiting for me, as always, so that we could wait through the food line together. Her eyes were twinkling. “ "'You're looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself,' I told her."'You know, we've never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,' she said. 'Well--I've found out.'"That afternoon, she said, there'd been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it."But she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?""Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: 'Because of the fleas! That's what she said, "That place is crawling with fleas!'""My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie's bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for."

Every day was so hard, that Corrie soon wanted to die, but the Lord and Betsie helped her continue to place their trust in Jesus who gave them strength to live through atrocious situations. In the death camp Betsie fell ill. She couldn’t get up for roll call, she couldn’t eat, and she couldn’t function. Because she couldn’t get up for roll call the camp was punished, something you were looked down upon for doing. But Betsie didn’t care, it was the Lord she needed. Corrie begged one of the prison workers to take her sister to the hospital, but she refused. Betsie told Corrie that she was going to “start a camp for people to find healing from the scars caused by the concentration camp around the world.” Corrie was amazed at how detailed Betsie was with what the house would look like and Corrie was ready to help her sister do this no matter what, and planned that night to make this dream come true. But the next morning Betsie died. She was taken to the hospital AFTER she died…which Corrie did not understand. That night Corrie snuck into the back of the Hospital where the deceased people were put, and saw Betsies. Saying a quick prayer for her sister, Corrie found comfort in the fact that Betsie was now safely in Jesus’ arms, and away from the evil of the world. Amazingly, two days later Corrie was released. It was a technical error, which rarely happened in death camps. She was called by her name, which surprised her greatly because she was used to “Prisoner 66730.” She had to stay in a hospital for a few days because Ravensbruck would not let any prisoners go that weren’t in perfect health. She was finally able to go home. Corrie ten Boom had gone through so much pain, endured so much suffering, and seen her family members died. But she knew that her story was not over yet. She had to make it known, the death camps. She had to tell her story, she had to witness around the world to tell people of the atrocities happening. When she first arrived home Corrie opened the Beje back up by giving the mentally disabled a home to live in. She began speaking a lot of her experiences. At every single meeting that she held, Corrie would speak of Betsies dream for people hurt by death camps. After one meeting, Mrs. DeHaan, a lady with five sons working in a resistance. One of her sons had been captured, and Mrs. DeHaan said that when Corrie had been speaking she felt that her son was still alive and would come back. She was so grateful that she opened her house for Corrie for the cause. One day later Mrs. Dehaan’s son came back, and when Corrie visited the house, she found that it was just like the vision that Betsie had, down to every detail. After the war, Corrie spoke all over the world about her story, and about the Nazis. She talked about the end times, she talked about the death camps, and about forgiveness, one day, while she was giving a speech about forgiveness an original Nazi officer came up to her. “IT WAS IN A CHURCH in Munich where I was speaking in 1947 that I saw him-a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. Memories of the concentration camp came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment of skin. Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. This man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say,, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.“You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk, ” he was saying. “I was a guard there. But since that time, ” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein-” again the hand came out-”will you forgive me?”And I stood there-and could not. Betsie had died in that place- could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.For I had to do it-I knew that. The message that God forgives has has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses.”Still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling. And so woodenly, so mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, brining tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!” For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, then the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love as intensely as I did then.” That was an excerpt from one of her books, which is still circulated today. Corrie wrote many books, did many meetings, and touched many lives. She said “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God” and many other famous quotes. Corrie ten Boom has been honored by evangelical Christians as an example of faith in action. She was an amazing woman, and still is. She is a shining example for all of us, and an amazing woman.