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The Hiding Place
By Corrie ten Boom
The Hiding Place is about the experiences of Corrie ten Boom through the horrors of World War II, including her involvement in anti-Nazi work, her subsequent hiding from the Nazis, discovery, imprisonment, and finally release.
The book opens with the ten Booms celebrating their family business' 100th anniversary. Their family home, called the Beje, held the watchmaking business on the ground floor while everyone lived above. The party is huge and the whole town shows up for it. Everything seems like life will be good.
Then, the Nazis invaded. The family's strong Christian beliefs led them to help their Jewish neighbors, and soon the Beje took on a new identity as a center of anti-Nazi operation. Corrie found herself in moral crisis because helping the Jews meant breaking the law in many ways, even breaking a Commandment by arranging a robbery. Nonetheless, the Dutch underground trusted the ten Boom family enough to build a large secret hiding place underneath the Beje.
A spy found out about the ten Booms, and the entire family was arrested, though the Jews managed to remain secreted away under the Beje. Corrie was sent to Scheveningen, a Dutch prison taken over by the Nazis. She learned that her sister Betsie was in the same prison and that, aside from her father, the rest of her family had been released. She befriended a Nazi officer, who allowed her to meet with her family once. She learned that her family was suffering greatly even outside of prison.
Four months later, Corrie and Betsie were transferred to a concentration camp. Corrie was assigned to built radios, and Betsie, whose health was failing, was assigned to sew prison uniforms. When a counter-offensive by the Allies threatened the camp, Betsie and Corrie were transferred again, to a much worse camp. There, they were forced to perform heavy physical labor, and the strain killed Betsie.
Corrie was eventually released because of a clerical error.
After the war Corrie used the Beje to minister to those hurt by the war - Dutch and German alike. She experienced a test of faith when, while preaching in Germany, she came upon a former guard who had humiliated her sister - but she learned that God's love can, in the end, conquer all.
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