The night that Otto left their home, everyone stayed up later than usual, because the Prime Minister was going to address the Dutch nation over the radio. When the Prime Minister told the people that there would be no war and that both sides had agreed to respect Holland's neutrality, Father abruptly turned off the radio and declared that it was wrong to give hope where there was none. He was convinced that the Germans would attack them and the country would fall. However, as he climbed the stairs to bed, he reassured his daughters by saying that he felt sorry for those who did not know God, for even though they would be beaten, God would not. Nonetheless, Corrie and Betsie were rooted to their chairs as he went to bed. If Father could find no good in the situation, then war was inevitable.
Five hours after the radio address, Corrie and the rest of her family were awakened by the sound of the bombs as Germany did indeed invade. They prayed all night for their country, their army, and their Queen. Incredibly to Corrie, Betsie even prayed for the Germans. She later fell asleep for a little while and dreamed the dream that came to foreshadow all that would befall her family. In the dream, she saw the town square and recognized all the buildings that were so familiar to her. Then, across the square came a horse-drawn wagon and in it were Father, she, and Betsie as well as many of their friends and a few strangers. She knew that they were unable to get off the wagon, and it was taking them far away. When she told Betsie all about it and asked her if she thought it was a vision, her older sister replied that she didn't know for sure. But if God was showing them the bad times ahead, she was comforted, because He was telling them that this, too, was in His hands.
Holland held out against the Germans for five days and in that time, the ten Booms kept the shop open so that people could come in and pray with them and receive some kind of comfort. They then boarded their windows and waited for news. Eventually, the radio told them that the Queen had left the country, and they all knew that they were lost. Everyone in Haarlem felt the need to be outside, and so there were strollers everywhere. Then, they heard someone open a window and shout out that Holland had surrendered. Father told a young boy who was too young to fight and was in tears at his own frustration, it was good that he had wanted to be there, because Holland's battle had just begun.
The occupation was not so hard for Corrie and her family in the first month, because little changed except for the hated identity and ration cards. They also had some difficulty adjusting to newspapers that no longer carried the real news, but only the great and glowing successes of the German army, as well as the order to turn in their radios. They decided to turn in the portable one and hide the big one in a hollow space beneath the winding staircase. Peter had come up with this suggestion, but it was Corrie who had to face the officials gathering up the radios and tell the first deliberate lie she had ever told in her life. She was distressed by the lie, but even more distressed by how easy it been to tell it.
One night, she tossed and turned in her bed while a dogfight between enemy planes raged overhead. When she heard Betsie in the kitchen, she got up to have tea. They stayed there until they heard the planes die away and even suffered the sound of an explosion far away, but close enough to make the dishes rattle in the cupboards. Eventually, Corrie returned to bed, and when she reached for her pillow, she cut her finger on something sharp. She ran to Betsie's room with a large piece of shrapnel that would have killed her if she had stayed in her bed. When she told Betsie this, her sister reminded her that there are no ifs in God's world, that the center of His will was their only safety.
Corrie tells the reader that the true horror of the occupation came over them only gradually. Attacks on Jews began sporadically as if the Germans were testing the will of the Dutch people: how many would go along with the Germans? To Corrie's horror, many did. The collaborative organization formed by the Dutch was called The Nationalist Social Bond and attracted those who just wanted more ration cards and other benefits as well as those who were anti-Semitic. So signs began to appear in windows denying Jews service, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars, and people began disappearing. One day, Corrie and Father saw a truckload of Jews being taken away, and Father remarked that he felt sorry for the Germans, because they had touched the apple of God's eye.
The entire ten Boom family discussed how they could help their Jewish friends. Willem had even begun finding hiding places for Jews in country homes. Corrie, Betsie, and their father were still unsure of what they should do, when one day, German soldiers broke down the door of the furrier across the street, a Jew named Weil. They trashed his shop and stole all of his merchandise while he stood in the street unable to move. At that moment, Corrie and Betsie reacted quickly and pulled him into their home, questioning him as to the whereabouts of his wife. Fortunately, she was in Amsterdam visiting her sister. They hid him until Corrie could catch the train to Willem's town and get his help for Mr. Weil. It was his son, Kik, who helped Corrie by coming to get Mr. Weil that night after dark. Two weeks later, she saw Kik again and asked him what had happened to the Jewish man. Kik told her she would have to stop asking so many questions if she were to be a part of the Dutch underground. Corrie then was even more worried that both Willem and his son were working with this secret and illegal organization. Furthermore, she worried, because the underground was involved in activities that she had been told all her life were wrong. She wondered, How should a Christian act when evil was in power?
On one of their daily walks, Corrie and Father met up with the same man they saw everyday, the man they called Bulldog. He always nodded to them, but they had never actually spoken, just admired his two bulldogs that accompanied him on every walk. On this day, however, he was alone. So, Father finally introduced himself and Corrie to the man named Harry de Vries. When Father asked him if his dogs were well, the man admitted that he hoped they were well even though they were dead. He said he had put poison in their dishes, because he was a Jew who had become a Christian, but he feared the Germans would come for him anyway, and he worried that his dogs would suffer as a result of being left behind. They extended an invitation for him to visit them any night after dark and soon, Harry and his wife, Cato, were almost nightly visitors. Father and Harry became fast friends especially when Harry saw Father's books on Jewish theology. Father called him a completed Jew and a follower of the one perfect Jew. The books were the property of a rabbi Father knew and he had brought them to Father for safekeeping. Father told the rabbi that he was right to save the books, because after they both were dead, they would speak to generations they would never see.
One night, Corrie, who had begun making deliveries for their Jewish customers,
visited the home of the Heemstras, a doctor and his wife and two children
from a very old Dutch Jewish family. While she had tea with them, it finally
hit her that even though this family was carrying on their lives as normally
as possible, at any minute there could come a knock at the door, and they
would be loaded into a truck and never seen again. So Corrie prayed to
God and offered herself at that moment in service to those she called
God's People. Immediately, her original dream ran by her eyes again, and
she now wondered once more just where that wagon was going.
This chapter describes the first two years after Germany invades Holland. In that time, through all the events they witness and all the discussions they have about the dangers for the Jews, Corrie has never decided how they are meant to help. It is only when she sees the Heemstras that she know she must offer herself in service to God's People and takes the irrevocable step that will lead to the wagon she had dreamed. It has become a moral question for her: how are Christians to behave when evil is in power? She finally finds the answer and puts herself in God's hands to do his service.
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Cite this page:
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on The Hiding Place".
TheBestNotes.com.
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