Even so, the systematic control of the populace took effect immediately. Meeting the criteria for ubermensch, the genetically desired qualities that Nazis felt constituted the Aryan race, the Dutch received a measure of leniency from German soldiers. The German occupation began.įor those like Corrie and her family, the first few months of the occupation were bearable. Following the flight of Holland's Queen Wilhemina and the devastating bombing of Rotterdam, Dutch forces surrendered. The German invasion of the Netherlands ended within days. Awakened by the bombings, Corrie and Betsie ten Boom were praying earnestly when Corrie experienced a premonition of her own-she, her family, and friends carried on an old wagon out of Haarlem to an inescapable fate. But the war for Holland began only hours later with furious airstrikes throughout the country. With confirmation from both sides that their borders would be respected, Holland's Prime Minister took to the radio on the evening of May 10 th, 1940 to reassure the Dutch people. Neutral in the first world war, Holland again claimed neutrality to defend its precarious safety. Germany invaded Poland in 1939, declaring war also on France and the United Kingdom. Humiliated and economically devastated after World War I, Germans whole-heartedly embraced Hitler's rhetoric. "They won't put up with that man for long".'īut put up with it they did. "How long are they going to stand for it?" we said. 'We knew what was happening-there was no way to keep from knowing.when Willem was visiting and would not let us forget, or when letters to Jewish suppliers in Germany came back marked "Address Unknown," we still managed to believe that it was primarily a German problem. Corrie's brother Willem, a concerned pastor working with Jews in Germany, brought the news of Jewish persecution home to Haarlem. The news traveled quickly to neighbouring Netherlands, the atmosphere there likewise changing though the rumbling was still distant.
Vicious attacks and forced business closures and seizures were a daily reality. Another decade would pass before her contented, quiet life would abruptly change.Īs Hitler rose to power, anti-Semitism wormed into German consciousness once again, rapidly laying the groundwork for a public campaign against Jews. Her gift in the trade led to an apprenticeship, and in 1924 she became Holland's first licensed female watchmaker. Unlike her father, Corrie was business-minded, and her pragmatic management of the watch shop actually made a profit where Casper's good intentions had not. Like her elder sister Betsie, Corrie never married, but the two sisters worked diligently in the family home and business. Her Bible training in her late teens and her love of children would later lead her to found Christian girls' clubs in Haarlem that only disbanded due to the German occupation of the 1940s. These missionary children were especially dear to Corrie she called them her 'Red Cap Club'. After 1918 the ten Booms also housed displaced German families and fostered the children of missionaries this practice of hospitality continued even after the deaths of Corrie's aunts and mother. Their architecturally meandering home, containing the watch shop and two adjacent buildings, was affectionately nicknamed the Beje and was often overflowing with the extended ten Boom family, the bustling watch shop, and a stream of visitors. Corrie herself confessed Christ at the young age of five. Though her family was not particularly well off, Corrie grew up witnessing the hospitality of her poor but generous parents, informed by their Dutch Reformed faith. After her birth the family moved to Haarlem, where Casper took over the family business of repairing and making watches.
The 'ten Boom' family Christian History Magazineīorn on Good Friday, April 15, 1892, Cornelia (Corrie) ten Boom was the fourth surviving child of Casper and Cornelia ten Boom.
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