ten BOOM
I remember when the book was first published.
It was 1971 and at that time I must have considered a book called “The Hiding Place” to have been just another book about someone who had been imprisoned during wartime.
That would have been in relation to “World War II”, in case you are in need of a reference point considering all that has taken place in the past half century. There were other books on the market at that time which gave accounts of life and death on the Nazi extermination camps, often detailed revelations of life under Hitler and of prison conditions.
I did not read “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom and (very much) with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. This writing couple - both of whom were Editors on “Guideposts” Magazine ...had other books on the stands in those days: “God's Smuggler”and “The Cross and the Switchblade”. Cornelia ten Boom, shared her memories and thoughts with them, and they skillfully made it into a readable and well-structured book.
Corrie ten Boom was born in 1892 which would made her old enough to remember some of the conditions of life in her native Holland during the time of the Kaiser and World War I. She was a mature woman when Hitler came along and that makes “The Hiding Place” a book differ from others of the era. I have a personal reference which stayed with me as I read the book recently. My mother was also born in 1892. Corrie ten Boom would have been, then, a mature woman and the time of Nazi ascendancy which gives this book a special meaning for me. She
spoke of life and events with a special, adult awareness, a quality so often lacking in many other books of this type.
Corrie's father, Casper, was a watchmaker, as had been his father before him. His father had opened a Clockmaker's Shop in 1837. Corrie, herself, the first and only licensed watchmaker in all of Holland in 1922. She organized Girls Clubs and one called The Triangle Club” became widespread.
In 1940 Hitler invaded Holland and her girl's clubs were banned. She and her family, unable to turn anyone away, soon found themselves with house guests attempting to escape Nazi. The methods by which they concealed their Jewish and other escapees is the backbone of the book.
As a middle-aged spinster at the time she continued in this underground system and their house, called “the Beje”, no doubt a shortened version of the long- named street on which it was located. In Haarlam, Holland. Quickly became a major cell in the entire Holland system caring for refuges placing them in “safe” homes,or arranging for escape. The
major portion of the book deals with these events and only the last few chapter deal with the prison conditions under which the entire family had to live for a year and half. Then, you keep waiting for the day of deliverance by advancing American troops and it does not come or page after page. When it does take place it is Canadian troops which show up.
The story ends quickly without any profound studies on why it all happened. Corrie had sworn to her older sister who died in the notorious Ravensbruck prison, that she would spend here life “telling people about
what had happened. She did so until she died in 1983 at age ninety-one.
“The Hiding Place” is a terse little book about day-to-day living under stress and the operation of a secret-room system moving Jews to freedom though the home of the ten Boom family. You will profit by having read it.
A.L.M. October 16, 2002 [w617wds]
