When Nazi Collaborators Moved into Corrie Ten Boom’s Home

Later betrayed and delivered into the hands of the Gestapo, the family was taken away, with Corrie spending time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her father and one of her sisters perished, and her brother succumbed to tuberculosis shortly after the war.

You may be familiar with the Ten Boom family’s courage in showing compassion to those in need, inspired by their Dutch Reformed faith, and the story of their struggle for survival. The drama has been adapted into books and plays, and an award-winning film in 1975. This year, an excellent film version of a play by A. S. (Pete) Peterson was released by the Rabbit Room.

The legacy of the Ten Boom family remains a testament to courage and love, and yet there’s an often-overlooked aspect of the story that staggers the imagination: after the war, Corrie ten Boom housed Nazi collaborators who were suffering as outcasts in society.

Hiding Place Once More

During the season of severe austerity that followed the war, as grief-stricken, traumatized people began to pick up the pieces of their lives and deal with the aftermath of so much death and despair, the Ten Boom hiding place for Jews became a place of healing and forgiveness for their captors. Yes, the very home that had once been used to hide Jews on the run from their persecutors became a place of refuge and healing for collaborators with the Nazi regime.

I didn’t realize the extent of the Ten Booms’ commitment to compassion until reading The Watchmaker’s Daughter, a new biography by Larry Loftis. The book shows Corrie seeking to admit some of the collaborators into a house nearby, a place that had been set apart for victims recovering from injustice, only to find some of the patients boiling with anger, understandably, at the thought of men responsible for their distress being accepted. In response, Corrie relocated the collaborators to her old home. And so, “the home that had once been the center of underground resistance now worked to heal the very persons who had betrayed them.”

Across town in a house of healing for victims, Corrie started morning and evening worship services. She organized a system whereby doctors, psychiatrists, and nutritionists would help those still struggling. No one visited the collaborators in her home, however, until hearts softened, and the victims from the one house began to send food to collaborators in the other.

Instinct of Forgiveness

One of the most explosive evidences of the gospel’s power is when Christians extend forgiveness in unexpected ways.

Earlier this year, there were some on social media who were scandalized on hearing that the families at the Covenant School in Nashville, where a former student took multiple lives, had pooled their resources to pay for the funeral of the killer.

The actions of the Covenant families reminded me of the Amish community in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, where in 2006, a 32-year-old milkman burst into the schoolhouse and shot 10 girls, killing five of them before killing himself. As shocking as the tragedy was, the more stunning scene was that of the Amish men and women attending the funeral of the gunman, standing with his wife and children in the graveyard of their Methodist church, and later setting up a fund to take care of the killer’s widow and her kids.

In a world of selfishness and superficiality, what’s substantive stands out. And nothing is more substantive than a person who exceeds all expectations of virtue. Yet that’s what we find, consistently, in the actions of Christians steeped in their Savior’s instructions on forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness Beyond Duty

Let’s be clear. There was no biblical command for the Amish to attend the funeral of a man who had shattered their idyllic community. Neither was there an obligation for the Covenant families to cover expenses for the burial of the shooter. There was no biblical command that required Corrie ten Boom to offer her home—the same house where she’d once hid the innocent from their tormentors—to the Nazi collaborators now tormented by their guilt and shame.

And yet what’s striking about all these cases is the absence of any deliberation about the matter. Corrie ten Boom knew, as a matter of instinct, that to follow her Lord’s example of gratuitous grace, she would love her enemies beyond anyone’s expectations. These Christians did what they did not because of an external command but because of an inner compulsion, an indescribable urge to respond to evil with good.

Forgiveness That’s Edgy (and Hard)

This kind of forgiveness is edgy. There’s not a whiff of sentimental, sappy superficiality. There’s no downplaying or denying the heinousness of the atrocities committed. The evil remains evil. The dead remain dead. The grief and pain endure. The consequences are horrendous. The Nazi collaborators who received the compassion of Corrie ten Boom engaged in terrible evils. None of them “deserved” the forgiveness they found. But that’s what makes the kindness all the more compelling. Grace is nothing if not unmerited.

This kind of forgiveness is hard. However “second nature” it came to Corrie ten Boom first to hide Jews and then to make a place for their captors to experience grace, it was a struggle when she encountered one of the cruelest and most sadistic of the camp guards, a man recently converted who held out his hand and asked for forgiveness. Loftis describes the pivotal moment:

The world often recommends forgiveness because of the therapeutic benefits the person forgiving might experience. As Christians, we forgive not out of a desire for psychological relief but as a response to the forgiveness we’ve been shown. Grace comes first. Then spreads.

I’ll never think of Corrie ten Boom and The Hiding Place the same way again. In a world marred by so much evil and suffering, the edgy and transformative power of forgiveness still pierces the darkness. Loving our enemies is one of the most astounding ways a Christian says, “Jesus the King is alive.”

By Trevor Wax / When Nazi Collaborators Moved into Corrie Ten Boom’s Home (thegospelcoalition.org)