PDF | Print |

Written by Sparky Pritchard Friday, 26 February 2010 14:52

Ask yourself a hard question: “If you as a Christian had been living in Holland during WWII and the Nazi occupation … if you had heard of Hitler’s “final solution” to exterminate those who were considered to be a threat or inferior … if you knew that for Jews living around you it was either “hide or die” … what would have been your “personal solution” to this dilemma?

For a watchmaker named Casper ten Boom and his family, it was their choice to hide the Jews from the threat of the death camps even at the risk of their own lives.  Casper’s two daughters, Betsie and Corrie, showed equal compassion and courage with Corrie later saying that they were simply “the skin on the hands of God” that brought protection to those souls.

But it was on this day, February 28, in the year 1944 that the lives of the ten Boom family took a drastic turn.  Corrie was working with her father in the watch repair shop when a stranger came through the door under the pretense of needing a broken watch fixed.  But the “customer” then whispered that he too was hiding Jews, but his wife had just been arrested.  (Six Jews were presently hiding in the crawl space behind the bookcase in the ten Boom home.)  The stranger wondered if Corrie and her family could help him.  The ten Booms did not refuse, believing that God would want them to assist.  The man left the shop.

That night, the home of the ten Booms was raided by the Nazis.  Their family along with 33 others who were involved in these valiant rescue attempts, were arrested and beaten.  (By the way, there was no evidence against the ten Booms as the Gestapo never found those hiding in Corrie’s home.  They escaped and survived the holocaust.)

Casper would die ten days later in prison.  Corrie and Betsie were “transferred” to the Ravensbruck death camp.  Betsie would die later that year … on Christmas Day.

With the Allied victory in 1945, Corrie would be freed.  And in June of that year, she wrote a very difficult and touching letter to the “stranger” who had come into the shop on February 28.

“I heard that most probably you are the one who betrayed me.  I went through ten months of concentration camp.  My father died … and my sister died in prison.

“The harm you planned was turned into good for me by God.  I came nearer to Him.  I have prayed for you, that the Lord may accept you if you will repent.  I have forgiven you everything.  God will also forgive you everything if you ask Him.”

Jesus once identified the two greatest commands that God had given – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind … and … you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:38, 39).

What would you have done in 1944?  I trust it would have been the same thing that you should do now: obey God in loving Him and loving others.