Tramp for the Lord (2 page)

There has been plenty for the dying ones in the concentration camps—plenty for the thousands gathered in universities, in town halls and in churches all over the world. Sometimes I have spoken to a few men in prison who stood behind bars and listened hungrily. Once to a group of six missionaries in Japan who offered me hospitality during a twenty-eight-hour rainstorm in which more than a thousand persons perished around us. Groups of hundreds and crowds of thousands have listened under pandals (a wide roof protecting the congregation from the hot sun) in India and in theaters in South America. I have spoken to tens of thousands at one time in the giant stadiums of America and retreated to the mountains of North Carolina to spend time with a small group of girls in a summer camp.

“God so loved the world …” (John 3:16) Jesus said. And that is why I keep going, even into my eightieth years, because we’ve a story to tell to the nations, a story of love and light.

God has plans—not problems—for our lives. Before she died in the concentration camp in Ravensbruck, my sister Betsie said to me, “Corrie, your whole life has been a training for the work you are doing here in prison—and for the work you will do afterward.”

The life of a Christian is an education for higher service. No athlete complains when the training is hard. He thinks of the game, or the race. As the apostle Paul wrote:

In my opinion, whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!

It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that we who have a foretaste of the Spirit are in a state of painful tension, while we wait for that redemption of our bodies which will mean that at last we have realized our full sonship in him. (Rom. 8:18–23,
PHILLIPS
)

Looking back across the years of my life, I can see the working of a divine pattern which is the way of God with His children. When I was in a prison camp in Holland during the war, I often prayed, “Lord, never let the enemy put me in a German concentràtion camp.” God answered no to that prayer. Yet in the German camp, with all its horror, I found many prisoners who had never heard of Jesus Christ. If God had not used my sister Betsie and me to bring them to Him, they would never have heard of Him. Many died, or were killed, but many died with the Name of Jesus on their lips. They were well worth all our suffering. Faith is like radar which sees through the fog—the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.

My life is but a weaving, between my God and me,

I do not choose the colors, He worketh steadily,

Oftimes He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride,

Forget He sees the upper, and I the under side.

Not till the loom is silent, and shuttles cease to fly,

Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful in the skillful Weaver’s hand,

As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

(Anonymous)

Although the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know, by faith, that on the other side of the embroidery there is a crown. As I have walked the world—a tramp for the Lord—I have learned a few lessons in God’s great classroom. Even as I share these things with those of you who read this book, I pray the Holy Spirit will reveal something of the divine pattern in God’s plan for you also.

C
ORRIE TEN
B
OOM

Baarn, Holland

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into [difficult times], Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience
.

James 1:2–3

R
ank upon rank we stood that hot September morning in 1944, more than a thousand women lining the railroad siding, one unspoken thought among us:
Not Germany!

Beside me my sister Betsie swayed. I was fifty-two, Betsie fifty-nine. These seven months in a prison and concentration camp since we had been caught concealing Jews in our home had been harder on her. But prisoners though we were, at least till now we had remained in Holland. And now when liberation must come any day, where were they taking us?

Behind us guards were shouting, prodding us with their guns. Instinctively my hand went to the string around my neck. From it, hanging down my back between my shoulder blades, was the small cloth bag that held our Bible, that forbidden Book which had not only sustained Betsie and me throughout these months, but given us strength to share with our fellow prisoners. So far we had kept it hidden. But if we should go to Germany … We had heard tales of the prison inspections there.

A long line of empty boxcars was rolling slowly past. Now they clanged to a halt and a gaping freight door loomed in front of us. I helped Betsie over the steep side. The dark boxcar grew quickly crowded. We were pressed against the wall. It was a small European freight car; thirty or forty people jammed it. And still the guards drove women in, pushing, jabbing with their guns. It was only when eighty women were packed inside that the heavy door slid shut and we heard the iron bolts driven into place outside.

Women were sobbing and many fainted, although in the tightly wedged crowd they remained upright. The sun beat down on the motionless train; the temperature in the packed car rose. It was hours before the train gave a sudden lurch and began to move. Almost at once it stopped again, then again crawled forward. The rest of that day and all night long it was the same—stopping, starting, slamming, jerking. Once through a slit in the side of the car I saw trainmen carrying a length of twisted rail. Maybe the tracks ahead were destroyed. Maybe we would still be in Holland when the liberation came.

But at dawn we rolled through the Dutch border town of Emmerich. We were in Germany.

For two more incredible days and two more nights we were carried deeper and deeper into the land of our fears. Worse than the crush of bodies and the filth, was the thirst. Two or three times when the train was stopped the door was slid open a few inches and a pail of water passed in. But we had become animals, incapable of plan. Those near the door got it all.

At last, on the morning of the third day, the door was hauled open its full width. Only a handful of very young soldiers was there to order us out and march us off. No more were needed. We could scarcely walk, let alone resist. From the crest of a small hill, we saw the end of our journey—a vast gray barracks city surrounded by double concrete walls.

“
Ravensbruck!
”

Like a whispered curse, the word passed back through the line. This was the notorious women’s death camp itself, the very symbol to Dutch hearts of all that was evil. As we stumbled down the hill, I felt the little Bible bumping on my back. As long as we had that, I thought, we could face even hell itself. But how could we conceal it through the inspection I knew lay ahead?

It was the middle of the night when Betsie and I reached the processing barracks. And there, under the harsh ceiling lights, we saw a dismaying sight. As each woman reached the head of the line she had to strip off every scrap of clothes, throw them all onto a pile guarded by soldiers, and walk naked past the scrutiny of a dozen guards into the shower room. Coming out of the shower room she wore only a thin regulation prison dress and a pair of shoes.

Our Bible! How could we take it past so many watchful eyes?

“Oh, Betsie!” I began—and then stopped at the sight of her pain-whitened face. As a guard strode by, I begged him in German to show us the toilets. He jerked his head in the direction of the shower room. “Use the drain holes!” he snapped.

Timidly Betsie and I stepped out of line and walked forward to the huge room with its row on row of overhead spigots. It was empty, waiting for the next batch of fifty naked and shivering women.

A few minutes later we would return here stripped of everything we possessed. And then we saw them, stacked in a corner, a pile of old wooden benches crawling with cockroaches, but to us the furniture of heaven itself.

In an instant I had slipped the little bag over my head and, along with my woolen underwear, had stuffed it behind the benches.

And so it was that when we were herded into that room ten minutes later, we were not poor, but rich—rich in the care of Him who was God even of Ravensbruck.

Of course when I put on the flimsy prison dress, the Bible bulged beneath it. But that was His business, not mine. At the exit, guards were feeling every prisoner, front, back and sides. I prayed, “Oh, Lord, send your angels to surround us.” But then I remembered that angels are spirits and you can see through them. What I needed was an angel to shield me so the guards could not see me. “Lord,” I prayed again, “make your angels untransparent.” How unorthodox you can pray when you are in great need! But God did not mind. He did it.

The woman ahead of me was searched. Behind me, Betsie was searched. They did not touch or even look at me. It was as though I was blocked out of their sight.

Outside the building was a second ordeal, another line of guards examining each prisoner again. I slowed down as I reached them, but the captain shoved me roughly by the shoulder. “Move along! You’re holding up the line.”

So Betsie and I came to our barracks at Ravensbruck. Before long we were holding clandestine Bible study groups for an ever-growing group of believers, and Barracks 28 became known throughout the camp as “the crazy place, where they hope.”

Yes, hoped, in spite of all that human madness could do. We had learned that a stronger power had the final word, even here.

(Reprinted by permission from
Guidepost
Magazine, © 1972 by Guideposts Associates, Inc., Carmel, New York 10512.)

You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria
.

Acts 1:8,
NEB

I
t was a week after Betsie had died in Ravensbruck that I took my place in the ranks of women prisoners standing together in the icy cold of the early morning.

“66730!”

“That is my number,” I said weakly as we took our places for roll call.

“Ten Boom, Cornelia.”

That is my name
, I thought. How strange that they would call me by name when they always addressed us by number!

“Come forward.”

We were falling in line for the roll call. Ten in a line, every one hundredth woman, one step forward. My friends looked at me sadly.

What does it mean?
I asked inwardly.
Punishment … freedom … the gas chamber … sent to another concentration camp?

There was but one thought that comforted me.
What a joy that Betsie is in heaven. No matter what terrible things now happen, she will not have to bear it
.

The guard, a young German girl, shouted at me. “Number 66730!”

I stepped forward, stood at attention and repeated the necessary words. “
Schutzhaftling ten Boom, Cornelia, meldet sich
.”

“Stand on Number 1 on the roll call.”

I went to the place to the far right, where I could overlook the entire square of the bleak camp. Standing in the crowd, I could not feel the draft, but now, standing in the bitter cold, the wind whipped through my ragged prison dress. Another girl, young and frightened, was sent to stand beside me. Roll call took three hours, and we were almost frozen. She saw how cold I was and rubbed my spine when the guards were not looking.