Tramp for the Lord (5 page)

“Are you trying to go to America, also?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she laughed. “I’m visiting Jan. He has his office in this building.”

“Then perhaps you can help me,” I said, shaking his hand. I told him my story.

He was polite but said, “I’m sorry. I would like to be of service to my brand-new cousin, but that’s not my department. However, if you have trouble, ring me up.” He gave me his telephone number, and we shook hands again as he left.

I continued to wait. The “man of flint” left the office for coffee, and a young clerk took his place. Then it was my turn.

“You had better wait until my boss returns,” the clerk said when I told him where I wanted to go and why.

My shoulders sagged. “I cannot wait any longer. Won’t you please call this number?” I handed him the card that Jan had handed me earlier.

I prayed while he placed the call. Moments later he hung up. “All is arranged. I am approving your passport. You may make your trip to America.”

From there I traveled to Amsterdam to try to arrange passage on a ship of the Holland-America Line. However, another mountain loomed before me. The agent told me they would only put my name on the waiting list. “We will notify you in about a year,” he said.

“A year! But I must go now.” The agent just shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work.

Disappointed, I returned to the square in the center of the city. God had told me to go to America—of that I was certain. All my papers were in order. God had seen to that also. Now it was up to Him to move this mountain. Glancing across the street, I noticed a sign: A
MERICAN
E
XPRESS
C
OMPANY
. Stepping into the office, I inquired, “Have you passenger accommodations on any of your freighters to America?”

The old clerk looked over his glasses and said, “You may sail tomorrow, Madam, if your papers are in order.”

“Oh, tomorrow is too sudden,” I said, hardly believing what I heard. “What about next week?”

“That too can be arranged,” he said. “We don’t have very many women your age who ship out on freighters. But if you are willing, so are we.”

Several weeks before I had met an American businessman who was visiting relatives in Holland. When I told him of my plans to visit America, he tried to discourage me. “It’s not easy to make one’s way in America,” he said.

“I believe you,” I told him. “But God has directed me and I must obey.”

He then gave me two checks, one small and one larger. “If you need it, use it,” he said. “You can repay me later.” I tucked them away for safekeeping.

So I arrived in New York as a missionary to America. I was only allowed to bring in fifty dollars, and of course, I knew no one. However, I found my way to the YWCA where I found a room and a place to leave my bags.

I had the address of a group of Hebrew-Christian immigrants who were meeting in New York. I made a phone call, and they invited me to come speak. Since they were German, I could not use the English lectures I had prepared on board the ship but had to speak to them in their native language. It was better, perhaps, for my English was rather hard to understand.

At the end of the week, after wandering around the city in a rather helpless daze, I went downstairs in the YWCA to pay my bill. The clerk looked at me sympathetically. “I am sorry, but our accommodations are so restricted that we cannot allow you to stay here any longer. One week is our limit. Do you have a forwarding address?”

“Yes. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, perplexed.

“God has another room for me,” I explained. “He just hasn’t told me what the address is. But I am not worried. He led me through Ravensbruck; He will surely see me through America as well.”

Suddenly the clerk remembered. “By the way, a letter came for you.”

Strange
, I thought, as she handed me the envelope.
How could I receive a letter? No one knows where I am staying
. But there it was. I read it hurriedly and then turned to the clerk. “My forwarding address will be this house on 190th Street.”

“But why didn’t you tell me that before?” she asked.

“I didn’t know. It was in this letter. A woman that I do not know writes, ‘I heard you speak to the Jewish congregation. I am aware that it is almost impossible to get a room in New York City. My son happens to be in Europe, so you are welcome to use his room as long as you are in New York.’”

The lady at the desk was more amazed than I. However, I reasoned, perhaps she had not experienced miracles before.

I rode the subway to 190th Street. The house at the address was a large, multistoried building occupied by many families. I found the correct apartment at the end of a hall, but no one was home. Certainly my hostess did not expect her invitation to be an eleventh-hour answer to my problem. I arranged myself among my suitcases on the floor and, leaning against the wall, soon began to drift off to sleep.

In those last moments before sleep took over, my mind drifted back to Ravensbruck. I could feel Betsie’s bony hand touching my face. It was pitch-black in Barracks 28 where seven hundred other prisoners were asleep. Each day hundreds of women died, and their bodies were fed to the ovens. Betsie had grown so weak, and we both knew that death was always moments away.

“Are you awake, Corrie?” Her weak voice sounded so far away.

“Yes, you wakened me.”

“I had to. I need to tell you what God has said to me.”

“Shhh. We hinder the sleep of the girls around us. Let us lie with our faces toward each other.”

The cot was so small. We could only lie like spoons in a box, our knees bumping against the knees of the other. We used our two coats as covers, along with the thin black blanket provided by the Nazis.

I pulled the coat over our heads so we could whisper and not be heard. “God showed me,” Betsie said, “that after the war we must give to the Germans that which they now try to take away from us: our love for Jesus.”

Betsie’s breath was coming in short gasps. She was so weak, her body wasted away until there was nothing but her thin skin stretched over brittle bones. “Oh, Betsie,” I exclaimed, “you mean if we live we will have to return to Germany?”

Betsie patted my hand under the blanket. “Corrie, there is so much bitterness. We must tell them that the Holy Spirit will fill their hearts with God’s love.”

I remembered Romans 5:5. Only that morning some of the women in the barracks had huddled with us in the corner while I read from our precious Bible. But I shuddered. Germany. If I were ever released from this horrible place, could I ever return to Germany?

Betsie’s weak voice whispered on. “This concentration camp here at Ravensbruck has been used to destroy many, many lives. There are many other such camps throughout Germany. After the war they will not have use for them anymore. I have prayed that the Lord will give us one in Germany. We will use it to build up lives.”

No
, I thought.
I will return to my simple job as a watchmaker in Holland and never again set my boot across the border
.

Betsie’s voice was quivering, so I could barely understand her. “The Germans are the most wounded of all the people in the world. Think of that young girl guard who swore in such filthy language yesterday. She was only seventeen or eighteen years old, but did you see how she was beating that poor old woman with a whip? What a job there is to do after the war.”

I found a place where I could put my hand. It was such a stupid problem, I thought, yet it was a small cot and it was difficult to position my hands and arms. My hand rested on Betsie’s left side, just on her heart. I felt her ribs—only skin and bones. How long would she be able to live? Her heart was fluttering inside the rib cage like a dying bird, as though it would stop any moment.

I rested and thought. How close to God’s heart was Betsie. Only God could see in such circumstances the possibility for ministry in the future—ministry to those who even now were preparing to kill us. Most of all, to see in such a place as Ravensbruck an opportunity to bless and build up the lives of our enemies. Yes, only the Lord Jesus could have given Betsie such a vision.

“Must we live with them in Germany?” I whispered.

“For a while,” Betsie answered. “Then we will travel the whole world bringing the gospel to all—our friends as well as our enemies.”

“To
all
the world? But that will take much money.”

“Yes, but God will provide,” Betsie said. “We must do nothing else but bring the gospel, and He will take care of us. After all, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If we need money, we will just ask the Father to sell a few cows.”

I was beginning to catch the vision. “What a privilege,” I said softly, “to travel the world and be used by the Lord Jesus.”

But Betsie did not answer. She had fallen asleep. Three days later she was dead.

Going to bed the night after Betsie died was one of the most difficult tasks of my life. The one electric light bulb was screwed into the ceiling toward the front of the room. Only a feeble ray reached my narrow cot. I lay in the semidarkness—thinking, remembering, trying to reconstruct Betsie’s vision.

There was a shuffle of feet near my bed, and I looked up. A Russian woman, thin and gaunt, was shuffling down the aisle between the beds looking for a place to sleep. The Russians were not received kindly, and everyone turned away. As she neared me, I saw the hunted look in her eyes. How awful to be in prison and not have even a place to sleep!

Betsie’s place beside me was vacant. I motioned to the woman and threw back the blanket for her. She crept in, gratefully, and stretched out beside me. We were sharing the same pillow and with our faces so close I wanted to speak. But I did not know her language.

“
Jesoes Christoes?
” I asked softly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. Quickly making the sign of the cross, she threw her arms about me and kissed me.

She who had been my sister for fifty-two years, with whom I had shared so much of weal and woe, had left me. A Russian woman now claimed my love. And there would be others too who would be my sisters and brothers in Christ all across the world.

I was awakened by a gentle hand shaking my shoulder. It was after midnight, and I realized I had fallen asleep in the midst of my suitcases, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall of the hallway.

“Come,” my new friend said softly as she opened the door, “the floor is no place for a child of the King.” I rose from my cramped, huddled position and entered her apartment. I was her guest for the next five weeks.

As the weeks passed, however, I realized I was running out of money. Jan ten Have (the publisher of my little book in Holland) was visiting New York. He helped me as much as he could, and I spent most of my time looking up addresses given me in Holland. The Americans were polite, and some of them were interested, but none wanted me to come to speak. They were all busy with their own things. Some even said I should have stayed in Holland.

As the weeks slipped by, I found more and more resistance to my ministry. No one was interested in a middle-aged spinster woman from Holland who wanted to preach. “Why did you come to America?” people began to ask.

“God directed me. All I could do was obey.”

“That’s nonsense,” they answered. “There is no such thing as direct guidance from God. Experience proves we must use our common sense. If you are here and out of money, then it is your fault, not God’s.”

I tried to argue back in God’s defense. “But God’s guidance is even more important than common sense. I am certain He told me to bring His message to America. I can declare that the deepest darkness is outshone by the light of Jesus.”

“We have ministers to tell us such things,” was the reply.

“Certainly, but I can tell from my experience in a concentration camp that what such ministers say is true.”

“It would have been better for you to have remained in Holland. We don’t need any more preachers. Too many Europeans come to America. They should be stopped.”

I was growing discouraged. Perhaps the Americans were right. Perhaps I should return to Holland and go back to my job as a watchmaker. My money was gone, and all that remained was the second check given me by the American businessman. Yet I was hesitant to cash it without his approval. I found his address and arrived in an imposing business office in Manhattan. Only this time his face was not as friendly as it had been in Holland.