The Hiding Place: The Bureaucracy of Hope

When it came to participating in an underground organization, especially one fighting the highly efficient Nazi war machine, everything – including survival – was in the details.

As Corrie ten Boom writes in The Hiding Place, elaborate systems had to be created to save Jews destined for the Nazi death camps. There were systems of initial contact – how would threatened Jews know to go to the ten Boom’s watch shop, and how would the ten Booms know that the individual at the door seeking help was exactly who they said they were.

Systems of temporary placement had to be devised. This included what to do in the event of a raid by the police. The ten Booms actually practiced, and had their temporary charges practice, hiding at a moment’s notice, including in the middle of the night. Could you go to a designated hiding place when you were sound asleep – and get everything together and yourself hidden in under a minute? And turn the mattress over so the police wouldn’t be able to feel the warm sport where you’d been lying?

Then there were systems of moving people from the watch shop to a farm or rural area. Contacts had to be made, information exchanged, movement arranged – it took planning and people. In some cases, people couldn’t be moved and had to stay in the ten Boom household.

The ten Booms used codes of all kinds – for the telephone, for visitors, for possible threats. They had to remember specific information, as did their fellow members of the underground. They also participated in an elaborate information network, where information was passed quickly.

The risks they ran were enormous, and, as time went on, kept growing. Expansion of the operations always incurred a risk. Taking care of more people always involved risk. Too much activity in the shop was a risk (a security office lived on the same street).

The risks were calculated, but they were rarely counted. The ten Boom family helped anyone who came to their door. Corrie’s father believed the Jews were indeed God’s chosen people, and they were worthy of help and support, no matter what risk might be entailed.

The Dutch underground, like underground organizations in other Nazi-occupied countries, had to create its own, specialized kind of bureaucracy, with defined processes, means of communication, goals and objectives. And do it all under the brutal shadow of the Nazi regime.

It was a bureaucracy driven by passion, determination, and hope.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Hiding Place. To see more posts on this chapter, “Eusie,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Lutz Schimpf via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Hiding Place: The Rope Tightens

It is two years into the Nazi occupation of Holland. Each month, Corrie ten Boom writes in The Hiding Place, the occupation grew harsher, the restrictions more numerous. Corrie’s brother Peter violates one of the latest edicts and plays the Dutch national anthem, the “Wilhelmus,” during a church service. He’s imprisoned for three months.

More Jews are being arrested and deported to the camps in the east. The numbers seeking help and hiding remain steady. One friend organizes the “burglary” of an identity card office, including a very real physical beating to convince the Germans. Corrie is later taken to a meeting of the Dutch underground, bicycling with a contact with tires wrapped in cloth to muffle the sound.

This is the line between amateur underground operations and the professionals. Corrie and the ten Booms will cross that line, and what results is the construction of a secret room in their home, a place that Jews and others can be temporarily hidden, the “hiding place” of the book’s title.

The risks for the family were enormous.

And yet they took them, with barely a second thought. As Corrie’s father would say, “In this household, God’s people are always welcome.” His meaning extended to God’s original chosen people, the Jews.

Was this courage? Foolhardiness? Recklessness?

Or was it an expression and extension of the ten Booms’ faith?

What does it mean to have that kind of reckless faith? Their lives, the lives of the extended family, the security of their church were all at great risk. And yet they continued.

We haven’t faced that kind of test of faith and courage here in the United States, but many say the time is coming. Christians in the Mideast have faced it and continue to face it. Globally, the number of persecutions of Christians has been increasing. We are likely fooling ourselves if we believe that something like this could never happen here.

I think about my children and my three grandsons. Would my faith be that reckless if I knew I would be putting them in jeopardy?

It’s a question I hope I never have to answer.

But I need to be prepared to answer it.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading and discussing The Hiding Place. To see more posts on this chapter, “The Secret Room,” please visit Jason at Connectingto Impact.

Photograph: Members of the Dutch underground in 1944, via Wikimedia Commons.