Defying the Holocaust by Tim Dowley

Author:Tim Dowley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2020-01-08T11:04:07+00:00

Plan of the Siemens work camp barracks, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Brandenburg, Germany

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On one occasion, Corrie discovered she had been scheduled to work at a munitions factory elsewhere, so she ­deliberately failed an eye test in order to stay at Ravensbrück, close to her ailing sister Betsie. The two sisters managed to remain to­gether until Betsie, who had for years suffered from pernicious anaemia, died on 16 December 1944, aged 59.

Later the same month, apparently as the result of an administrative error, Corrie was released from Ravensbrück, receiving a discharge certificate on Christmas Eve. She was unable to leave immediately, however: a camp doctor diagnosed oedema in her feet and ankles and ordered her to be admitted to the camp hospital. On New Year’s Day 1945 Corrie ten Boom was finally declared fit to leave.

With other released prisoners, Corrie was taken by train first to Berlin and then on to Groningen in the Netherlands, where she spent a further ten days convalescing in hospital. A lorry then transported her to Willem’s home in Hilversum, and finally back to the Beje. She discovered that Willem’s son Kik had been taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp the previous year. When the camp was liberated by the Russian army, Kik was sent with the other prisoners to a labour camp in Russia, where he died aged only 24.

Corrie ten Boom returned home in the midst of the ‘hunger winter’ (Hongerwinter), the appalling Dutch famine of the winter of 1944–5 largely caused by a German blockade preventing vital supplies of food and fuel from getting through. In May 1945 she rented a 56-room residence called ­Schapendunien in Bloemendaal and converted it to house the mentally disabled and provide space for prisoners liberated from concentration camps to recover from their traumas. When peace came, she pressed for reconciliation to help heal the psychological scars inflicted by the Nazi occupation.

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