Betsie ten Boom.

In an earlier post, I said that Casper ten Boom and his family were lights that refused to be extinguished by the Darkness that came with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Rather than being chained by fear, all of his children worked — to one degree or another — with the Dutch Underground, helping their Jewish neighbors and friends. Here’s a bit more about his oldest child.

Background Information

Betsie ten Boom was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1885 to Casper and Cor ten Boom. She was the oldest of five children — one of whom died in infancy. In 1892 — shortly after the youngest child, Corrie, was born — Casper moved his family back to Harlaam where he had grown up and took over his father’s watch shop.

Born with pernicious anemia, Betsie knew that she could never have children. So at a young age, she decided she would never marry. It was a decision that stuck, and she remained at home with her father for most of her life.

But remaining at home didn’t mean being an isolated old spinster. Like her father, Betsie had a love for the people around her and a conviction that God would want her to help where she could. So as her mother had done when she was alive, Betsie kept soup and coffee simmering on the stove to share with anyone who came by. She taught Sunday school and, along with her sister Corrie, organized social clubs for teenage girls. Along with her father and sister, she was a foster parent to children of foreign missionaries who were sent back home by their families for education. And of course, there were the Jews.

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Betsie — along with her father and sister — worked with the Dutch Underground. For two years, they helped Jews find hiding places, even keeping some in their own home – a decision that would cost them dearly, but one they never regretted.

On February 28, 1944, the Germans raided the Ten Booms’ house and arrested Casper, Betsie, and Corrie. As the raid began, six people fled to the secret space that the Ten Booms had built in Corrie’s room – four Jews who were living there at the time and two young men who worked with the Dutch Underground movement. Their hiding place went undetected, and they were later released by other underground workers.

After their arrest, the three Ten Booms were separated and imprisoned. Casper died in prison ten days later, never seeing his daughters again. For two months, Betsie and Corrie were kept in separate cells, without contact (Corrie alone; Betsie with other women). They were reunited near the beginning of June when they were transferred to Vught, a German concentration camp in the Netherlands. Three months later, they were transferred to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Germany.

Because of her medical condition, Betsie had never been strong, but she held her own until Ravensbruck. There, her health declined rapidly. In December, shortly before Christmas, she told Corrie that they would both be released by the beginning of the year. The next day, Betsie passed away at the age of 59. Just after Christmas, Corrie was released and allowed to return home. Betsie’s prediction had come true.

In 2007, Betsie ten Boom was honored at the Yad Vashem in Israel and recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Betsie’s Faith in Action

During the last years of her life, Corrie asked people to share their memories of Betsie with her. A woman who had visited the Ten Booms’ house when she was child had this to say about the two sisters:

It seemed to me that Tante (the Dutch word for “aunt”) Corrie was the strong one, someone everybody could depend upon wherever that was necessary. But it seems that during the war years, Betsie was the stronger spiritually.

Corrie probably agreed with that assessment. Why? The answers lie in her book, The Hiding Place. 

On the night Germany invaded the Netherlands, Corrie and Betsie were awakened by the sounds of bombs dropping. Terrified, they began to pray. At first, they prayed for the Netherlands – those who were dying and injured, Queen Wilhelmina, etc. Then Betsie started praying for the Germans – the ones who were dropping the bombs! (She saw them as being entangled in a great evil that had been loosed in Germany.) Corrie looked at her sister in amazement then continued her own prayers by whispering, “Oh Lord, listen to Betsie, not me, because I cannot pray for those men at all.”

As they were being processed into Vught, Betsie talked to Corrie about teaching the women around them to love. (If people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes…”) It took a moment, but Corrie finally realized her sister was talking about the guards.

Corrie said, “I glanced at the matron seated at the desk ahead of us. I saw a gray uniform and a visored hat; Betsie saw a wounded human being. And I wondered, not for the first time, what sort of a person she was, this sister of mine … what kind of road she followed while I trudged beside her on the all-too-solid earth.”

While they were in Vught, Betsie and Corrie found out who had betrayed them to the Gestapo. Corrie was furious. She recalled:

Flames of fire seemed to leap around … in my heart. I thought of Father’s final hours ….. Of the underground work so abruptly halted. …. And I knew that if [he] stood in front of me now, I could kill him. … All of me ached with the violence of my feelings about the man who had done us so much harm. That night I did not sleep.

But Betsie didn’t seem to harbor the same rage.

Finally one night, Corrie — who had not slept well since she heard the betrayer’s name – asked her, “Betsie, don’t you feel anything about [him]? Doesn’t it bother you?” Betsie answered, “Oh yes, Corrie! Terribly! I’ve felt for him ever since I knew — and pray for him whenever his name comes into my mind. How dreadfully he must be suffering!”

Corrie said:

For a long time I lay silent in the huge shadowy barracks restless with the sighs, snores, and stirrings of hundreds of women. Once again I had the feeling that this sister with whom I had spent all my life belonged somehow to another order of beings.

Shortly after they arrived at Ravensbruck, Betsie insisted that she and Corrie do as the Scriptures said and thank God for everything about the barracks they found themselves in. Corrie wondered what there was to be thankful for. Betsie started listing things:

• Being assigned to the same barracks. Corrie agreed.
• The Bible Corrie was holding in her hands. Corrie agreed. (By the grace of God – a miracle, one might say — they had been able to smuggle a Bible into both concentration camps. By the time they arrived at Ravensbruck, they had read through the entire New Testament twice and were working on their third time through.) 
• The extreme overcrowding which allowed for more women to have an opportunity to share in the daily devotionals that she and Corrie always tried to have. Corrie agreed, but reluctantly.
• For the fleas. Uh, no. Corrie wasn’t going to do that.

“Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“Give thanks in all circumstances,” [Betsie] quoted. “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances’. Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.

Time went on, and Betsie and Corrie began holding nightly “worship services” in the back of the barracks. According to Corrie:

They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a sotto-voce chant by Eastern Orthodox women. With each moment, the crowd around us would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed.

At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text, we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the lightbulb.

Despite making no attempt to hide what they were doing, no one tried to stop the services. In fact, there was almost no supervision in the barrack at all. Hmmm.

One day, Corrie came back from work to find Betsie looking very happy. (They were assigned to different workgroups.) Corrie asked her why.

“You know we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,” [Betsie] said. “Well – I’ve found out.”

That afternoon there’d been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they’d asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

“But she wouldn’t.” [Betsie said.] “She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?”

Why?

“Because of the fleas!” Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice. “That’s what she said, ‘That place is crawling with fleas!'”

Corrie continued:

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

Whose faith was stronger? I believe Corrie thought Betsie’s was, hands down.

(If you’re interested, my posts about Betsie’s sister Corrie and their mother Cor can be found by clicking on their names.)

My Sources and Further Information

Web Articles

•  “About the Ten Booms” – (the Ten Boom Museum website)
•  “Betsie ten Boom” – (Wikipedia article)

Books

•  The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom and John and Elizabeth Sherrill
•  Tramp for the Lord by Corrie ten Boom and Jamie Buckingham
•  Life Lessons from the Hiding Place by Pam Rosewell Moore – (Pam was Corrie’s live-in companion/helper/nurse for the last few years of her life.)
• Ten Boom: Betsie, Promise of God by Mike Evans – (a historical fiction work about Betsie — I have not read this one)

Videos

•  a virtual tour of the Corrie ten Boom Museum – (the Ten Booms’ former home in Harlaam, Netherlands)
•  Corrie ten Boom: A Faith Undefeated – (a documentary about the Ten Booms)
•  The Hiding Place – (a movie based on Corrie ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place)