My Mother Worked Miracles During The Holocaust

And we continue with our American Stories, and you are about to hear the story of how one woman shined one of the clearest lights on one of the darkest moments in world history. All in all, it’s estimated that around eight hundred Jews were saved by Cory Teenboom, her sister Betsy, and the rest of her family’s efforts after Holland’s surrender to the Nazis. They hid Jews in a secret room in their home or Baya, in Hollm, Netherlands, near Amsterdam. We’d like to thank Vision Video for contributing the footage for this story. So, without any further ado, here’s Cory Tenboom.

A shadow fell across us in 1940, but it rested lightly. Nobody dreamed that this tiny cloud would grow until that blocked
out the sky. And nobody dreamed that in these darkness, each of us would be called to
play a role. Even the funny old Baya, with its urn matching floor levels and ancient angles, life was very changed
when the war arrived.

I will never forget that through these streets, and I saw tanks. And it was a real performance, this big, huge army going through the streets to make impression on us, and I can still remember these boots marching over the streets. It was strange when the German uniforms were seen, and we had to obey the people of the occupation to your kind. The beginning was not too terrible. We had only five days more, and then we had to surrender, and it seemed that things were a little bit the same as before. Respect. Betsy tried to keep our life as normal as was possible.
She didn’t agree with all the
things that the enemy told us to do, and she tried even to make the meals as normal and good as before.

We really learned to know the people around us.
There were friends where all they thought you can depend on them, but they changed. They could get some more food when they helped the enemy. But the example of my father was a great help. Although he was at last a week old men, his spiritual strength helped all of us. When the Germans came in Holland, the young men especially were in great danger. They needed workers in ammunition factories. They came and took the boys just from the street. These rattias were terrible. Almost every family was really ingred danger and neat. I think of my nephews, Kick and Peter. Sometimes when they had to go through the street, then we gave them girls’ dresses. Sometimes we have laughed when they had that, when they went in girls’ dresses in the street.
But in reality, it was very sad.

During the first year of German rule, there were only minor attacks on jewels in the Halt. It was as though they were trying, testing the temper of the country. On our daily walk, found and I saw the symptoms spread.
“Jewels will not be served. No juice.”

It began slowly with a Nazi propaganda machine spewed out its poison. The yellow star served to mark the prey. In the early morning hours, many royal Dutchmen were forced from their beds. They left their homes like shadows.
They would never return.

As soon as we saw the danger there for all the Jewish people, we warned many of them. I remember that father and I went to doctor Himster, one of our friends. Just imagine that mister Van Jimstra will be brought to a concentration camp, his wife to another concentration camp, his children will be killed.
And that moment, I took a decision. That was the beginning.

There were many underground workers in Haunt. Then they had many secrets. The good thing was that there were two entrances, in the shop and in the alley, and we always looked very carefully who came. Some of the neighbors did not know, and it was better that they didn’t know it. We did not talk about the Jews outside. We were a small family of three people, my father with two of his spins, the daughters. We just played the game as if that was the whole family, the cheisman. The work became so important. The Baya needed a hiding place in case the Gestapo came for an inspection.
The secrets rule was made in my bedroom.

There was a famous architect who made these hiding places, and that was his part in the underground work, very important. I will never forget that he came upstairs and through the whole house to see where it was possible, and because this room were the highest of the house, he chose this, my tiny bedroom. The wall was made of brick, and that was the secret of the hiding place. When they started to knock at it, it was solid, so they didn’t find it. They had to creep so into this opening of the hiding place.
Carry.

And then when they were in it, they could close the backside of the closet so that you couldn’t see there was an opening.
“A non privileged Jew will be unable to show his face in the Netherlands.”
At the same time, as a mix commissioner, I will publish a degree that the possessions, and each day more and more Jews were heard together on city street corners, families young and old.
There were no exceptions.

Publicly, the Nazis succeeded in their attempt to camouflage the destiny of the deep parties. They spoke of labor service in Germany. Our hearts were torn seeing them hold away like sheep, come dignified, almost hopeful. The human imagination could not accept the whispered rumors as to what away did them.

And you’re listening to Corey Tamboom, and what a story she is telling. “I am old, but I know about prison,” she started. “I know what it is like to be behind a door that only opens from the outside.”
And those last words were chilling.
“The human imagination could not accept the whispered rumors as to what awaited.” When we come back, more of Corey Temboom’s story. Here are now American Stories, and we continue with the story of Corey ten boom. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

For two eventful years, the Lord allowed us to help hundreds of people escape the Nazi death camps until February 28, 1944. Well, the Jews, what Jews?
“Lord, to help me? There on the street.”

I remember the dream that the Lord gave to me at the beginning of the war, as I watched a kind of odd, old farm wagon, old fashioned and out of place in the middle of a city, came lumbering across the square, pulls by four enormous black horses. To my surprise, I saw that I myself was sitting in the wagon, and Father too, and Betsy. There are many others, some strangers, some friends. I recognized Pickwick and Tools, Willam and young Peter. Altogether we were surely being drawn across the square behind those horses.
We couldn’t get off the wagon. That was the terrible thing. It was taking us away, far away, but we didn’t want to go.

I did not know then, but that dream meant. Later I understood. In this house in 1844, there happened something. A minister said to my grandfather, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
“That is written in the Bible.” My grandfather had never thought
about it, but he saw that it was a commandment in the Bible, and he invited his friends, and they came in this house every week and at a
prayer meeting for the Jews.

A hundred years later, in this very same house, grandfather’s son, four of his grandchildren, and a great grandson were arrested because they had saved Jewish people.
That was a
Divine but not to understand answer on prayer for Jerushem. I remember that when father was worn by his friends and they said, “Don’t have always Jewish people in that towerse; it will end up in prison for you.” Then Father said, “I’m too old for prison life, but when that will happen, it will be an honor to me to give my life for God’s ancient people.”
And that’s what really happened.

After ten days, already Father died in prison. For the first week, they put me in a cell with four or five others. I was very ill with pleurisy. The prison doctor said I would have tuberculosis, so I was sent to soldiery confinement. They did not want me to infect the others.
Perhaps for the first
time in my life, I was really alone, and I knew my life was completely in the head hands of the enemy. They could kill me, or torture me, just forget me altogether.

There was no one to know.
At night, the sounds of distant bone penetrated thick walls, and the muffled cries of people being tortured by the Gestapo.
That was a little bit of hell.

I tried singing, but the guards pounded on the door for silence.
They threatened to take me to the dark cell. In the dark cell, you had to stand in water.
Time became a very thick thing to have to wade through. There was a possibility each moment of the day and night that I would come for me. Whenever I heard footsteps outside myself, I would ask myself, “Do they come
to torture me?
To kill me?” Once I stood with my back against the wall on my cell, with my hands spread out as if I would push it away, and I was dead scared. And then I said, “Lord, I’m not strong enough to stand all this. My faith is not strong enough.” Then I saw an end I had seen for days, roaming over the floor.

“I just mopped the floor with a wet rag. The
moment and felt the water on the stones.
He ran to a little hole in the wall.
He did not stop to look at the wet rag or his weak feet. He went straight to his hiding place. Cory, don’t look at your faith. It is weak, like the tiny feet
of that end.
Don’t think of the possibilities of those cruel people. I am your hiding place, and you can come to me like that
end disappeared into.”

the hole in the wall, and for the first time, there came a real peace in my heart. I was 53 years old
then.
I’d always known about Jesus, and now, in sold reconfinement, I had started to really know that His light is stronger than the deepest darkness. I have an idea that later, when we are in heaven, we will look back and stand many things that are now not to understand by us. I can tell you about thousand answer prayers, but I also can tell you about many unanswered prayers. There was a prayer that I said every day when I was in prison in Holland: “Oh God, that they never bring us to a concentration caem.” We had heard such terrible rumors about what happened there. But God had other plans.

This is Betsy, my sister.
She was in another part of that same prison, but I could never see her. Months later, we were transferred to a bigger prison in Holland, and then after that, we were packed like cattle in boxcars and taken teap in to Germany. The Nazis were empty in jails everywhere. Men prisoners were sent one way, women prisoners another.

And you’re listening to Corey Tamboom, and it doesn’t get more real than this, the confrontation with evil, and my goodness, face to face is Corey and so many of the people of Western Europe, and so many Allied Americans, Canadians, and Australians taking the fight to the Nazi menace. “Lord, I’m not strong enough to stand all of this. My faith is not strong enough.” And my goodness, the Nazi menace, well, it put faith to the test throughout Western Europe. I’m not sure Western Europe has recovered. Actually, that prayer, “Oh God, may they never take us to a concentration camp. But God had other plans,” he said. When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Corey ten Boom here on our American Stories. And we continue with our American Stories. Let’s return to Corey ten Boom.

My sister and I, along with thousands of others, were marched into Raffensbrook. It was called a work camp.
When we first came into the
camp, they took everything away. It was a great miracle that I had my Bible. I hid it under my dress on my back, and I prayed, “Lord, will you send your angels to surround me?” But then I thought, “Angels are spirits, and you can look through spirits, and I don’t want these people to see me.” So I prayed in my great fear, “God, let your angels not be transparent today.”
“They must cover me.” And God did it.

The woman in front of me was searched, and then my sister threw us directly behind me.
But no one even noticed I was there.
The barracks they put us in were built for 200 women. They packed 700 of us inside. The bunks were built up all the way to the ceiling. We each had sleeping space a few inches wide. If they had all been worse, and we would have had eight toilets for the entire barracks. It was so dangerous a raven’sbrook to use the word of God. If the guards called you, you were killed in a very cruel way. But they never knew that I had a Bible meeting twice every day in Barracks 28. The room was filthy, crawling with fleece and lies. That’s why the guards never came in past the door. So you see that the Lord used the angels and lies to leave us our Bible. I don’t mean to say it was pleasant. There were moments of great despair. I remember one night I was outside the barracks and there were beautiful stars, and I said, “Lord, you guide all these stars. You have not forgotten one of them, but you have forgotten Betsy and me.” And then Betsy said, “No, he does.”

“not forget us.”
I know that from the Bible, the Lord Jesus has said, “I am with you always until the end of the world.” And Cory, He is here with us. And we must believe that ’tis not feeling but believing. And I slowly learned not to trust in myself or my faith or my feelings are trusting in, but trusting in Him. Feelings come and feelings go. They are deceitful. In all that hell around us, the promises from the Bible kept us sane, and Ravensbrook was a work. It was the enemy’s plend to work us to deaths before the war would end. Ninety six thousand women whould die here, including dear Betsy, who became an old woman before my eyes and slowly starved. The smoke from the crematorium was like a black hate over the camp. Every day, seven hundred women died or were killed. It was the only way to solve the problem. There were far too many of us. So I looked death in the eyes, not once, but often, and I found that the Lord was still my hiding place. Betsy was now number 66729. I was 6673.

Oh.
It was as if we had ceased to be human. Twenty eight was built to house 400 women. There were now fourteen hundreds of us. Our small Bible became the center of an ever widening circle of help and hope. Like waves clustered around the blazing fire, we held out our hearts to its warmth and light.

I had believed the
Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were, of Hell and Heaven, of how men act and how God acts. Betsy seemed mercifully oblivious to pain and despair. Watching her, I over wondered if God had put a headge about her, as He had about Job so long ago. The cold was affecting Betsy’s legs. They were like wood. She weighed no more than a child. She could no longer stamp her feet as the rest of us did to keep her blood flowing. More and more, the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsy.

Patsy was gone.
There was no cold now, nor hunger, nothing between Betsy
and the face of kisses.

And then I saw already a little bit God’s sighed. When the Lord takes us very close to himself, we see the things more or less from God’s point of view.
In some way, we are protected. But not, that is not in
the Bible that the Lord will tell that you haven’t cross to bear. Just contrary, the Bible says, “Take up pure cross and follow the Lord Jesus.” And to follow the Lord Jesus that means to share in His suffering.

But He gives grace to do it, and He even gives joy.
There is almost a joyful sight in suffering for the Lord, especially in suffering for the Lord, because we know that Jesus has suffered so much for us. At a Cross and Boom Cornelia. Three mornings after Betsy’s death, I was summoned to the Administration barracks. Years later, it was learned my release came through a clerical error, what some might call a mistake. Not long after I was set free, women my age were put to death. It was in the meeting in Germany. I saw suddenly in the midst of the crowd woman who wouldn’t look into my eyes. And certainly I saw that woman, that is the nurse who has been cruel to Betsy when he was dying. And it came hatred in my heart. But I knew, “When I do not forgive those who have sinned against me, then the heavenly Father will not forgive me.”

So I said, “Lord, I cannot forgive her.”