Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom (Amsterdam, 1892 – Placentia, California, 1983) was a Dutch watchmaker who became a Christian writer and public speaker. She is remembered for sheltering Jews and members of the resistance from the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands, and for her later message of forgiveness.

She grew up in Haarlem above the family watch shop, known as the Beje, which had been opened by her grandfather and passed to her father, Casper. She trained as a watchmaker and in 1922 became the first woman licensed to practise the trade in the Netherlands. Alongside her work she ran activities for teenage girls in her church community, which grew into a large youth club. The family belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church and understood their faith as a call to help those in need.

After the German invasion of 1940 and the closure of the club, the family began hiding Jews and resistance members in their home, using a concealed room behind a false wall in Corrie's bedroom. In 1944 they were betrayed and arrested. Her father died in prison shortly afterwards. Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbrück, where Betsie died in December 1944. Corrie was released days later, something she later learned was the result of a clerical error.

After the war she settled in the Netherlands and set up a rehabilitation centre in Bloemendaal for camp survivors. From 1946 she spent decades travelling to more than sixty countries as a speaker, and in Germany she met former guards from Ravensbrück and spoke of forgiving them. Her largely autobiographical books reached a wide readership, and her story helped bring the occupation to public attention from the perspective of an ordinary family. She is remembered in the house museum in Haarlem dedicated to her and her family, and Yad Vashem named her Righteous Among the Nations.