Impossible Forgiveness

Corrie Ten Boom (kor-ee ten bome) was born in 1892 in the Netherlands. World War II broke out in Europe when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Although the Netherlands was officially neutral, the German Army invaded in 1940.

German bombing runs devastated Dutch cities, and within five days the government and Royal family had fled to England and Canada, and the Dutch army laid down their arms.

All Nazi occupations were evil through and through, and they were particularly successful in the Netherlands. The Nazis began an efficient program of rounding up Dutch Jews for the death camps, achieving an unholy 70% fatality rate.

However, some Dutch citizens did something about it. The Dutch resistance began almost as soon as the Nazis settled into their new headquarters. And throughout the country, brave Gentiles risked their own lives to hide their Jewish neighbors. The extended Ten Boom family were among them. Their Christian faith would not allow them to deny help to the desperate. Father Casper and his two unmarried adult daughters, Corrie and Betsey, led the dangerous work.

As it turns out, their work was too successful to stay secret. They were known to the Dutch resistance, who even sent an architect to their home to build a secret room. In 1944, a Dutch informant named Jan Vogel told the Nazis about the 10 booms work. The Gestapo arrested the entire family, but they never found the Jews hidden in the house. Other resistance workers spirited them to safety.

Casper died 10 days later. Most of the family were released for lack of evidence, but Corrie and her sister Betsy were formally arrested and eventually sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.

The women never stop trusting God. That managed to sneak in a Bible and held worship services at night. But Betsie’s health continued to deteriorate, and she died on 16 December 1944 at the age of 59. 

25 days later, all of the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers. Corrie had been released five days earlier thanks to a “clerical error.” She returned safely home, and on May 6, 1945, the Germans officially surrendered.

Corrie Ten Boom believed that the Christian’s highest calling is to love and forgive as God has loved and forgiven us. In 1947, just two years after liberation, she traveled to war-torn Germany to preach the message of forgiveness at a church in Munich. In 1972, she shared what happened there in the magazine Guideposts.

This is what she wrote:

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.

It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.

“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”

The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.

Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”