April 15, 1892 - April 15, 1983

The Ten Boom family will be remembered as a family who, motivated by their Christian faith, became very active in the underground rescue of many Jews during the Holocaust. They helped Jews unconditionally and even cooked kosher foods and observed the Sabbath with "their guests."

In 1942, the entire family was arrested and sent to Dutch prisons, and in 1944 to the awful Ravensburg concentration camp in Germany. It was in that camp that her father and brother were killed, and her sister Betsie died. In December, 1944, after 10 months of incarceration, she was free. Somehow an order had been given that at the end of that week, all women of her age were to be killed; by a clerical error God had spared Corrie. She was gaunt, filthy, and weak when she made her way to the railway station for the three-day journey back home to Holland.

At once she began building rehabilitation centers in Holland. Back to Germany in 1946, Corrie began ministry as an itinerant preacher and writer. Her basic theme was forgiveness. At one time she was approached by one of the cruelest former Ravensburg camp guards. He held out his hand; she hesitated. Could she forgive the person who had acted with extreme brutality to her and her family? She hesitated and then said that God moved her to accept the guard’s hand.

Forgiveness had won out over reluctance to forgive him. "I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then."

In her work among Holocaust victims, Carrie maintained that the victims who were able to forgive were best able to rebuild their lives.