Imagine yourself in a WWⅡconcentration camp, performing forced labor in hideous living conditions whilst being nearly starved to death. What would be your attitude towards those around you, and most especially, your captors? For Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie, it was that of complete love and concern, and a desire to give them the light of Christ. A true story, The Hiding Place is Corrie ten Boom’s historical account of her and her family’s experience in WWⅡ. Written by Corrie herself, this 216 page book is crammed with tragedy as well as joy. Youngest of four children, Corrie ten Boom uses her home in Haarlem, Holland as a temporary safe house for Jews in hiding, until she is discovered and sent to prison as well as various concentration …show more content…
It was a deep and tall house, with lots of tiny rooms where the Boom’s lived alongside several of Corries aunts. Her father, Casper ten Boom, was a renowned watch repairer and everyone in their town of Haarlem referred to him as Opa, meaning grandfather. Corrie and her sister Betsie never married, and eventually it was just the two of them and their father still living in The Beje. Life stayed in essence the same until Corrie was forty-five years old. However, things started to change when the Germans took control of Holland, and Corrie started an underground operation to find Jews and get them to safe hiding locations. She saved hundreds of lives before they were discovered and her whole family, as well as several friends who had helped with the operation, were sent to prison. Kept in a tiny cell alone for almost three months, everyone was eventually released except for Corrie …show more content…
Even though she witnessed and experienced horrible things, she never became bitter or angry, not once. She was always giving thanks to God and asking for him to help her deal with whatever came. Her sister was even more so, praying for the German guards even as they were committing terrible acts of violence. Asking God to forgive them as she did. Her statement, “Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way,” shows that she had received the atonement of Christ, and through him was able to love the very people who were killing her. It made me want to be a better person, just reading about how christ like Betsie was, able to light up even the darkest places with her inner strength. When she said to her sister, “Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings, Corrie. It's something we make inside ourselves,” she demonstrated how truly good and wise she
When she had the fever and was dying at Bush Hill, her caretaker said, “Oh, my, now that’s looking much better, isn’t it? You’ve beat the Grim Reaper, you have, lassie.” This states that she recovered from something that killed most others and that she was very strong willed. Likewise, she also defended her house from thieves. “ ‘You cut me,’ he said in disbelief. ‘The wench cut me with the sword.’ ‘Get out of my house, before I cut out your heart.’ I raised the sword and ran at him.” This shows that she was willing to defend herself and others and that she was “...a fighter, no doubt about that.” Strictly speaking, this shows the theme of the novel to be
She spreads the love of Jesus to keep fellow prisoners faith in being released. Without Bestie’s prayers, Corrie would not be optimistic during her sentence at the camp. Betsie ten Boom says, “These young women. That girl back at the bunkers. Corrie, 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. . . .” (Boom 125). This reveals that Betsie sees the goodness in everyone, and she does not believe that the person is evil. The person is surrounded by evil. Betsie and Corrie are taken to Vught, and Betsie sees the opportunity to spread love while they are there. She sees how much hate the concentration camps bring, and the only outcome of hate is even more hate. If Betsie and Corrie spread love, then all of the hate will turn into love for one another. While Betsie and Corrie are prisoners at the concentration camp, they try to help fellow prisoners. They helped the prisoners by comforting them with the love of Jesus. Betsie and Corrie gave the prisoners hope when they did not have any. The narrator says, “In the midst of their agony, each sought to comfort cold and desperately hungry fellow prisoners, often speaking a last word affirming the presence of Christ to those destined for the gas chambers” (Holt 52). Betsie and Corrie are truly good people by nature. Despite being in a bad environment
In this paper, we will explore the camp that is Bergen-Belsen and its workers, the camp system, liberation and trial. The notorious detention camp, Bergen-Belsen, was constructed in 1940 and “was near Hanover in northwest Germany, located between the villages Bergen and Belsen” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org), hence the name. Originally, the “camp was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) but, Bergen-Belsen rapidly grew. “In the first eighteen months of existence, there were already five satellite camps.” (holocaustresearchproject.org).
The descriptions of the action and characters provided by the authors of Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels’ Den creates a vivid story of great courage and faith. The biography’s vitality was shown through Geoff and Janet Benge’s usage of vivid descriptions. Action was thoroughly described from Corrie’s point of view, giving the reader a thorough understanding of what she experienced while imprisoned by the Nazis. For instance, the text illustrates, “… Ravensbruck was running out of food to feed all the prisoners, so it had been decided to reduce the number of prisoners in the camp by gassing the older ones (Benge & Benge, 1998, p. 164).” This quote is an example of the horrors that took place in the concentration camps in which Corrie
I could hear her soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside it.” I like this quote so much because it makes the title of the book have a different meaning. Throughout the whole book I thought the “Hiding place was the Beje, their home, because they were hiding Jews there. Or maybe it was the organization the Corrie Ten Boom was leader of. When I read that, it brought the whole book together. Without that simple paragraph, the book would lose a whole level of
Right away the jews show indifference. The pre-camp jews “refused not only to believe” Moche the Beadle’s stories “but even to
...he shows us her character, not by how she gives herself respect, but by the continued respect that she gives to others: even her tormenters. Her secret shame was kept inside, and it was an impossible burden to bear. She was brave.
No matter how much he put her through, she kept fighting for her life. I was confused by this because, in my eyes her life was completely over. I did not see how she could ever live a functioning life after all of the things that she went through. I would have thought that this reality would have been a reason for her to give up and choose fiction. Fiction would have been the easy way out of the pain, loses, and suffering that she faces and would continue to face. Then I thought to myself that is what makes humans amazing. Being able to endure the challenges of life and keep going. Originally, I thought she was a fool to keep going then I realized that she was strong. If I was her I would have chosen my reality
Between Night and The Hiding Place, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are clearly proved to be essential in order to survive in these death camps. Corrie, Elie, and other victims of these harsh brutalities who did survive had a rare quality that six million others unfortunately did not.
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.
It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis
...y seen her strengths until I considered her for the victim in this assignment. I will also never see Crissy the same again. This woman that started out in my eyes as helpless in a potential IPV situation became a beacon of hope to all women plagued by intimate partner violence.
As World War II occurred, the Jewish population suffered a tremendous loss and was treated with injustice and cruelty by the Nazi’s seen through examples in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Victor Frankl records his experiences and observations during his time as prisoner at Auschwitz during the war. Before imprisonment, he spent his leisure time as an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, Austria and was able to implement his analytical thought processes to life in the concentration camp. As a psychological analyst, Frankl portrays through the everyday life of the imprisoned of how they discover their own sense of meaning in life and what they aspire to live for, while being mistreated, wrongly punished, and served with little to no food from day to day. He emphasizes three psychological phases that are characterized by shock, apathy, and the inability to retain to normal life after their release from camp. These themes recur throughout the entirety of the book, which the inmates experience when they are first imprisoned, as they adapt as prisoners, and when they are freed from imprisonment. He also emphasizes the need for hope, to provide for a purpose to keep fighting for their lives, even if they were stripped naked and treated lower than the human race. Moreover, the Capos and the SS guards, who were apart of the secret society of Hitler, tormented many of the unjustly convicted. Although many suffered through violent deaths from gas chambers, frostbites, starvation, etc., many more suffered internally from losing faith in oneself to keep on living.
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
This memoir, which sits on the library shelf, dusty and unread, gives readers a view of the reality of this brutal war. So many times World War II books give detail about the war or what went on inside the Concentration Camps, yet this book gives insight to a different side. A side where a child not only had to hide from Nazi’s in threat of being taken as a Jew, but a child who hid from the Nazi’s in plain sight, threatened every day by his identity. Yeahuda captures the image of what life was like from the inside looking out. “Many times throughout the war we felt alone and trapped. We felt abandoned by all outside help. Like we were fighting a war on our own” (Nir 186). Different from many non-fiction books, Nir uses detail to give his story a bit of mystery and adventure. Readers are faced with his true battles and are left on the edge of their