Day 19 Behind the wall

On our last day in Holland we venture out of Amsterdam to the satellite city of Haarlem to visit a museum in the home of Corrie Ten Boom , author of  the famous book The Hiding Place.  We cannot find any mention of this museum in any of our guidebooks but find information from a website so we travel 15 minutes west by train and then walk through the old town to find the house. Corrie Ten Boom followed her father into the watchmaking business and a shop bearing their name is still operating on the original site in this busy part of town.

The museum is not open when we arrive but a sign on the door tells us that a tour will start at 1pm. We spend a couple of hours exploring this interesting and beautiful town that has existed since the 11^th century.

We return to the museum at 1pm and our tour begins with just four visitors and our lovely guide, Mary, who is able to tell us Corrie’s story in both Dutch and English. Richard thought he knew the story and Wendy has read the book, but as we sit in the Ten Boom’s lounge room we are enthralled by the amazing wartime story we are hearing. We knew Corrie Ten Boom had hidden Jews from the Nazis, but we didn’t know that her faith had led her to be a key organizer of the Resistance and that their home was a clearing house of over 800 Jews who were then led to safer places.

We hear the story of the raid that led to Corrie’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment. Our guide’s stories are part history and part testimony to Corrie Ten Boom’s belief and trust in God through resistance , through imprisonment in concentration camps and then her amazing release and subsequent teaching and writings which have touched millions of lives.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the room where a false wall had been installed and had been the hiding place for up to six people at a time. We are able to crawl through the false back of the cupboard in Corrie’s bedroom and actually stand in the small cavity where six people were hiding on the day that the Nazis raided the house and the Ten Booms were arrested.

Thousands of people visit this house each year but in the cold and wet of a winter’s day we are especially privileged to have all but a private tour of the hiding place.

We are reminded of an extraordinary God, who works in the most difficult times through ordinary people.