Corrie ten Boom
Dutch resistance hero and writer
Cornelia Arnolda Johanna "Corrie" ten Boom (15 April 1892 – 15 April 1983) was a Dutch watchmaker and later a Christian writer and public speaker, who worked with her father, Casper ten Boom, her sister Betsie ten Boom and other family members to help many Jewish people escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in her home. They were caught, and she was arrested and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, is an autobiography that recounts the story of her family's efforts and how she found and shared hope in God while she was imprisoned at the concentration camp.
Early life
Corrie ten Boom was born on 15 April 1892 in Haarlem, Netherlands, the youngest child of Casper ten Boom, a jeweller and watchmaker, and Cornelia (commonly known as "Cor") Johanna Arnolda, née Luitingh, whom he married in 1884. She was named after her mother but known as Corrie all her life. Corrie had three older siblings: Betsie, Willem, and Nollie. Her three maternal aunts, Tante Bepa, Tante Jans, and Tante Anna, lived with the family. Her father was fascinated by the craft of watchmaking and often became so engrossed in his work that he forgot to charge customers for his services.
The Ten Boom family lived above Casper's watch shop in what Corrie called "the Beje" (pronounced bay-yay), a house named for the Barteljorisstraat where they lived. Corrie spent the first part of her life in charge of the housekeeping.
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This entry incorporates text from “Corrie ten Boom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.