In 1939 Corrie ten Boom lived a peaceful life with her sister Betsie and elderly father in Haarlem, in the heart of the Jewish section of Amsterdam in Holland. Together they ran a successful watch repair shop and were active in the community. Mr. ten Boom was known as “the Grand Gentleman” of Haarlem. But, all of that changed when the bombs started to fall, and then the Nazis came. People, principally jews, began to disappear. And then Corrie’s nephew Peter was arrested for playing the Dutch national anthem.

Corrie and her family saw the devastation on people’s lives taking place around them, and then they answered the plea of a desperate Jewish woman, hiding her from the Nazis until she could escape to the Dutch countryside. The ten Boom’s Christian faith compelled them to do nothing less. Thereafter, Corrie’s family actively began to hide their Jewish neighbors in their home on a regular basis and also to collect and distribute ration cards so that Jewish families could receive food. Soon, jews were coming to the ten Boom home from all over Haarlem and Amsterdam – as soon as they helped one family escape to the countryside more people would arrive.

The ten Booms built a secret hidden room, “the Hiding Place”, in their house behind a false wall in Corrie’s bedroom so that their guests could hide in the event that the Nazis searched the residence. The ten Booms helped hundreds of Jewish people escape the Nazis. Eventually, however, the ten Boom’s activity was discovered and they were arrested by the Nazis.

Corrie, Betsie, her father, her brother and his wife, her sister Nollie and her husband, and her nephew Peter were all arrested and sent by the Nazis to concentration camps. Corrie’s father, then 87, died within 10 days of his arrest. Corrie and Betsie were eventually sent by train to Ravensbruck. Over the course of the following terrible years Corries family members, including her beloved sister Betsie, died. By some miracle that Corrie attributed to God’s providence, she was released from Ravensbruck due to a clerical error just one week before all women her age were killed.

Following the war Corrie traveled Europe and worked with refugees of the Nazi death camps, always speaking and sharing her faith in Jesus Christ. It was at one such speaking engagement that Corrie discovered the true meaning of forgiveness. She described the events as follows:

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavy-set 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. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. ...

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 Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. ...

‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying. ‘I was a guard in there.’ No, he did not remember me.

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. ‘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. Fraulein, ...’ his 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.’ ...

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.”

Forgiveness has nothing to do with nations and foreign policy. Forgiveness occurs within the heart of each individual – God’s forgiveness is offered to every person – it is accepted and realized in the heart, and then that same forgiveness is passed from heart to heart, person to person. But, what an amazing impact that forgiveness could have on the world, on nations and foreign relations, if more individuals sought out, accepted and then shared God’s genuine love and forgiveness.

“But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.