WWII story of resistance and forgiveness now on the big screen

It’s a story that’s deeply familiar for those in Dutch Reformed circles, one that has endured the test of time for many decades. First published as a book in 1971 and then adapted into a film in 1975, The Hiding Place is being released this week as a brand new movie.

It’s the story of Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch watchmaker who became a symbol of faith, forgiveness, and resilience for her work hiding Jewish people in her family home during the Holocaust. 

This newest version of The Hiding Place has been filmed as a theatre production. The movie emphasizes the stage-performance aspect, using simple but clever techniques to create a cohesive story; the set is built on a circular dais that rotates slowly to create movement between scenes, and several monologues are delivered towards the audience. It feels like you’re in the audience watching the events unfold on stage, which heightens empathy as everything happens in real time.  

The story is split into three parts: the Ten Booms’ lives before World War II; the events that precede their arrest; and, wedged between the two, Corrie’s interrogation by a Gestapo officer while in prison. But while these parts each have their own place in the story’s timeline, they coincide with one another through masterful weaving of scenes that create a powerful juxtaposition. In the film’s first example of this, Corrie is being interrogated by a Gestapo officer in the Haarlem prison. As he mentions her sister Betsie and father Casper, the audience’s attention is drawn across the stage to where we can see, in a brighter and much more cheery light, her childhood home, where Betsie, Casper and a young Corrie are gathered. The scenes converge as the present Corrie steps into the scene of her childhood. She echoes the voice of her younger self, both of them asking Casper the question of why. While her younger self is asking why she can’t accompany Casper on his errand of bringing watches to customers by helping to carry his suitcase, the why her older self utters is a desperate plea for answers to the injustice of the Holocaust. 

Casper’s answer is directed towards young Corrie, but her older self understands the symbolic weight it holds for her now: “You have to wait until you’re bigger to lift it. But you will, my little Corrie. Until then you must trust your father loves you.” The older Corrie, standing in both the shell of the memory and the doom of the prison, knows Casper’s words have come into effect. From this moment on, with the trust that her heavenly father loves her, she will have to learn to carry this weight. 

Held and holding

Those who are familiar with Corrie’s story know that she and Betsie often turned to Casper for comfort. In one such example found in the movie, Corrie and Casper are recalling her childhood fear of trains. “You held my hand as we stood on the platform. I remember the rumble of the train as it rolled into the station,” Corrie says. “It all seemed very big, terrible even. But I clung to your hand, and I knew I would be safe.” Casper then reminds her that he didn’t give her her ticket until the very last moment, and that “when the time comes, your father will give you everything you need, just at the moment you need it.”

But there is no clinging to her father’s hand, no surety of safety, once she is on the train to concentration camp. And though she learns to cling to her heavenly father, she experiences moments of doubt, most notably when Betsie grows sick at Ravensbrück. Corrie tells her sister that there is no God here; she cannot see him. Betsie reminds her of Casper’s message of the train ticket, but Corrie declares that she will not take the ticket and go on the train. Shortly after this conversation Corrie stumbles across a dying man, his posture symbolic of Christ’s on the cross. “Don’t leave me,” he begs, but she turns away. This symbolic sequence of Betsie’s death, the horrors of the Holocaust, and Corrie’s faith struggle is one of the most powerful parts of the movie.

That question of why, asked by both her younger and older self, echoes across the entire movie. 

“What sort of God would allow this?” one Nazi taunts Corrie.

Where was God?

It was something I wondered while I visited Vught Concentration Camp in the Netherlands this past spring. Although it’s not featured in the movie, the Ten Boom sisters were held captive in Vught for a short time. How could God allow this to happen? The camp exit poses a question for its visitors, a reminder that we are all capable of great sin: What would you have done if you lived during the Holocaust? 

The same question is echoed by Nan Gurley, who plays Corrie in The Hiding Place, when she discusses the film. “One of the beauties of telling a story like this is reflecting and [wondering what I would have done] if I had been faced with this situation. What would I have done?”

Corrie understood the potential all of us have to commit terrible sins, but she also understood the power of forgiveness. “It must not make any sense in the economy of human understanding. Forgiveness must be a scandal for it to have any power at all.”

Which is why, when the man who betrayed her family to the Nazis asked for her forgiveness, she chose love, and she forgave him. 

Corrie Ten Boom’s life story serves as a testimony to God’s providence, reminding us that he is  “what lies beyond the darkness.”