Corrie ten Boom, Her Story
1. I Was in Prison "NAME?" THE INTERROGATOR inquired.
"Cornelia ten Boom, and... ." "Age?" "Fifty-two."
It was a dark night when we were finally marched out of the building. We could see before us a large canvas-roofed army truck. The truck had no springs and we bounced roughly over the bomb-pitted streets of The Hague. Leaving the downtown section, we seemed to be headed west, toward the suburbs of Scheveningen. Now we knew our destination; the Federal Penitentiary named after this seaside town of Scheveningen.
We turned left into an endless world of steel and concrete.
"Ten Boom, Cornelia!" Another door rasped open. The cell was deep and narrow, scarcely wider than the door. A woman lay on the single cot, three others on straw ticks on the floor.
"Give this one the cot," the matron said. "She's sick."
Soon I was moved to another location. The cell was identical to the one I had just left: six steps long, two wide, a single cot at the back. But this cell was empty. As the guard's footsteps died away down the corridor, I leaned against the cold metal of the door. Alone. Alone behind these walls . . . solitary! Weeks later, "Get your things together! Get ready to evacuate!" The shouts of - the guards echoed up and down the long corridor. I was thankful to see other faces
Again... Dut!
Where would we be taken? Where were we headed? One thing I dreaded... please .. . not into Germany! Hours passed as the loaded train sat on the siding. It must have been two or three in the morning when the train at last began to move. The thought uppermost in every mind was: Is it Germany?
Finally we seemed to stop in the middle of a wood. Floodlights mounted in trees lita broad rough-cleared path lined by soldiers with leveled guns.
Spurred on by the shouts of the guards, I started up the path between the gun barrels. "Close ranks! Keep up! Five abreast!"
The nightmare march lasted a mile or more, when at last we came to a barbedwire fence surrounding a row of wooden barracks. We went into one of them and fell into an exhausted sleep. So began our stay in this place that we learned was named Vught, after the nearest small village. Vught had been constructed in Holland by the occupation army primarily as a concentration camp for political prisoners.
Several months later we were moved to another camp. After a night punctuated with the hail of bullets and machine-gun fire, we learned at dawn that we were passing through a border town into Germany. For two more incredible days and nights we were carried deeper and deeper into the land of our fears.
From the crest of the hill, we saw a vast scar on the green German landscape; a city of low gray barracks, surrounded by concrete walls on which guard towers rose at intervals. In the very center a square smokestack emitted a thin gray vapor into the blue sky.
"Ravensbruck!"
Like a whispered curse, the word passed back through the lines. This was the notorious extermination camp for women, whose name we had heard even in Holland.
Adapted from The Hiding Place