Corrie ten Boom, Her Story
8. Storm Clouds Gather
IF EVENINGS WERE pleasant, daytimes grew increasingly tense. We were too big; the group was too large, the web too widespread. For a year and a half now we had got away with our double lives. Ostensibly we were still an elderly watchmaker living with his two spinster daughters above his tiny shop. In actuality the Beje was the center of an underground ring that spread now to the farthest corners of Holland. Here daily came dozens of workers, reports, appeals. Sooner or later we were going to make a mistake.
It was mealtimes especially when I worried. There were so many now for every meal that we had to set the chairs diagonally around the dining room table. The cat loved this arrangement. Eusie had given him the Hebrew name "Maher Shalal Hashbaz," meaning appropriately enough, "hastening to the spoils, hurrying to the prey." With the chairs set so close M. S. Hashbaz could circle the entire table on our shoulders, purring furiously, traveling round and round.
But I was uneasy at being so many. The dining room was only five steps above street-level; a tall passerby could see right in the window. We'd hung a white curtain across it providing a kind of screen while letting in light. Still, only when the heavy blackout shades were drawn at night did I feel truly private.
At lunch one day, looking through the thin curtain I thought I saw a figure standing just outside in the alley. When I looked again a minute later it was still there. There was no reason for anyone to linger there unless he was curious about what went on in the Beje. I got up and parted the curtain an inch.
Standing a few feet away, seemingly immobilized by some terrible emotion, was old Katrien from Nollie's house!
I bolted down the stairs, threw open the door, and pulled her inside. Although the August day was hot, the old lady's hands were cold as ice. "Katrien! What are you doing here? Why were you just standing there?"
"She's gone mad!" she sobbed. "Your sister's gone mad!" "Nollie? Oh, what's happened!" "They came!" she said. "The $.D.! I don't know what they knew or who told them. Your sister and Annaliese were in the living room and I heard her!" The sobs broke out again. "I heard her!"
"Heard what?" I nearly screamed. "Heard what she told them! They pointed at Annaliese and said, 'Is this a Jew?' And your sister said, 'Yes.'"
I felt my knees go weak. Annaliese, blonde, beautiful young Annaliese with the perfect papers. And she'd trusted us! Oh Nollie, Nollie, what has your rigid honesty done! "And then?" I asked.
"T don't know. I ran out the back door. She's gone mad!"
I left Katrien in the dining room, wheeled my bicycle down the stairs and bumped as fast as I could the mile and a half to Nollie's. Today the sky did not seem larger above the Wagenweg. At the corner of Bos en Hoven Straat I leaned my bike against a lamppost and stood panting, my heart throbbing in my throat. Then, as casually as I was able, I strolled up the sidewalk toward the house. Except for a car parked at the street curb directly in front, everything looked deceptively normal. I walked past. Not a sound from behind the white curtains. Nothing to distinguish this house from the replicas of it on either side.
When I got to the corner I turned around. At that moment the door opened and Nollie came out. Behind her walked a man in a brown business suit. A minute later a second man appeared, half pulling, half supporting Annaliese. The young woman's face was white as chalk; twice before they reached the car I thought she would faint. The car doors slammed, the motor roared, and they were gone.
I pedaled back to the Beje fighting back tears of anxiety. Nollie, we soon learned, had been taken to the police station around the corner, to one of the cells in back. But Annaliese had been sent to the old Jewish theater in Amsterdam from which Jews were transported to extermination camps in Germany and Poland.
It was Mietje, stooped, care-worn little Mietje whose offer of help we had discounted, who kept us in touch with Nollie. She was in wonderful spirits, Mietje said, singing hymns and songs in her high sweet soprano.
How could she sing when she had betrayed another human being! Mietje delivered the bread that Betsie baked for Nollie each morning, and the blue sweater Nollie asked for, her favorite, with flowers embroidered over the pocket.
Mietje relayed another message from Nollie, one especially for me: "No ill will happen to Annaliese. God will not let them take her to Germany. He will not let her suffer because I obeyed Him."
THE HIDING PLACE
Six days after Nollie's arrest, the telephone rang. Pickwick's voice was on the other end. "I wonder, my dear, if I could trouble you to deliver that watch yourself?"
A message, then, that he could not relay over the phone. I biked at once out to Aerdenhout, taking along a man's watch for safe measure.
Pickwick waited until we were in the drawing room with the door shut. "The Jewish theater in Amsterdam was broken into last night. Forty Jews were rescued.
One of them—a young woman—was most insistent that Nollie know: 'Annaliese is free.'"
He fixed me with one of his wide-set eyes. "Do you understand this message?" I nodded, too overcome with relief and joy to speak. How had Nollie known? How had she been so sure?
After ten days in the Haarlem jail, Nollie was transferred to the federal prison in Amsterdam.
Pickwick said that the German doctor in charge of the prison hospital was a humane man who occasionally arranged a medical discharge. I went at once to Amsterdam to see him. But what could I say, I wondered, as I waited in the entrance hall of his home. How could I get into the good graces of this man?
Lolling about the foyer, sniffing from time to time at my legs and hands, were three perfectly huge Doberman pinschers. I remembered the book we were reading aloud by bicycle lamp, How to Win Friends and Influence People. One of the techniques advocated by Dale Carnegie was: find the man's hobby. Hobby, dogs SOnder: «24
At last the maid returned and showed me into a small sitting room. "How smart of you, Doctor!" I said in German to the grizzle-haired man on the sofa. "omart:s "Yes, to bring these lovely dogs with you. They must be good company when you have to be away from your family."
The doctor's face brightened. "You like dogs then?" About the only dogs I had ever known were Harry de Vries' bulldogs. "Bulls are my favorite. Do you like bulls?"
"People don't realize it," the doctor said eagerly, "but bulldogs are very affectionate."
For perhaps ten minutes, while I racked my brain for everything I had ever heard or read on the subject, we talked about dogs. Then abruptly the doctor stood up. "But I'm sure you haven't come here to talk about dogs. What's on your mind?"
I met his eye. "I have a sister in prison here in Amsterdam. I was wondering if ... 1 don't think she's well."
The doctor smiled. "So, you aren't interested in dogs at all."
"P'm interested now," I said, smiling too. "But I'm far more interested in my sister."
"What's her name?" "Nollie van Woerden." The doctor went out of the room and came back with a brown notebook. "Yes. One of the recent arrivals. Tell me something about her. What is she in prison for?"
Taking a chance, I told the doctor that Nollie's crime had been hiding a Jew. I also told him that she was the mother of six children, who if left without aid could become a burden to the State. (I did not mention that the youngest of these children was now seventeen.)
"Well, we'll see." He walked to the door of the sitting room. "You must excuse me now."
I was more encouraged than at any time since Nollie's arrest as I rode the train back to Haarlem. But days, then a week, then two weeks passed and there was no further news. I went back to Amsterdam. "I've come to see how those Dobermans are," I told the doctor. ~ He was not amused. "You mustn't bother me. I know that you have not come. to talk about dogs. You must give me time."
So there was nothing to do but wait.
It was a bright September noon when seventeen of us were squeezed around the dining room table. Ail of a sudden Nils, seated across from me, turned pale. Nils, one of our workers, had come to report old Katrien safely arrived at a farm north of Alkmaar. Now Nils spoke in a low normal voice.
"Do not turn around. Someone is looking over the curtain." Over the curtain! But—that was impossible! He'd have to be ten feet high. The table felt silent.
"He's on a ladder, washing the window," Nils said.
"T didn't order the windows washed," said Betsie. Whoever it was, we mustn't sit here in this frozen, guilty silence! Eusie had an inspiration. "Happy Birthday!" he sang. "Happy Birthday to you!" We all got the idea and joined in lustily. "Happy Birthday, dear Opa... ," the song was still echoing through the Beje when I went out the side door and stood next to the ladder, looking up at the man holding bucket and sponge.
"What are you doing? We didn't want the windows washed. Especially not during the party!"
The man took a piece of paper from his hip pocket and consulted it. "Isn't this Kuiper's?"
"They're across the street. But—anyhow, come in and help us celebrate." The man shook his head. He thanked me, but he had work to do. I watched him crossing the Barteljorisstraat with his ladder to Kuiper's candy store.
"Did it work?" a clamor of voices asked when I got back to the dining room. "Do you think he was spying?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know." fh %
That was the hardest. Never knowing. And one of the biggest unknowns was my own performance under questioning. As long as I was awake I felt fairly sure of myself. But if they should come at night .. . Over and over again the group worked with me—Nils, Henk, Leendert—bursting into my room without warning, shaking me awake, hurling questions at me.
The first time it happened I was sure the real raid had come. There was a terrific pounding on my door, then the beam of,a flashlight in my eyes. "Get up! On your feet!" I could not see the man who was speaking.
"Where are you hiding your nine Jews?" "We only have six Jews now." There was an awful silence. The room light came on to show Rolf clutching his head with his hands. "Oh no. Oh no," he kept saying. "It can't be that bad."
"Think now," said Henk just behind him. "The Gestapo is trying to trap you. The answer is, 'What Jews! We don't have Jews here.' " "Can I try again?" "Not now," said Rolf. "You're wide-awake now." They tried again a few nights later. "The Jews you're hiding, where do they come from?"
I sat up groggily. "I don't know. They just come to the door." Rolf flung his hat to the floor. "No, no, no!" he shouted. " 'What Jews! There are no Jews! Can't you learn?"
"T'll learn," I promised. "Ill do better." And sure enough the next time I woke a little more completely. Half a dozen shadowy forms filled the room. "Where do you hide the ration cards?" a'voice demanded.
Under the bottom stair, of course. But this time I would not be trapped into saying so. A crafty reply occurred to me: "In the Frisian clock on the stairwell!"
Kik sat down beside me on the bed and put an arm around me. "That was better, Tante Corrie," he said. "You tried, this time. But remember—you have no cards except the three for you, Opa, and Tante Betsie. There 7s no underground activity here, you don't understand what they're talking about... ."
Gradually, with repeated drills, I got better. Still, when the time actually came, when they were real Gestapo agents really trained in getting the truth from people, how would I perform?
Willem's underground work brought him frequently to Haarlem. There was an expression of something like despair mingled now with the worry lines in his face. Twice soldiers had been to the nursing home, and although he had managed to deceive them about most of the Jews still in residence there, one sick blind old woman had been taken away.
"Ninety-one!" Willem kept saying. "She couldn't even walk—they had to carry herto cheicar.-
So far, Willem's position as a minister had prevented direct action against him and Tine, but he was watched, he said, more closely than ever. To provide an official reason for his visits to Haarlem he started conducting a weekly prayer fellowship at the Beje each Wednesday morning.
But Willem could do nothing routinely—especially pray—and soon the meeting was attended by dozens of Haatlemers hungry for something to believe in, this fourth year of the occupation. Most of those coming to the services had no idea of the double life of the Beje. In a way they posed a fresh danger as they passed workers and couriers from other underground groups coming and going on the narrow stairs. But in another way, we thought, it might be an advantage to have these flocks of obviously innocent people in and out. That, at least, was our hope.
We were sitting around the supper table after curfew one night, three ten Booms, the seven "permanent guests," and two Jews for whom we were seeking homes, when the shop doorbell chimed.
A customer after closing? And one bold enough to stand on the Barteljorisstraat after curfew? Taking the keys from my pocket I hurried down to the hall, unlocked the workshop door, and felt my way through the dark store. At the front door I listened a moment.
"Who's there?" I called. "Do you remember me?" A man's voice speaking German. "Who it it?" I asked in the same language.
"An old friend, come for a visit. Open the door!"
I fumbled with the lock and drew the door gingerly back. It was a German soldier in uniform. Before I could reach the alarm button behind the door, he had pushed his way inside. Then he took off his hat and in the October twilight I recognized the young German watchmaker whom Father had discharged four years ago.
"Otto!" I cried. "Captain Altschuler," he corrected me. "Our positions are slightly reversed, Miss ten Boom, are they not?"
I glanced at his insignia. He was not a captain or anything close to it, but I said nothing. He looked around the shop.
"Same stuffy little place," he said. He reached for the wall switch, but I put my hand over it.
"No! We don't have blackout shades in the shop!" "Well, let's go upstairs where we can talk over old times. That old clock cleaner still around?"
"Christoffels? He died in the fuel shortage last winter." Otto shrugged. "Good riddance then! What about the pious old Bible reader?"
I was edging my way to the sales counter where another bell was located. "Father is very well, thank you." ; "Well, aren't you going to invite me up to pay my respects?" Why was he so eager to go upstairs? Had the wretched fellow come just to gloat, or did he suspect something? My finger found the button.
"What was that!" Otto whirled around suspiciously. "What was what?" "That sound! I heard a kind of buzzing."
"T didn't hear anything." But Otto had started back through the workshop.
"Wait!" I shouted. "Let me get the front door locked and I'll go up with you! I—I want to see how long it takes them to recognize you."
I dawdled at the door as long as I dared: definitely his suspicions were aroused. Then I followed him through the rear door into the hall. Not a sound from the dining room or the stairs. I dashed past him up the steps and rapped on the door.
"Father! Betsie!" I cried in what I hoped was a playful voice. "I'll give you three— no, uh—six guesses who's standing here!"
"No guessing games!" Otto reached past me and flung open the door. Father and Betsie looked up from their meal. The table was set for three, my unfinished plate on the other side. It was so perfect that even I, who had just seen twelve people eating here, could scarcely believe this was anything but an innocent old man dining with his daughters. The "Alpina" sign stood on the sideboard: they had remembered everything.
Uninvited, Otto pulled out a chair. "Well!" he crowed. "Things happened just like I said, didn't they?"
"So it would seem," said Father mildly.
"Betsie," I said, "give Captain Altschuler some tea!" Otto took a sip of the brew Betsie poured him and glared round the table at us. "Where did you get real tea! No one else in Holland has tea."
How stupid of me. The tea had come from Pickwick.
"If you must know," I said, "it comes from a German officer. But you mustn't ask any further questions." I tried to imply clandestine dealings with a high occupation official.
Otto lingered another fifteen minutes. And then, feeling perhaps that he had underlined his victory sufficiently, sauntered out into the empty streets.
It was only after another half-hour that we dared give the all clear to nine cramped and shaky people.
The second week in October, during a particularly hectic morning with underground problems, the secret telephone number rang downstairs in the hall. I hurried down to pick it up; only Father, Betsie, or ] ever answered it.
"Well!" said a voice. "Aren't you coming to'pick me up?"
It was Nollie.
"Nollie! When—How—Where are you?"
"At the train station in Amsterdam! Only I have no money for the trainfare." "Stay right there! Oh, Nollie, we're coming!" I biked to Bos en Hoven Straat and then with Flip and the children who happened to be at home, hurried to the Haarlem station. We saw Nollie even before our train came to a stop in Amsterdarn—her bright blue sweater like a patch of blue sky in the big dark shed.
Seven weeks in prison had left her pallid-faced, but as radiantly Nollie as ever. A prison doctor, she said, had pronounced her low blood pressure a serious condition, ne that might leave her permanently disabled and her six children a burden to society. Her face wrinkled in puzzlement as she said it.
Christmas, 1943, was approaching. The light snow which had fallen was the only festive quality of the season. Every family it seemed had someone in jail, in a work camp, or in hiding. For once the religious side of the holidays was uppermost in every mind.
At the Beje, we had not only Christmas to celebrate but also Hanukkah, the Jewish "Festival of Lights." Betsie found a Hanukkah candlestand among the treasures stored with us behind the dining room cupboard and set it up on the upright piano. Each night we lighted one more candle as Eusie read the story of the Maccabees.
Then we would sing, haunting, melancholy desert music. We were all very Jewish those evenings.
About the fifth night of the Festival, as we were gathered round the piano, the doorbell in the alley rang. I opened it to find Mrs. Beukers, wife of the optician next door, standing in the snow. Mrs. Beukers was as round and placid as her husband was thin and worried, but tonight her plump face was twisted with anxiety.
"Do you think," she whispered, "your Jews could sing a little more softly? We can hear them right through the walls and—well, there are all kinds of people on this street..."
Back in Tante Jans's rooms we considered this news in consternation. If the Beukers family knew all about our affairs, how many other people in Haarlem did too?
It wasn't long before we discovered that one who did was the chief of police himself. One dark January morning when it was trying to snow again, Toos burst into underground "headquarters" in Tante Jans's rear room clutching a letter in her hand. The envelope bore the seal of the Haarlem police.
I tore it open. Inside, on the police chief's stationery, was a hand written note. I read it silently, then aloud.
"You will come to my office this afternoon at three o'clock." For twenty minutes we tried to analyze that note. Some felt it was not a prelude to arrest. Why would the police give you a chance to escape? Still, it was safest to prepare for search and imprisonment. Workers slipped out of the house, one at a
THE HIDING PLACE Ot
time. Boarders emptied wastebaskets and picked up scraps of sewing in preparation for a quick flight to the secret room. I burned incriminating papers in the longempty coal hearth in the dining room. The cat caught the tension in the air and sulked beneath the sideboard. : Then I took a bath, perhaps the last for months, and packed a prison bag according to what Nollie and others had learned: a Bible, a pencil, needle and thread, soap—or what we called soap these days—toothbrush, and comb. I dressed in my warmest clothes with several sets of underwear and a second sweater beneath the top one. Just before 3:00 I hugged Father and Betsie tight, and walked through the gray slush to the Smedestraat.
The policeman on duty was an old acquaintance. He looked at the letter, then at me with a curious expression. "This way," he said.
He knocked at a door marked "Chief." The man who sat behind the desk had red-gray hair combed forward over a bald spot. A radio was playing. The chief reached over and twisted the volume knob not down but up.
"Miss ten Boom," he said. "Welcome." "How do you do, Sir." The chief had left his desk to shut the door behind me. "Do sit down," he said.
"T know all about you, you know. About your work."
"The watchmaking you mean. You're probably thinking more about my father's work than my own."
The chief smiled. "No, I mean your 'other' work."
"Ah, then you're referring to my work with retarded children? Yes. Let me tell " you about that "No, Miss ten Boom," the chief lowered his voice. "Iam not talking about your work with retarded children. I'm talking about still another work, and I want you to know that some of us here are in sympathy."
The chief was smiling broadly now. Tentatively I smiled back. "Now, Miss ten Boom," he went on, "I have a request."
The chief sat down on the edge of his desk and looked at me steadily. He dropped his voice until it was just audible. He was, he said, working with the underground himself. But an informer in the police department was leaking information to the Gestapo. "There's no way for us to deal with this man but to kill him."
A shudder went down my spine.
"What alternative have we?" the chief went on in a whisper. "We can't arrest him—there are no prisons except those controlled by the Germans. But if he remains at large many others will die. That is why I wondered, Miss ten Boom, if in your work you might know of someone who could z "Kill him?" arcests I leaned back. Was this all a trap to trick me into admitting the existence of a group, into naming names?
92, CORRIE TEN BOOM "Sir," I said at last, seeing the chief's eyes flicker impatiently, "I have always believed that it was my role to save life, not destroy it. | understand your dilemma, however, and I have a suggestion. Are you a praying man?"
"Aren't we all, these days?" "Then let us pray together now that God will reach the heart of this man so that he does not continue to betray his countrymen."
There was a long pause. Then the chief nodded. "That I would very much like to do."
And so there in the heart of the police station, with the radio blaring out the latest news of the German advance, we prayed. We prayed that this Dutchman would come to realize his worth in the sight of God and the worth of every other human being on earth.
At the end of the prayer the chief stood up. "Thank you, Miss ten Boom." He shook my hand. "Thank you again. I know now that it was wrong to ask you."
Still clutching my prison bag, I walked through the foyer and around the corner to the Beje.
Upstairs, people crowded around wanting to know everything. But I did not tell them. Not everything—I did not want Father and Betsie to know that we had been asked to kill. It would have been an unnecessary burden for them to bear.
The episode with the chief of police should have been encouraging. Apparently we had friends in high places. As a matter of fact the news had the opposite effect upon us. Here was one more illustration of how our secret was no secret at all. All of Haarlem seemed to know what we were up to.
We knew we should stop the work, but how could we? Who would keep open the network of supplies and information on which the safety of hundreds depended?
If a hideaway had to be abandoned, as happened all the time, who would coordinate the move to another address? We had to go on, but we knew that disaster could not be long in coming.
As a matter of fact, it came first to Jop, the seventeen-year-old apprentice who had sought a safe home at the Beje.
Late one afternoon near the end of January, 1944, Rolf stepped stealthily into the workshop. He glanced at Jop. I nodded: Jop was party to everything that went on in the house.
"There's an underground home in Ede that is going to be raided this evening. Do you have anyone who can go?"
But I did not. Not a single courier or escort person was at the Beje this late in the day.
"Pll go," Jop said.
I opened my mouth to protest that he was inexperienced, and liable to the factory transport himself if stopped on the street. Then I thought of the unsuspecting people at Ede. We had a wardrobe of girls' scarves and dresses upstairs. . . .
"Then quickly, boy," Rolf said. "You must leave immediately." He gave Jop the details and hurried away. In a few moments Jop reappeared, making a very pretty brunette in long coat and kerchief, a fur muff hiding his hands. Did the lad have some kind of premonition? To my astonishment he turned at the door and _ kissed me.
Jop was supposed to be back by the 7:00 p.m. curfew. Seven came and went. Perhaps he had been delayed and would return in the morning.
We did have a visitor early the next day but it was not Jop. I knew the minute Rolf stepped through the door that bad news was weighing him down.
Slt's Jopy isnt it?" ess "What happened?" Rolf had learned the story from the sergeant at the night desk. When Jop got to the address in Ede the Gestapo was already there. Jop had rung the bell; the door opened. Pretending to be the owner of the house, the $.D. man had invited Jop in.
"And Corrie," Rolf said, "we must face it. The Gestapo will get information out of Jop. They have already taken him to Amsterdam. How long will he be able to hold his tongue?"
Once again we considered stopping the work. Once again we discovered we could not.
That night Father and Betsie and I prayed long after the others had gone to bed. We knew that in spite of daily mounting risks we had no choice but to move forward. This was evil's hour: we could not run away from it. Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work.
9, The Raid
AT THE SOUND of someone in my room I opened my eyes painfully. It was Eusie, carrying up his bedding and night clothes to store in the secret room. Behind him came Mary and Thea with their bundles.
I shut my eyes again. It was the morning of February 28, 1944. For two days I had been in bed with influenza. My head throbbed, my joints were on fire. Every little sound, Mary's wheeze, the scrape of the secret panel, made me want to shriek. I heard Henk and Meta come in, then Eusie's laugh as he handed the day things out to the others through the low door.
Go away all of you! Leave me alone! I bit my lip to keep from saying it. At last they collected their clothes and belongings and trooped out, closing the door behind them. Where was Leendert? Why hadn't he come up? Then I remembered that Leendert was away for a few days setting up electrical warning systems like ours in several of our host homes. I drifted back into a feverish sleep.
The next thing I knew, Betsie was standing at the foot of the bed, a steaming cup of herb tea in her hand. "I'm sorry to wake you, Corrie. But there's 2 man down in the shop who insists he will talk only to you."
"Who is he?" "He says he's from Ermelo. I've never seen him before."
Isat up shakily. "That's all right. I have to get up anyway. Tomorrow the new ration cards come."
I sipped the scalding tea, then struggled to my feet. There by the bed lay my prison bag, packed and ready as it had been since the summons from the chief of
THE HIDING PLACE Os)
police. In fact I'd been adding to it. Besides the Bible, clothing, and toilet things, it now held vitamins, aspirins, iron pills for Betsie's anemia and much else. It had become a kind of talisman for me, a safeguard against the terrors of prison.
I got slowly into my clothes and stepped out onto the landing. The house seemed to reel around me. I crept down, clinging to the handrail. At the door to Tante
Jans's rooms I was surprised to hear voices. I looked in. Of course, I''d forgotten.
It was Wednesday morning, people were gathering for Willem's weekly service. I saw Nollie passing around "occupation coffee" as we called the current brew of roots and dried figs. Peter was already at the piano, as he was most weeks to provide the music. I continued down around the stairs, passing new arrivals streaming up.
As I arrived, wobble-kneed, in the shop, a small sandy-haired man sprang forward to meet me. "Miss ten Boom!"
"Yes?" There was an old Dutch expression: you can tell a man by the way he meets your eyes. This man seemed to concentrate somewhere between my nose and my chin. "Is it about a watch?" I asked.
"No, Miss ten Boom, something far more serious!" His eyes seemed to make a circle around my face. "My wife has just been arrested. We've been hiding Jews, you see. If she is questioned, all of our lives are in danger."
"T don't know how I can help," I said.
"T need six hundred guilders. There's a policeman at the station in Ermelo who can be bribed for that amount. I'm a poor man—and I've been told you have certain contacts."
"Contacts?" "Miss ten Boom! It's a matter of life and death! If I don't get it right away she'll be taken to Amsterdam and then it will be too late."
Something about the man's behavior made me hesitate. And yet how could I risk being wrong? "Come back in half an hour. ['ll have the money," I said.
For the first time the man's eyes met mine.
"T'll never forget this," he said. The amount was more than we had at the Beje so I sent Toos to the bank with instructions to hand the man the money, but not to volunteer any information.
Then I struggled back up the stairs. Where ten minutes earlier I'd been burning with fever, now I was shaking with cold. I stopped at Tante Jans's rooms just long enough to take a briefcase of papers from the desk. Then with apologies to Willem and the others I continued to my room. | undressed again, refilled the vaporizer where it was hissing on its small spirit-stove, and climbed back into bed. For a while I tried to concentrate on the names and addresses in the briefcase. Five cards needed this month in Zandvoort. None in Overveen. We would need eighteen in.... The flu roared behind my eyes, the papers swam in front of me. The briefcase slipped from my hand and I was asleep.
In my fevered dream a buzzer kept ringing. On and on it went. Why wouldn't it stop? Feet were running, voices whispering. "Hurry! Hurry!"
I sat bolt upright. People were running past my bed. I turned just in time to see Thea's heels disappear through the low door. Meta was behind her, then Henk.
But—I hadn't planned a drill for today! Who in the world—unless—unless it wasn't a drill. Eusie dashed past me, white-faced, his pipe rattling in the ashtray that he carried in shaking hands.
And at last it penetrated my numbed brain that the emergency had come. One, two, three people already in the secret room; four as Eusie's black shoes and scarlet socks disappeared. But Mary—where was Mary? The old woman appeared in the bedroom door, mouth open, gasping for air. I sprang from my bed and halfpulled, half-shoved her across the room.
I was sliding the secret panel down behind her when a slim white-haired man burst into the room. I recognized him from Pickwick's, someone high in the national Resistance. I'd had no idea he was in the house. He dived after Mary. Five, six. Yes, that was right with Leendert away.
The man's legs vanished and I dropped the panel down and leapt back into bed. Below I heard doors slamming, heavy footsteps on the stairs. But it was another sound that turned my blood to water: the strangling, grating rasp of Mary's breathing.
"Lord Jesus!" I prayed. "You have the power to heal! Heal Mary now!" And then my eye fell on the briefcase, stuffed with names and addresses. I snatched it up, yanked up the sliding door again, flung the case inside, shoved the door down and pushed my prison bag up against it. I had just reached the bed again when the bedroom door flew open.
"What's your name?"
I sat up slowly and—I hoped—sleepily. "What?" "Your name!" "Cornelia ten Boom." The man was tall and heavy-set with a strange, pale face. He wore an ordinary blue business suit. He turned and shouted down the stairs, "Weve got one more up here, Willemse.": He turned back to me. "Get up! Get dressed!" As I crawled out from under the covers, the man took a slip of paper from his pocket and consulted it. "So you're the ring leader!" He looked at me with new interest. "Tell me now, where are you hiding the Jews?"
"T don't know what you're talking about." The man laughed. "And you don't know anything about an underground ring, either. We'll see about that!"
He had not taken his eyes off me, so I began to pull on my clothes over my pajamas, ears straining for a sound from the secret room.
"Let me see your papers!"
THE HIDING PLACE My
I pulled out the little sack that I wore around my neck. When I took out my identification folder, a roll of bills fell out with it. The man stooped, snatched up the money from the floor, and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he took my papers and looked at them. For a moment the room was silent. Mary Itallie's wheeze— why wasn't I hearing it?
The man threw the papers back at me. "Hurry up!" But he was not in half the hurry I was to get away from that room. I buttoned my sweater all wrong in my haste and stuffed my feet into my shoes without bothering to tie them. Then I was about to reach for my prison bag.
Wait.
It stood where I had shoved it in my panic: directly in front of the secret panel.
If I were to reach down under the shelf to get it now, with this man watching my every move, might not his attention be attracted to the last place on earth I wanted him to look?
It was the hardest thing I had ever done to turn and walk out of that room leaving the bag behind.
I stumbled down the stairs, my knees shaking as much from fear as from flu. A uniformed soldier was stationed in front of Tante Jans's rooms; the door was shut. I wondered if the prayer meeting had ended, if Willem and Nollie and Peter had got away. Or were they all still in there? How many innocent people might be involved?
The man behind me gave me a little push and I hurried on down the stairs to the dining room. Father, Betsie, and Toos were sitting on chairs pulled back against the wall. Beside them sat three underground workers who must have arrived since I had gone upstairs. On the floor beneath the window, broken in three pieces, lay the "Alpina" sign. Someone had managed to knock it from the sill.
A second Gestapo agent in plain clothes was pawing eagerly through a pile of silver rijksdaalders and jewelry heaped on the dining room table. It was the cache from the space behind the corner cupboard: it had been indeed the first place they looked.
"Here's the other one listed at the address," said the man who had brought me down. "My information says she's the leader of the whole outfit."
The man at the table, the one called Willemse, glanced at me, then turned back to the loot in front of him. "You know what to do, Kapteyn."
Kapteyn seized me by the elbow and shoved me ahead of him down the remaining five steps and into the rear of the shop. Another soldier in uniform stood guard just inside this door. Kapteyn prodded me through to the front room and pushed me against the wall.
"Where are the Jews?" "There aren't any Jews here." The man struck me hard across the face.
"Where do you hide the ration cards?"
" "T don't know what you're Kapteyn hit me again. I staggered up against the astronomical clock. Before I could recover he slapped me again, then again, and again, stinging blows that jerked my head backward.
"Where are the Jews?" Another blow.
"Where is your secret room?" I tasted blood in my mouth. My head spun, my ears rang—I was losing consciousness. "Lord Jesus," I cried out, "protect me!"
Kapteyn's hand stopped in midair.
"If you say that name again Ill kill you!" But instead his arm slowly dropped to his side. "If you won't talk, that skinny one will."
I stumbled ahead of him up the stairs. He pushed me into one of the chairs against the dining room wall. Through a blur I saw him lead Betsie from the room.
Above us hammer blows and splintering wood showed where a squad of trained searchers was probing for the secret room. Then down in the alley the doorbell rang. But the sign! Didn't they see the "Alpina" sign was gone and—I glanced at the window and caught my breath. There on the sill, the broken pieces fitted carefully together, sat the wooden triangle.
Too late I looked up to see Willemse staring intently at me. "I thought so!" he said. "It was a signal, wasn't it?"
He ran down the stairs. Above us the hammering and the tramp of boots had stopped. I heard the alley door open and Willemse's voice, smooth and ingratiating.
"Come in, won't you?" "Have you heard!" A woman's voice. "They've got Oom Herman!" Pickwick? Not Pickwick! "Oh?" [heard Willemse say. "Who was with him?" He pumped her as hard as he could, then placed her under arrest. Blinking with fright and confusion, the woman was seated with us aiong the wall. I recognized her only as a person who occasionally took messages for us about the city. I stared in anguish at the sign in the window announcing to the world that al! was as usual at the Beje. Our home had been turned into a trap: how many more would fall into it before this day was over? And Pickwick! Had they really caught Pickwick!
Kapteyn appeared with Betsie in the dining room door. Her lips were swollen and puffy, a bruise was darkening on her cheek. She half fell into the chair next to mine.
"Oh Betsie! He hurt you!"
"Yes." She dabbed at the blood on her mouth. "I feel so sorry for him." Kapteyn whirled, his white face even paler. "Prisoners will remain silent!" he shrieked. Two men were clumping down the stairs and into the dining room carrying something between them. They had discovered the old radio beneath the stairs.
"Law-abiding citizens, are you?" Kapteyn went on. "You! The old man there.
I see you believe in the Bible." He jerked his thumb at the well-worn book on its shelf. "Tell me, what does it say in there about obeying the government?"
" 'Fear God,'" Father quoted, and on his lips in that room the words came as blessing and reassurance. "'Fear God and honor the Queen.'"
Kapteyn stared at him. "It doesn't say that. The Bible doesn't say that."
"No." Father admitted. "It says, 'Fear God, honor the King.' But in our case, that is the Queen."
"It's not King or Queen!" roared Kapteyn. "We're the legal government now, and you're all lawbreakers!"
The doorbell rang again. Again there were the questions and the arrest. The young man—one of our workers—had barely been assigned a chair when again the bell sounded. It seemed to me that we had never had so many callers: the dining room was getting crowded. I felt sorriest for those who had come simply on social visits. An elderly retired missionary was brought in, jaw quivering with fear. At least, from the banging and thumping above, they had not yet discovered the secret room.
A new sound made me jump. The phone down in the hall was ringing.
"That's a telephone!" cried Willemse. He glared around the room, then grabbing me by the wrist yanked me down the stairs behind him. He thrust the receiver up against my ear but kept his own hand on it.
"Answer!" he said with his lips. "This is the ten Boom residence and shop," I said as stiffly as I dared. But the person on the other end did not catch the strangeness. "Miss ten Boom, you're in terrible danger! They've arrested Herman Sluring! They know everything!
On and on the woman's voice babbled, the man at my '" You've got to be careful side hearing everything.
She had scarcely hung up when the phone rang again. A man's voice, and again the message, "Oom Herman's been taken to the police station. That means they're on to everything...."
At last, the third time I repeated my formal and untypical little greeting, there was a click on the other end. Willemse snatched the earpiece from my hand.
"Hello! Hello!" he shouted. He jiggled the cradle on the wall. The line had gone dead. He shoved me back up the stairs and into my chair again. "Our friends wised up," he told Kapteyn. "But I heard enough."
Apparently Betsie had received permission to leave her chair: she was slicing bread at the sideboard. I was surprised to realize it was already lunchtime. Betsie passed the bread around the room but I shook my head. The fever was raging again. My throat ached and my head throbbed.
A man appeared in the doorway. "We've searched the whole place, Willemse," he said. "If there's a secret room here, the devil himself built it."
Willemse looked from Betsie to Father to me. "There's a secret room," he said quietly. "And people are using it or they would have admitted it. All right. We'll set a guard around the house till they've turned to mummies."
In the hush of horror which followed there was a gentle pressure on my knees. Maher Shalal Hashbaz had jumped up into my lap to rub against me. I stroked the shining black fur. What would become of him now? I would not let myself think about the six people upstairs.
It had been half an hour since the doorbell had rung last. Whoever had caught my message over the phone must have spread the alarm. Word was out: no one else would walk into the trap at the Beje.
Apparently Willemse had come to the same conclusion because abruptly he ordered us on our feet and down to the hallway with our coats and hats. Father, Betsie, and me he held in the dining room till last. In front of us down the stairs came the people from Tante Jans's rooms. I held my breath scanning them. Apparently most of those at the prayer service had left before the raid. But by no means all. Here came Nollie, behind her, Peter. Last in the line came Willem.
The whole family then. Father, all four of his children, one grandchild. Kapteyn gave me a shove.
"Get moving." Father took his tall hat from the wall peg. Outside the dining room door he paused to pull up the weights on the old Frisian clock.
"We mustn't let the clock run down," he said. Father! Did you really think we would be back home when next the chain ran out?
The snow had gone from the streets; puddles of dirty water stood in the gutters as we marched through the alley and into the Smedestraat. The walk took only a minute, but by the time we got inside the double doors of the police station I was shaking with cold. I looked anxiously around the foyer for Rolf and the others we knew, but saw no one. A contingent of German soldiers seemed to be supplementing the regular police force.
We were herded along a corridor and through the heavy metal door where I had last seen Harry de Vries. At the end of this hall was a large room that had obviously been a gymnasium. Windows high in the walls were covered with wire mesh; rings and basketball hoops were roped to the ceiling. Now a desk stood in the center of the room with a German army officer seated behind it. Tumbling mats had been spread out to cover part of the floor and I collapsed onto one of them.
For two hours the officer took down names, addresses, and other statistics. I counted those who had been arrested with us: thirty-five people from the raid on the Beje.
People from previous arrests were sitting or lying about on the mats too, some of them faces we knew. I looked for Pickwick but he was not among them. One of them, a fellow watchmaker who often came to the Beje on business, seemed especially distressed at what had happened to us. He came and sat down beside Father and me.
At last the officer left. For the first time since the alarm buzzer sounded we could talk among ourselves. I struggled to sit up. "Quick!" I croaked. "We've got to agree on what to say! Most of us can simply tell the truth but " My voice died in my throat. It seemed to my flu-addled brain that Peter was giving me the most ferocious frown I had ever seen.
"But if they learn that Uncle Willem was teaching this morning from the Old Testament, it could make trouble for him," Peter finished for me.
He jerked his head to one side and I clamored unsteadily to my feet. "Tante
Corrie!" he hissed when we were on the other side of the room. "That man, the watchmaker! He's a Gestapo plant." He patted my head as though I were a sick child. "Lie down again, Tante Corrie. Just for heaven's sake don't do any talking."
I was waked by the heavy door of the gym slamming open. In strode Rolf.
"Let's have it quiet in here!" he shouted. He leaned close to Willem and said something I could not hear. "Toilets are out back," he continued in a loud voice.
"You can go one at a time under escort."
Willem sat down beside me. "He says we can flush incriminating papers if we shred them fine enough." I fumbled through my coat pockets. There were several scraps of paper and a billfold containing a few paper rijksdaalders. I went over each item, trying to think how I would explain it in a court process. Beside the row of outdoor toilets was a basin with a tin cup on a chain. Gratefully I took a long drink—the first since the tea Betsie had brought me that morning.
Toward evening a policeman carried into the gym a large basket of fresh hot rolls. I could not swallow mine. Only the water tasted good to me, though I grew embarrassed at asking again and again to be taken outside.
When I got back the last time, a group had gathered around Father for evening prayers. Every day of my life had ended like this: that deep steady voice, that sure and eager confiding of us all to the care of God. The Bible lay at home on its shelf, but much of it was stored in his heart. His blue eyes seemed to be seeing beyond the locked and crowded room, beyond Haarlem, beyond earth itself, as he quoted from memory: "Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word... . Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe... ."
None of us slept much. Each time someone left the room he had to step over a dozen others. At last light crept through the high, screened windows at the top of the room. The police again brought rolls. As the long morning wore on I dozed with my back up against the wall; the worst pain now seemed to be in my chest.
It was noon when soldiers entered the room and ordered us on our feet. Hastily we struggled into our coats and filed again through the cold corridors.
In the Smedestraat a wall of people pressed against police barricades set across the street. As Betsie and I stepped out with Father between us, a murmur of horror greeted the sight of "Haarlem's Grand Old Man" being led to prison. In front of the door stood a green city bus with soldiers occupying the rear seats. People were climbing aboard while friends and relatives in the crowd wept or simply stared.
Betsie and I gripped Father's arms to start down the steps. Then we froze. Stumbling past us between two soldiers, hatiess and coatless, came Pickwick. The top of his bald head was a welter of bruises, dried blood clung to the stubble on his chin. He did not look up as he was hauled onto the bus.
Father, Betsie, and I squeezed into a double seat near the front. Through the window I caught a glimpse of Tine standing in the crowd. It was one of those radiant winter days when the air seemed to shimmer with light. The bus shuddered and started up. Police cleared a path and we inched forward. I gazed hungrily out the window, holding onto Haarlem with my eyes. Now we were crossing the Grote Markt, the walls of the great cathedral glowing a thousand shades of gray in the crystal light. In a strange way it seemed to me that I had lived through this moment before.
Then I recalled. The vision. The night of the invasion. I had seen it all. Willem, Nollie, Pickwick, Peter—all of us here—drawn against our wills across this square. It had all been in the dream—all of us leaving Haarlem, unable to turn back. Going where?