Activities During The Occupation
The ten Boom family were devout and generous Christians. According to The Hiding Place, in 1918 the family took in the first of many foster children that they would shelter over the years. Corrie ran special church services for disabled children for 20 years. The Dutch Reformed Church "protested Nazi persecution of Jews as an injustice to fellow human beings and an affront to divine authority." The ten Boom family strongly believed that people were equal before God.
During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, ten Boom and his daughters became active in sheltering Jewish people who were trying to escape the Nazis at their home. In May 1942, a woman came to the house and asked for help. She said she was a Jew, that her husband had been arrested several months before, and her son had gone into hiding. As Occupation authorities had visited her, she was afraid to return home. She had heard that the family had helped other Jews, and asked if she could stay with them; to which Casper agreed. He believed that all people were equal before God and told her, "In this household, God's people are always welcome." When the Nazis began requiring all Jews to wear the Star of David, he voluntarily wore one also. His son Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, also worked in an non-denominational nursing home. During the occupation, he sheltered many Jews there to save them from the Nazis.
Read more about this topic: Casper Ten Boom
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