“A hero is an ordinary person who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. ” These words of Christopher Reeve perfectly describe the essence and soul of Corrie Ten Boom – a devout Christian watchmaker who saved nearly 800 individuals from the horrors of World War II, and as a result was placed in a concentration camp herself. To the survivors and their descendants, and even to other Jews, she was their hero.
The three main characteristics that classified Corrie Ten Boom as a hero are the following: selflessness, loyalty, and resilience. Considering her history, before and after the war, many would say that Corrie was the epitome of selflessness – she put others before herself, in every way imaginable. Using her job as a watchmaker in her father’s shop as a cover, Corrie built contacts with resistance workers, who assisted her in procuring ration books and building a hiding place in the family home, in which she hid both Jews and resistance workers.
Unfortunately, on February 28, 1944, Corrie along with her father, sister, and brother were imprisoned in German camps for assisting Jews escape the Nazi’s genocide of an estimated six million Jews in WWII. Through all of her atrocious suffering, she continued to put others before herself. In the camps, she would give the vitamins she had to others, she would read the Bible to her fellow prisoners, and she always would be trying to find her sister medical attention, even though she needed some herself – she would continue to work because she knew if stopped then her sister would have to take her place.
That particular act – in a way – showed extreme loyalty to her sister. Loyalty, to most, means a quality that expresses unending love and support to people closest to them. That is exactly what Corrie ten Boom was like – she was always thinking and praying for her friends, family, and those that she barely knew. When the Nazis raided the Ten Boom house in 1944, seven people were using the hiding place. Even through the beatings, Corrie showed extreme loyalty by not telling the officers who else was involved in the Dutch underground.
Even though Corrie suffered indescribable injustices as well as severe physical and emotional pain and suffering, she spent her postprison life preaching about God’s love and repeatedly proclaiming that the one thing she learned at Ravensbruck was: “There is no pit so deep that the love of God is not deeper still. ” She had such a loyalty and love for God that she didn’t blame God, at all, for the things she went through. She understood that things happen in her life for a reason, and although she didn’t know why, she continued to believe and have faith in God.
Through the war Corrie had been able to take on any challenges that came her way – she was resilient to anything and everything that happened to her, due to her extremely strong faith and trust in God. In 1945, Corrie returned to the Netherlands immediately after the war and built a rehabilitation center for concentration camp survivors. She later learned that her release had been a clerical error – a week after she was released, all the women her age were executed.
She traveled around the world as an evangelist, motivational speaker, and social critic, speaking about her experiences in Ravensbrueck as she offered her own provisions to prisoners. In 1947 she was speaking in Berlin, and a certain man approached Corrie, she recognized him as one of the more harsh guards who had held her captive at Ravensbruck. He asked her to forgive him for what he had done to her and her sister. Her immediate emotional reaction was a sense of revulsion and resentment. But at that moment Corrie says she knew God’s love for the man was greater than her own hatred for him.
So, she looked at the man and said, “I forgive you for everything. ” Through all she had gone through she was still able to recover and go on with her life in the most fulfilling way possible – changing others for the better and giving them a second chance at life. All through Corrie’s life she had been expressing selflessness, from hiding Jews in a secret room, to building a rehabilitation center for individuals like herself who had gone through the horrific experiences of the Holocaust. Even after all of her experiences in the concentration camps, she still had faith in God.
She said, “God does not have problems – only plans. ” Without her faith in God, she wouldn’t have been able to be as resilient as she was during the Holocaust, and she wouldn’t have been able to minister to all of the people she did. All through history, society has reflected on what accurately defines a hero. More recently, individuals have considered Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone, and Anthony Sadler – three American friends who helped thwart what could have been a mass shooting on a packed high-speed train bound for Paris – as the chief example of a hero.
They cared not for themselves, but for the individuals aboard the train, and although they have resisted the designation of a hero with vengeance and vigor, people around the world continue to think of these three men as heroes. It, in a way, makes individuals wonder, what can they do for other people, whether it’s giving their lunch to the woman down the street or giving up their seat on the bus for an elderly man? This all may seem trivial and insignificant, but whether they realize it or not, they are changing lives little by little… they are becoming someone’s hero.