Radical Forgiveness (Excerpt)
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Corrie ten Boom was living with her older sister and her father in Amsterdam when Holland was occupied by the Nazis. She was 48, unmarried, and worked as a watchmaker in the family shop on the first floor of their home. For a year and a half, Corrie and her family were active in the underground, managing to hide and save the lives of many Jews who were sought for deportation to the death camps in Germany.
Eventually, they fell under suspicion. A gentile neighbor, seeing unusual activity at all hours around the watch shop, pretended to be a Jew in need of help, and Corrie promised to do what she could. The next night, Corrie and her family were arrested. The eight Jewish people they were hiding that night made it into the secret room in time, and eventually managed to escape Holland to freedom.
The ten Boom family was placed in concentration camps, where Corrie’s father and then her sister lost their lives. Corrie eventually was released due to a clerical error, the day before all the women in her age group were slated to be killed.
After the war ended, many former prisoners returned to their homeland, broken in body and mind. Corrie worked with others to establish houses of healing for these people. They helped each other survive and re-connect with life, cooking, cleaning, gardening, singing and worshiping in community.
Corrie was somewhat surprised when people who had not been sent to the camps began to arrive, seeking healing for their broken hearts and minds.
These were people who, when faced with a choice to turn in their neighbors and friends to the Gestapo or to protect and hide them, gave in to their fear and betrayed their fellow human beings. They had bought their freedom from prison camp and/or death at the price of their own sense of right and wrong. This kind of wound is called moral injury, and it is one of the most devastating side effects of war.
I worked one summer in a Veteran’s Administration hospital, and saw firsthand how the guilt and shame from doing things one feels are horribly wrong—out of fear, out of following orders—plagues our former soldiers, causing physical, mental and spiritual anguish. I talked to one man in his nineties, a World War II vet, who told me, with tears streaming down his face, “I killed so many people!”
Such was the state of those who came to the Dutch houses of healing, seeking a place where they could hope to regain their sense of humanity and become able to face everyday life again. Their sense of self, of being someone who has integrity, had been lost during the occupation of their country. And they had no power on their own to regain it.
Corrie ten Boom took them in, too. No blame, no repercussions. Those who had been so drastically hurt by the actions—or inaction—of these people saw that they were in desperate need of healing as well, and made space for them. You may stay here. We will live with you, garden and cook with you, deal with our own anger and feelings of betrayal in order to help you regain your sense of worth and integrity. Sometimes, even in the face of the most egregious wrongs, forgiveness wins out. Sometimes, against all the odds, love wins.
- Radical Forgiveness (Excerpt) - September 1, 2015
