The Barracks That Became a Sanctuary

In 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie huddled with other women in Barracks 28 at Ravensbrück concentration camp. The fleas were so thick the guards refused to enter. But in that filthy, overcrowded space, something remarkable happened. Each evening, Betsie would open a smuggled Dutch Bible and read aloud. Women pressed close — Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, unbelieving — translating the words into German, French, Polish, Russian. Worship broke out in the foulest building in one of the darkest places on earth.

There was no steeple, no stained glass, no altar. Yet the Spirit of the Living God filled that barracks as surely as He once filled Solomon's temple. The foundation was not concrete or timber. It was Christ Himself, the only foundation that holds when everything else is stripped away.

Paul told the Corinthians something they had forgotten in their squabbling over leaders: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" The temple is not a structure. It is a people. And the foundation beneath them is not a philosophy or a personality — it is Jesus Christ alone.

Betsie ten Boom died in that camp, but the church in Barracks 28 outlived the Reich. Because what is built on Christ, even amid fleas and cruelty, nothing in this world can destroy.