The Watchmaker's Daughter Who Never Flinched

In the winter of 1944, Corrie ten Boom sat in Ravensbrück concentration camp, her body wasting but her spirit strangely unshaken. For two years, she and her family had hidden Jewish refugees in a secret room behind a false wall in their Haarlem watchmaker's shop. They fed the hungry from their own rations, forged documents, and welcomed strangers into mortal danger — all because Corrie's father, Casper, had taught his children that to fear the Almighty was to love His people without calculation.

When the Gestapo finally came, Casper ten Boom was eighty-four years old. An officer offered him release if he would stop harboring Jews. Casper replied simply, "If I open my door to them, I open my door to God." He died ten days later in prison.

Corrie survived. She spent the next thirty years traveling the world, teaching forgiveness — even extending her hand to a former Ravensbrück guard who approached her after a speaking engagement in Munich. Her heart, steadied by decades of trusting the Most High, did not waver.

Psalm 112 describes exactly this kind of life: a heart so anchored in reverence for God that it remains firm when evil tidings come, generous when resources are thin, and gracious even toward enemies. The righteous, the psalmist promises, will never be shaken. The ten Boom family proved it with their lives.