2차 대전 때, 네덜란드의 악명 높은 라벤슨부르크 수용소에서 하느님(God)의 은총으로 목숨을 건진 코리 텐 붐(Corrie Ten Boom) 은 신앙 간증에서 다음 같이 당시의 악몽을 전해주고 있습니다. 그의 아버지 Casper Boom 은 하느님 말씀에 따라 사는 사람이었는데 카스퍼는 독일군에 쫓기는 유대인들을 자기 지하에 이중벽을 만들어 놓고 숨겨주곤 하였습니다. 물론 발각되면 전 가족이 몰살되거나 가스실이 있는 강제 수용소로 보내지게 되어있는 실정이었습니다. 그런 위험한 상황에서 그의 둘째 딸 코리는 늘 불안해 하였습니다. 발각되면 처형당하게 될 위험에서 둘째 딸 코리 텐 붐(Corrie Ten Boom)이 죽음의 공포를 느낀 나머지 엄마에게 물었습니다. 엄마, 우리가 잡히면 어떻게 죽나요? 어디로 끌려가나요? 엄마가 대답했습니다. 사랑하는 딸 코리야, 너무 걱정하지 말아라. 모든 것을 주님께 맡겨라. 진인사 대천명이라고 하느님께 맡기는 수 밖에 다른 방법이 없지않느냐? 기도나 정성껏 하자구나. 그런데 코리가족은 어느날 그들을 도와주던 어느 유태인의 밀고로 악명 높은 라벤슨부르크 수용소로 투옥이 되어 영어의 신세가 되었습니다. 수용소 생활에서 굶주림과 고문 등으로 동생 코리가 정신 이상을 가져올 정도로 정신 공황에 빠졌을 때 그이 언니, 벳시(Betsie)가 간절히 수용소에서 하느님께 기도를 올렸습니다. 하느님, 시련을 주셔서 감사 합니다. 저희 가족에게 은총을 허락해 주십시요. 저희 뜻대로 하지 마시고 하느님 뜻대로 해주십시요. 이곳 라벤슨 수용소에서 저희 가족을 위해 하느님께서 무엇을 준비하셨나요? 언니의 간절한 기도 모습을 보고 동생 코리도 용기를 얻고 기도를 같이 하였습니다. 그러나 간절한 기도에도 불구하고 아버지는 처참한 고문과 함께 가스실의 이슬로 사라졌고 언니도 굶주림으로 죽게됩니다. 너무 허탈감에 빠진 코리는 죽어가는 언니에게 절규합니다. 하느님께서 우리를 져버리셨어. 우리의 기도에 응답 안하셨잖아. 하느님이 미워. 그때 언니가 조용히 말하기를, 코리야 안그래 하느님은 우리와 항상 함께 계시단다. 하느님의 자비(Mercy)에 맡기자. 하늘이 땅보다 높은 것처럼 하느님의 사랑은 너무 크시잖아. 우리를 지켜주고 계셔. 우리 눈으로 보지 못할 뿐이야. 하느님 사랑은 변함이 없어, 하고 동생을 달랩니다. 긴박한 상황입니다. 2차 대전이 종료된 후, 코리는 극적으로 구출이됩니다. 한편의 드라마 같은 내용 입니다. 코리는 그후 나치라는 말만 들어도 치를 떨고 늘 악몽에서 시달리고 꿈에서 조차 정신적 고통을 느낍니다. 정신과 병원에도 찾아갑니다. 그런 코리에게 하느님께서는 계시를 주십니다. "원수를 사랑하라는 계시를 말입니다" 아빠 엄마를 죽인 독일인들을 증오하지만 말고 사랑해라. 독일인에게 찾아가 하나님의 사랑과 용서를 전해 주거라. 처음에는 하느님의 말씀을 의심하였지만 코리는 용기를 내어 순명하면서 용서를 전하는 유명한 여성설교자로 신앙의 간증자로 하느님의 충실한 종이 됩니다. 그런데, 어느날 한 성당 모임에서 간증을 마치고 그녀의 간증에 감동한 찬석자들과 친교를 나누는 자리에서 코리와 악수하려고 줄을 서 있는 사람들 가운데 아주 많이 낯이 익은 얼굴이 보였습니다. 바로 라벤스부르크 수용소에서 언니와 자신의 어린몸을 발가벗기고 모진 고문을 하던 간수였습니다. 그 모습을 보자 죽어 가던 언니의 모습이 떠오르고 피가 거꾸로 솟구쳤습니다. 그 순간 “하느님! 저 사람 만은 용서 못해요.”라고 뇌까릴 때 하느님은 조용히 말씀해 주셨습니다. “그도 용서해라.” 코리는 하느님께 즉시 순명하고 손을 내밀어 그 간수를 끌어안고 다음과 같이 말했다고 합니다. “ 하느님은 당신을 사랑합니다." 그 말을 전할 때 코리는 천상의 기쁨을 느꼈다고 합니다, 나중에 그 기쁨을 코리는 이렇게 표현했습니다. 하느님은 사랑의 하느님, 자비의 하느님, 진리의 하느님이십니다. 우리의 행복은 하느님의 사랑과 자비에 온전히 의탁하는 것입니다. 하느님의 사랑과 자비에 의탁할 때 우리도 사랑을 베풀 수 있고 원수까지도 사랑할 수 있는 것입니다. 원수까지도 사랑하라는 복음 말씀을 실천한 코리의 선행이 아름답기만 합니다. 코리는 92세를 일기로 1983년에 하느님 품으로 돌아갔습니다. 다음 내용은 코리 텐 붐(Corrie Ten Boom)에 관한 자료입니다.
Cornelia Johanna Arnalda ten Boom, generally known as Corrie ten
Boom, (1892 – 1983) was a Dutch Christian Holocaust
survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War
II. Ten Boom co-wrote her autobiography, The Hiding
Place, which was later made into a movie of the
same name. In December, 1967, Ten Boom was honored as one of the Righteous Among
the Nations by the State of Israel. Ten
Boom was born in Haarlem, North
Holland, the youngest of four children. Her mother died of a stroke. Her
father, she reports, was a well-liked watch repairman. Her sister Betsie was
born with pernicious anemia and
never married. According to Ten Boom, her brother Willem was obsessed with
politics, graduated from a theology school, and always saw the dark side of
things. He married and fathered four children. Her last sibling, Nollie, also
married, and had six children. Ten Boom herself never married. She said in later
life that she had had one love, Karel, from the age of fourteen to her early
twenties. After Karel married another woman, she vowed that she would never love
another man. The Ten Boom family was by all accounts a family with strong
Christian beliefs. According to The Hiding Place, in 1918, the family took in the first
of many children that they would shelter over the years. She began training as a
watchmaker in 1920
and in 1922 became
the first female watchmaker licensed in the Netherlands. In 1923, she helped organize girls'
clubs, and in the 1930s these clubs grew to become
the very large Triangle
club. In 1940,
the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and banned Ten Boom's club organization. By 1942, she and her family
had become very active in the Dutch underground,
hiding refugees. They rescued many Jews from certain death at the hands of the
Nazi SS. They helped Jews
without forcing conversions, and even provided Kosher food and honored the Sabbath. The
Germans arrested the entire Ten Boom family on February 28, 1944 with the help of a Dutch
informant (Ten Boom would later discover his name to be Jan Vogel). They were
sent first to Scheveningen prison, then
to the Vught
political concentration camp
(both in the Netherlands), and finally to the notorious Ravensbrück
concentration camp in Germany in September 1944, where
Ten Boom's sister Betsie died. Ten Boom was released in December 1944.[2] In the
movie The Hiding Place, Ten Boom narrates the section on her release from
camp, saying that she later learned that her release had been a clerical error.
The women prisoners her age in the camp were killed the week following her
release.After the war, Ten Boom returned to the Netherlands to set up rehabilitation
centres. She returned to Germany in 1946, and many years of itinerant
preaching in over sixty countries followed, during which time she wrote many
books.
Ten Boom told the story of her family and their work during World War
II in her most famous book, The Hiding Place (1971), which was made
into a film by World Wide Pictures
in 1975. The book and film give context to the story of Anne Frank, who was also in
hiding in the Netherlands during the war. In 1977, Ten Boom, then 85 years old,
moved to Orange, California.
Successive strokes in 1978 took away her powers of speech
and communication and left her an invalid. She died on April 15, 1983, on her ninety-first birthday.
She was said to have been happy about dying on
her birthday because she could "celebrate it with the Lord".Ten Boom was
honoured by the State of Israel for her work in aid of the Jewish people. She
was invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, at the Yad
Vashem, near Jerusalem. Oskar Schindler is also
honoured there. Rabbi Daniel Lapin has commented
with regret on how little Corrie ten Boom is known among American
Jews, and also how she has been ignored in the U.S. by the Holocaust Memorial
Museum. However, Ten Boom was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in
recognition of her work during the war, and a museum in the Dutch city of Haarlem is
dedicated to her and her family. Her preaching focused on the Christian Gospel, with
emphasis on forgiveness. In her book
Tramp for the
Lord (1974), she tells the story of how, after she had been preaching in
Germany in 1947, she was approached by one of the cruelest former Ravensbrück
camp guards. She was reluctant to forgive him, but prayed that she would be able
to. She wrote that,
For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the
former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did
then.
She also wrote (in the same passage) that in her post-war experience with
other victims of Nazi brutality, it was those who were able to forgive who were
best able to rebuild their lives.
She is known for her rejection of the Pre-Tribulation
Rapture doctrine. Her writings claim that it is without Biblical foundation,
and she has claimed that the doctrine left the Christian Church ill-prepared in
times of great persecution, such as in China under Mao Zedong. The Hiding Place
(biography) is a 1971 book on the life of
Corrie ten Boom, written by Corrie
together with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. The idea of a book on Corrie's life began as John and Elizabeth
Sherrill were doing research for the book God's
Smuggler, about Corrie ten Boom's fellow Dutchman, Brother Andrew.
Corrie was already in her mid-seventies when the Sherills first heard about her.
She was one of Brother Andrew's favorite traveling companions and many of his
recollections were about her. In the preface to the book, the Sherills recount:
...his [Brother Andrew's] fascinating stories about her in Vietnam, where she
had earned that most honorable title "Double-old Grandmother" - and in a dozen
other Communist countries - came to mind so often that we finally had to hold up
her hands to stop his flow of reminiscence. "We could never fit her into the
book," we said. "She sounds like a book in herself." It's the sort of thing you
say. Not meaning anything. It was later made into a film of the same name. The title refers not to the physical hiding place where the ten Boom
family secreted Jews from the Nazis, but rather to God, as in Psalm 32:7: "You are my hiding
place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of
deliverance." The book opens in 1937. The ten Boom family is
celebrating the 100th anniversary of the family watch and watch repair business,
now run by the family's elderly father, Casper. The business takes up the ground
floor of the family home (known as the Beje). Casper lives with his unmarried
daughters Corrie (the narrator and a watchmaker herself) and Betsie, who takes
care of the house. It seems everyone in the Dutch town of Haarlem has shown up to the party,
including Corrie's sister Nollie, her brother, Willem, and her nephews Peter and
Kik. Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church brings a
Jewish man, who had just escaped from Germany, as a guest. The man's
beard had been burned off by some thugs, a reminder of what was happening to the
east of Holland. In the next few chapters, Corrie talks about her childhood, her
infirm but glad-hearted mother, and the three aunts who once lived in the Beje.
She talks about the only man she ever loved, a young man named Karel, who
ultimately married a woman from a rich family. Eventually, both Nollie and
Willem marry. After the deaths of Corrie's mother and aunts, Corrie, Betsie, and
their father settle down into a pleasant domestic life. Then, in 1940, the
Nazis invade Holland.
Due to the family's strong Christian beliefs, they feel
obligated to help their Jewish friends in every way
possible. Soon, the Beje is the center for a major anti-Nazi operation. Corrie,
who had grown to think of herself as a middle-aged spinster, finds herself
involved in black market operations, stealing
ration cards, and eventually,
hiding Jews in her own home. Corrie suffers a moral crisis over this work; not
from helping the Jews, but from what she has to do to accomplish this: lying,
theft, forgery, bribery, and even arranging a
robbery. The Dutch underground arranges for a
secret room to be built in the Beje, so the Jews would have a place to hide in
the event of the inevitable raid. When a man asks Corrie to help his wife, who
had been arrested, Corrie agrees, but with misgivings. As it turns out, the man
was a spy, and the watch shop is raided. The entire ten Boom family is arrested,
along with the shop employees, though the Jews manage to hide themselves in the
secret room. Casper is well into his eighties by this time, and a Nazi official
offers to let him go, provided he makes no more trouble. Casper cannot agree to
this, and is shipped to prison. It is later learned he died shortly after.
Corrie is sent to Scheveningen, a Dutch prison which
was used by the Nazis for political prisoners, nicknamed 'Oranjehotel'--a hotel
for people loyal to the House of Orange. She later learns
her sister is being held in another cell, and that, aside from her father, all
other family members and friends have been released. A coded letter from Nollie
reveals that the hidden Jews were safe. Corrie befriends a depressed Nazi
officer, who arranges a brief meeting with her family, under the pretense of
reading Casper's will. She is horrified to see how ill Willem is, as he had
contracted jaundice in prison. He would
eventually die from this in 1946. Corrie also learns that her
nephew, Kik, had been captured while working with the Dutch underground. He had
been killed, though the family did not learn of this until 1953. After four months at
Scheveningen, Corrie and Betsie are transferred to Vught, a Dutch concentration camp
for political prisoners. Corrie is assigned to a factory that makes radios for
aircraft. The work is not hard, and the prisoner-foreman, Mr. Moorman, is kind.
Betsie, whose health is starting to fail, is sent to work sewing prison
uniforms. When a counter-offensive against the Nazis seems imminent, the
prisoners are shipped by train to Germany, where they are imprisoned at
Ravensbrück, a notorious women's
concentration camp. The conditions
there are hellish; both Corrie and Betsie are forced to perform back-breaking
manual labor. It is there that Betsie's health fails and she dies. Corrie is
later released, due to what later proves a clerical error. Though she is forced
to stay in a hospital barracks while recovering from edema, Corrie arrives back in
Holland by January of 1945. Throughout the ordeal, Corrie
is amazed at her sister's faith. In every camp, the sisters use a hidden
Bible to teach
their fellow prisoners about Jesus. In Ravensbrück, where there was only hatred
and misery, Corrie finds it hard to look to Heaven. Betsie, however, shows an
universal love for everyone. Not only for the prisoners, but, amazingly for the
Nazis. Instead of feeling anger, she pities the Germans, sorrowful that they are
so blinded by hatred. She yearns to show them the love of Christ, but dies
before the war is over. After the war, Corrie begins to put her sister's dream
into action. Using the Beje, along with a donated mansion, and even an old
concentration camp, Corrie begins ministering to those hurt by the war--Dutch
and German alike. Corrie's own faith is put to the test, when, after preaching
in Germany, she meets a former guard who humiliated her sister. It is then she
decides that God's love can conquer all. The book details the moral dilemmas
faced by Corrie and her religious family. While she lies and deals in stolen
ration cards to protect Jews, her sister Nollie maintains a strict honesty which
results in her revealing the presence of a Jew, who is arrested. Corrie is
appalled, but the Jew is released from captivity soon after . Corrie is also
asked by a police chief if she can provide help with killing a Dutch Nazi
informer; Corrie suggests praying instead, but the incident is not resolved.
The book also emphasizes the "governance of God in
all things". For example, Corrie's sister Betsie thanks God for the fleas in
Ravensbrück, and later Corrie realizes that these fleas keep the guards at bay).
A worksheet at the back of the book invites readers to adopt the same attitude.
Corrie and her ghostwriters were all Pentecostals, and miracles are
strongly inferred in the text. At one point, Corrie gets out of bed in the night
and so avoids being hit by shrapnel . When Corrie prays, an elderly asthmatic
Jew in hiding stops wheezing. In Ravensbrück, a Bible gets smuggled past an
inspection, and a medicinal bottle keeps producing drops longer than it should .
Betsie’s body looks restored to health after death. There are also a number of
supernatural visions included in the story: Corrie has a vision of herself and
some friends and relatives being taken away from the town square, before this
really happens ; in Ravensbrück, Betsie has a vision of a large mansion being
used to rehabilitate released prisoners, and of a camp being painted up and
decorated, which come to pass through seeming coincidences after the war. Betsie
also correctly predicts Corrie’s release date. Jews are considered to be
particularly holy; Corrie’s father states that he feels sorry for the Germans
because "they have touched the apple of God’s eye"
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