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| The Corrie ten Boom House and Museum |
I was told recently that someone asked my friend, ”What's the deal with Marty and the Holocaust?" I sometimes wonder myself.
But here's a start. My grandma moved to our little farm when I was five years-old. She lived in the house that now belongs to me Grandma became the center of my world. I once got up before everyone else at home and ran to her house in the cold morning dew in just my underpants. She found me outside her kitchen door crying, "Grandma, I'm cold!"
Grandma had a shelf of books, mostly paperbacks from her children's English classes. I remember them. I can smell them still. Black Like Me. The Crucible. Fahrenheit 451. Animal Farm. Lord of the Flies. To Kill a Mockingbird.
At age six or seven, those didn't mean much to me. But the book that did was The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom and John and Elizabeth Sherrill.
For one thing, it had pictures which those other books didn't. Also Grandma liked the book , and before I could read it, she told me the story of how the ten Boom family rescued Jews and other people from the Nazis.
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| This was the entrance to the hiding place. The six who hid there had 70 seconds to get in and close it. I couldn't get into it in 70 seconds. |
The bookcase at grandma's hid the nook underneath the stairs where Christmas decorations and other odds and ends were stored. In my imagination, that's where we would hide people when they came to us.
So what's the deal with Marty and the Holocaust? It started with my grandma and Corrie ten Boom.
Two days ago I visited "the Beje," the family nickname for their 500 year-old house, where no one was ever turned away, on Barteljorisstraat, the street where it sits in Haarlem.
I've been in the edge of tears almost constantly lately. And from the moment i entered the house and watch shop, I felt like I was going to break down. I didn't. But I got chills over and over like I was getting the flu. A couple of times when I was asked a question, my voice cracked.
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| The hiding place |
Being in the home where two spinsters and their aged father became key players in the Dutch Resistance in Haarlem was moving.
I won't give away the story. Go read the book or watch the movie (available on YouTube).
