Haarlem - Corrie Ten Boom

Another daytrip we took from Amsterdam was to Haarlem, a short train ride away. Here we wanted to tour the Coorie Ten Boom House. If you do not know Corrie Ten Boom's story, she was apart of the resistance during WWII and helped many refugees, including Jews, go into hiding. Her family owned the Jewelry shop in the picture (now with a different owner) which was actually a watch shop back then. The Ten Boom family lived above the shop in a good sized apartment. The Ten Boom's were a modest Christian family that seem like they would have done anything to help someone. They hid a lot of people during those years as their house was a transfer house. See the pictures below ofor their brilliant plan of how they carried this out. The family was eventually caught and sent off to concentration camps. Corrie survived the camp, was released on Christmas Day and later learned that her release was a clerical error. The women her age were put to death the week after she was released. She said, "God does not have problems. Only plans." She went on to share her story with millions of people. If you want to learn more there is a book about Corrie Ten Boom's life called "The Hiding Place."

What was once a watch shop is now a jewelry store:
The living room where they put on skits, sang songs and gathered for praise and worship.
The hiding place is at the bottom of this linen closest. The board was attached to a pulley system which lifted up for people to enter and of course pushed down to look just like the rest of the closest. The closest and wall is a fake wall and behind is an area the size of a wardrobe where people hid during danger (an alarm system alerted them to get there quickly, they even practiced drills to cut the time down to one minute).

This is how to get to the hiding place.
Liz, Stacy and I are standing in the hiding spot.
The day that the Ten Boom's were arrested there were people hiding here. The police knew people were hiding somewhere in the house and watched over the house day and night for several days. Can you imagine being stuck behind here for that long? They never found the hiding place or the people in it as the police on duty one night were part of the resistance and they helped them to escape.
One thing I loved about this tour is that is was run by a Christian group whose goal was to share the gospel through the Ten Boom's story. Praise God!
After our tour, we walked through a market:
Dutch cheese is delicious!
More tulips: