The Hiding Place

The activities of the ten Booms during World War II were part of a broader movement across Holland, often referred to as the Dutch resistance, which stood against the occupying Nazi regime. For the most part, the actions of the resistance were nonviolent, but they could occasionally include acts of sabotage, especially when assisting the Allied advance later in the war. The resistance largely focused on hiding Jewish individuals and other targets of Nazi aggression; this required the broad-scale participation of many Dutch civilians and the use of coded messages, hidden rooms, and other tools of secrecy. Several different networks carried out these activities throughout Holland, many of them independently of other groups. The ten Boom family’s network was one of these groups. The network collectively sheltered hundreds of thousands of people during the war, engaging either the active participation or the passive sympathy of at least a million Dutch citizens.

The Hiding Place holds an important place in the literature of the Dutch resistance and the Holocaust. It is one of several autobiographical works from the period, including, most famously, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, which is also set in Holland. Like Frank’s work, The Hiding Place offers a firsthand account of a home that hid Jewish individuals and engaged in resistance work. The two texts are both told in first-person narrative, from the perspectives of the young Jewish Anne Frank and the Dutch Corrie ten Boom. The Hiding Place also offers an account of life within concentration camps. It addresses both sides of life under occupation: the experience of resistance workers and hideaways, as well as the experience of prisoners in a concentration camp.