An Early Thanksgiving Day Story

The family of Corrie ten Boom was from Holland where they ran a watchmakers shop.  They used their shop as a front to hide Jews during the war and were eventually imprisoned in a German concentration camp.  Corrie was the only member of the family to survive the ordeal.  I first met her as a child as my aunt told me stories of her life.  Later on Corrie was sent a written invitation to visit our mountain home for a retreat get-a-way.   Sadly, for us her world speaking schedule did not permit it.  The following is one of her stories of Thanksgiving.   
The move to permanent quarters came the second week of October.  We were marched, ten abreast, along a wind cinder avenue and then into a narrower street of barracks.  Several times the column halted while numbers were read out-names were never used at Ravensbruck.  At last Betsie’s and mine were called: “Prisoner 66729, Prisoner 66730.”  We stepped out of line with a dozen or so others and stared at the long gray front of Barracks 28….A door in the center let us into a large room where two hundred or more women bent over knitting needles.  On tables between them were piles of woolen socks in army gray.

On either side doors opened into two still larger rooms-by far the largest dormitories we had yet seen.  Betsie and I followed a prisoner-guide through the door at the right.  Because of the broken windows the room was in semi-twilight.  Our noses told us, first, that the place was filthy: somewhere plumbing had backed up, the bedding was soiled and rancid.  Then as our eyes adjusted to the gloom, we saw that there were no individual beds at all, but great square piers stacked three high and wedged side by side and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle slicing through. 

We followed our guide single file-the aisle was not wide enough for two-fighting back the claustrophobia of these platforms rising everywhere above us.  The tremendous room was nearly empty of people; they must have been out on various work crews.  At last she pointed to a second tier in the center of a large block.  To reach it we had to stand on the bottom level, haul ourselves up, and then crawl across three other straw platforms to reach the one that we would share with-how many?  The deck above us was too close to let us sit up.  We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw.  We could hear the women who had arrived with us finding their places.

Suddenly I sat up, striking my head on the cross-slat above.  Something had pinched my leg.

“Fleas!” I cried.  “Betsie, the place is swarming with them!”

We scrambled across the intervening platforms, heads low to avoid another bump, dropped down to the aisle, and edged our way to the patch of light.

Here! And here is another one!”  I wailed.   “Betsie, how can we live in such a place?”

“Show us.  Show us how.”  It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying.  More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.

“Corrie!” she said excitedly.  “He gives us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does!  In the Bible this morning.  Where was it?  Read that part again!”

I glanced down the long dim aisle to make sure no guard was in sight, then drew the Bible from its pouch.  “It was in First Thessalonians,” I said.  We were on our third complete reading of the New Testament since leaving Scheveningen.  In the feeble light I turned the pages.  “Here it is: ‘Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all…’”  it seemed written expressly to Ravensbruck.

Go on,” said Betsie.  “That wasn’t all.”

“Oh, yes: ‘…to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus – ‘”

“That’s it Corrie!  That’s His answer. ‘Give thanks in all circumstances!’ That’s what we can do.  We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this barracks!”

I stared at her then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

“Such as?” I said.

“Such as being assigned here together.”

I bit my lip.  “Oh, yes, Lord Jesus!”

"Such as what you’re holding in your hands.”

I looked down at the Bible.  “Yes!  Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here!  Thank You for all the women, here in this room, who will meet you in these pages.”

“Yes,” said Betsie.  “Thank You for the over-crowding here.  Since we’re packed so close, that many more will hear!”  She looked at me expectantly.  “Corrie!”  she prodded.

“Oh all right.  Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds.”

“Thank You,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for – “

The fleas!  This was too much.  “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

"'Give thanks in all circumstances’,” she quoted.  “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’  Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas.  But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong….

One evening I got back to the barracks late from a wood-gathering foray outside the walls.  A light snow lay on the ground and it was hard to find the sticks and twigs with which a small stove was kept going in each room.  Betsie was waiting for me, as always, so that we could wait through the food line together.  Her eyes were twinkling. 

“You’re looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself,” I told her.

“You know we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,”   she said.  “Well – I found out.”

That afternoon, she said, there’d been confusion in the knitting group about sock sizes and they’d asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

"But she wouldn’t.  She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards.  And you know why?”

Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: “Because of the fleas!  That’s what she said, ‘That place is crawling with fleas!’”

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

Photos taken at Tamarack - "The Best of West Virginia