The Hiding Place
We stood in the doorway and gaped. The smell of fresh paint was everywhere. But surely nothing in this room was newly painted! All four walls had that streaked and grimy look that old rooms got in coal-burning Haarlem. The ancient molding ran unbroken around the ceiling, chipped and peeling here and there, obviously undisturbed for a hundred and fifty years. Old water stains streaked the back wall, a wall that even I who had lived half a century in this room, could scarcely believe was not the original, but set back a precious two-and-a-half-feet from the true wall of the building.
Built-in bookshelves ran along this false wall, old, sagging shelves whose blistered wood bore the same water stains as the wall behind them. Down in the far lefthand corner, beneath the bottom shelf, a sliding panel, two feet high and two wide, opened into the secret room.
Mr. Smit stooped and silently pulled this panel up. On hands and knees Betsie and I crawled into the narrow room behind it. Once inside we could stand up, sit, or even stretch out one at a time on the single mattress. A concealed vent, cunningly let into the real wall, allowed air to enter from outside.
“Keep a water jug there,” said Mr. Smit, crawling in behind us. “Change the water only once a week. Hardtack and vitamins keep indefinitely. Anytime there is anyone in the house whose presence is unofficial, all possessions except the clothes actually on his back must be stored in here.”
Dropping to our knees again, we crawled single file out into my bedroom. “Move back into this room,” he told me. “Everything exactly as before.”
With his fist he struck the wall above the bookshelves.
“The Gestapo could search for a year,” he said. “They’ll never find this one.”
© The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill.
Used by permssion of Chosen Books LLC , Mount Kisco, NY
The Hiding Place
During the 1930s, Nazi hatred toward Jews in Holland increased daily. In this time of fear, a watchmaker named Corrie ten Boom, her sister Betsie and their father chose to take a stand. They joined the Dutch resistance and shielded their Jewish neighbors. Said Corrie, “This was not my business, but God’s.” The Hiding Place is her story.
The family’s old watch shop had a secret room. It was the perfect hiding place—or was it? The ten Booms were betrayed and thrown into the brutality of the concentration camps, but Corrie—the only surviving ten Boom—discovered the truth that would sustain her: “No pit is so deep that the love of God is not deeper still!”
Corrie ten Boom’s story will touch your deepest heart.
Hardcover Book : 288 pages
Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers Inc ( January 01, 2006 )
Item #: 12-784923
ISBN: 9781598563399
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.75inches
Product Weight: 12.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
heartrending 
December 26, 2012
if you ever want to know what the heart of Jesus would like us to be, this is the book for you. so loving is corrie ten boom in the face of such tragedy. it made my tears fall and my heart soar.
Reviewer: kathleen r
Important reading 
October 04, 2010
I read this book when I was a young person and now reading it as an adult I have a different perspective. I can see a firm and abiding faith especially in the face of persecution. I think this is a book that records history from a view that is amazingly accurate and fading fast from any source available in history books now.
Reviewer: Debbie C
She shows us how to live a Christian life.
February 20, 2010
We all try to live according to our beliefs but Corrie actually does it to the Nth degree. It is eye opening what a non-Jew went through during WWII in an occupied country. Her compassion and intelligence shows what a woman could do even back then. Her father and sister's strong beliefs are clearly visible in her choices. I'm not sure I could be as strong or forgiving in her situation. I can't see myself surviving the three camps/jails she was in for so long. After the war she never stopped trying to help people. Her whole life was devoted to it.
Reviewer: Valerie
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