When the Nazis began deporting Jews to the death camps, the ten Boom family opened their home, risking their lives to provide the famous Hiding Place. Today that home and watch shop in the Netherlands is owned and operated as a museum by our ministry. We are doing everything that we can to keep this vital story from being forgotten.
In 1944, the ten Boom prayer meeting came to an end when the Gestapo raided the home, arresting Caspar ten Boom, his daughters Betsie and Corrie, and his son Willem. Because Caspar was 84 years of age, they offered to let him go if he would promise to stop helping and hiding Jewish people. He refused, saying, “It would be the greatest honor of my life to die for God’s Chosen People.” Two weeks later he passed away and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Betsie also died in a prison camp, but Corrie ten Boom survived Ravensbrück—released through a “clerical error” not long before all the prisoners in the camp were killed. She traveled around the world telling the story of her family. I had the privilege of meeting her in Texarkana many years ago. I did not know who she was, but saw her
carrying her luggage into a hotel and went across the street to help. We shared a meal together, and I was able to tell her my family story and listen to her firsthand account of all that she endured.
Today we are carrying on in the spirit of love for the Jewish people that motivated the ten Boom family to risk and sacrifice so much. We are continuing that 100-year prayer meeting. The Jerusalem Prayer Team has united millions of Believers together to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the protection of Israel. The largest prayer army in the history of the world has its headquarters at your Friends of Zion Center located just 600 meters from the Temple Mount in the Holy City.
From this place we are not just praying, but like the ten Booms did we are putting feet to our prayers. We are delivering food to thousands of poor Holocaust survivors each week. We are welcoming those who have suffered injury and loss in terrorist attacks to help them heal. We are hosting elderly Holocaust survivors as they come to the Holy City, showing them Christian love in a way most of them have never experienced. We are bringing all the members of the IDF—the Israel Defense Forces—to the Friends of Zion Museum as part of their training.
The list goes on and on. But it is all made possible by the generous support of friends like you…Friends of Zion who are truly making a difference. Thank you so much for being part of this vital ministry, and for all you are doing for the sake of God’s Chosen People.
”Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.” – Corrie Ten Boom
