Would You Be Their Hiding Place?

Corrie Ten Boom became the first female licensed watchmaker in the Netherlands in 1921. A devoted spinster, Corrie worked in her father Otto's clock shop with her sister Betsie, running a youth club for teenage girls on the side. A Calvinist Christian in the Dutch Reformed Church, Corrie focused very much on ways she could help others, but also believed that the Jewish people were very precious in the eyes of God and loved them as equals.

Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie's love for the Jewish people would be put to the test in 1940 when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and she chose to join the Dutch resistance. This would eventually lead to her family opening their home and shop to hide an estimated 800 Jewish families in their clocks and tiny hidden rooms behind hollow walls, and using theft, forgery, bribery, and the black market (a moral dilemma with which she struggled) to provide rations to hundreds of families under her roof.

In 1944 Corrie, her father, and sister were arrested and taken to various camps for political prisoners, eventually ending up in Ravensbrück, where Betsie died but Corrie was somehow released due to a clerical error. Their father had passed just 10 days after his arrest.

Yet 800 men, women, and children, both Jewish families and members of the Dutch resistance, survived the war because of their sacrifice.

In 1971 Corrie Ten Boom wrote the book The Hiding Place, a well-known and well-loved story of her family's courage and selflessness, and often used as a piece of Christian doctrine and even dramatized on Focus On the Family’s Radio Theatre productions.

But now, it would seem, we're at a bit of an impasse.

The Associated Press

Today Donald Trump, in his first day in office, issued 11 executive orders pertaining to immigration, vowing to "begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came." He chose his words carefully, knowing his base would hear "criminal" and think rapists and drug mules. But just as in World War II, "criminal" is relative. Back then it was criminal to have a certain number of Jewish students in a German school. It was criminal for Jews to work in law or even go to medical school. Then it became illegal to attend schools altogether, movie theaters, and sporting events.

Now it's immigrants. It's families from Peru, and Mexico, and Afghanistan, who came here to work hard and achieve everything they were told about in American movies, the "American Dream" they were promised by propaganda from our own government. So they came, they worked, and they paid their way, their taxes, their medical bills, put their kids in school, and sent money home to their families in hopes that they, too, could come to America.

Statista

I don't know what your town looks like, but where we live it's very diverse. White kids are the minority, and there are many, many different languages, holidays, beliefs, and cultures. At our bus stop alone we know families living with four generations under one roof. They are proud to be here and are fighting to gain their citizenship and validation, but it's hard. There's no offer to make the path to legal citizenship easy or attainable if you're making minimum wage. In New Jersey, a sanctuary state, that's just over $15/hour, but most states it's much lower. We have a family of 6 and our simple apartment runs $3700/month. It's not fancy. It doesn't have extras. I'm grateful that we don't live on $15/hour or even $30 with two working parents. Rent alone would take everything and then some.

Reuters

According to the Wall Street Journal the Trump Administration will begin its "large-scale raids" on Chicago starting tomorrow. Then New York City. Then Boston. Then Miami. Then all along the southern border.

“On Tuesday, ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We're going to take the handcuffs off ICE.” - Tom Homan, Border Czar

Meanwhile, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham penned a letter to Trump, offering him 1400 acres of ranchland for a “facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.” Again, "violent criminals." However only 4% of illegal immigrants have any criminal convictions at all, let alone violent, a much lower rate than U.S. citizens. This letter has since been removed from the Texas General Land Office's website with no explanation.

NYS DREAM Act - Higher Ed. Services Corporation

Currently there are about 11 million illegal immigrants on U.S. soil raising families, attending school, working full-time jobs, and paying taxes. According to the Brookings Institution's Tax Policy Center, illegal immigrants paid an estimated $100 billion (with a B) in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. By comparison, a mass deportation program could cost the U.S. over $88 billion annually, for an indeterminant amount of time.

So Christians have a very big decision to make, a chance to "love one another as Jesus loved them." When the gestapo - excuse me - ICE comes knocking, will they turn in their neighbors, their friends, their children's classmates, their clients, their fellow churchgoers, the people they sit next to at holiday concerts and parent-teacher conferences? Or will they be like Corrie, the woman they've honored as the epitome of a Christian for over 40 years? Will they open their homes as a hiding place and send the authorities away? We'll have to see if the 82% of Republicans who claim to be Christian are ready to put their money where their mouth is.

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.