A Prisoner and Yet… by Corrie ten Boom, is a book written to inform us of Corrie’s life in the concentration camps she went through. It is more of a biographical novel; with some parts focusing on her life and the treatment that they underwent and n other parts the book describes scenes when God’s amazing power was shown like a cloud over his people, those who remain faithful to him.
Corrie’s starts this book by telling us about her life in Holland, with her sister, father, Jewish friends, and also with people that she is involved in her church. She lived in the house that the Hiding Place also describes as their house, for it is the same. It was a wood house with a secret compartment. German soldiers who were spying on their house for quite a time capture her, her sister, father, and some Jews a few pages later.
They are then sent to a concentration camp in Holland, were her father dies soon after. Her father was a sick man, a Christian man, and a man longing for Heaven. In this camp, Corrie and Betsie, her sister, make a few friends in their sells and try to evangelize them, with a big success rate. Then, some time after this, Betsie and Corrie are sent to Germany to stay in a camp there, much worse than the Dutch one. In Germany, they are put in barracks, they have tiny beds, sleep in places planned for 40 with 400 people, have scarce food, work almost to death, have to appear on Roll Call (having to wait outside, cold and raining) for hours until they are sent to work or until they are allowed to go back to the barracks.
In this camp, Ravensbruck, they are able to meet a large group of Christian believers and are also able to share their faith with other prisoners, who see their attitude towards their decrepit conditions, and also with the German officers, who see their way of obeying rules and following orders, along with their submission. Corrie and Betsie go through hard times, but we see, in this book, the account of times that God clearly led the circumstances in their favor for them to be allowed to serve him in the best of their capacities, even in their despair. They meet some disconsolate women who just seem they lost all faith that they will return home, so they encourage these women and give them a new hope based on the person of Jesus Christ, “Jesoes Christoes”, the name they used when they reached out to non-Dutch people who didn’t speak the Dutch language.
Some times in their camp life they became seriously ill, but usually it passed. But one time, Betsie became very ill, and even thought it was cold and she was dying, she was obligated to go to roll call. That situation only made her sickness worse, and when next roll call hit, Lony, their supervisor, said that Betsie didn’t have to go and sent her to the hospital. Betsie saddle died a few days later, and that amazingly made Corrie feel release of the weight that was having her sister endure this life. She new for certainty.
Corrie spent a few more months in the camp, helping in the task that Christ gave us to make more disciples and followers. She later received an order to appear after one of the officers, who told her that she was now free. She only understood this when they said to her Lagerentlassenen, the German word for “released from the concentration camp”. The people that were in camp could only leave it when they sign a paper that they were never sick or that they suffered during camp. They also had to leave in good health conditions, so because she had a problem in her feet, she wasn’t aloud to leave in that moment, for she had to recover from it in the hospital barrack. In this hospital she saw the desperation of the people and the way that they were treated, in even worse conditions of health compared with those that lived outside the hospital. Even in here she was able to give hope to those in great distress and help them have the certainty of faith before their sad but imminent death.
When she got better, she was allowed to leave camp and travel back to her Fatherland, Holland. She traveled with another Dutch woman and some Germans. She traveled by train until she reached Holland, were she went to a church. In that church, she was cared for, loved, and she had the biggest meals of all time. After a couple days to recover, she went to her house, were in a short time she began meeting with her church and girls’ group, were she started teaching with a complete new point of view. Her life was a life full of tribulations, but seeing how she kept her faith in Christ shown her profound belief in the person of Christ. I liked this book a very great deal because of this reason. This book can be a hard read because of the way it is divided and because it’s a biography, something not many people like to read.