Ravensbruck Prayer

The Ten Boom family who lived in the Netherlands were devout Christians who joined the Dutch resistant movement to hide Jews from Nazi authorities during WWII.  They constructed a hiding place for six people in their home who could be sequestered for several days until another “safe house” could be located for them.  An estimated 800 people made their way through the Ten Boom rescue network.  In 1944, an informant reported their activities to the Nazi authorities, leading to their arrest, although the six Jews hiding in the secret room were never found and made it to safety.  The father of the Ten Boom family died in prison ten days later and sisters, Betsie and Corrie, were sentenced to the Ravensbruck concentration camp for women and children.   They were two of the 132,000 political and religious prisoners incarcerated at the camp from 1939-1945.  Betsie was one of 50,000 who died there.  Betsie said to Corrie before she died, “There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still.”  Corrie was later released due to a clerical error shortly before others in her barracks went to the gas chamber. After the war, Corrie opened a rehabilitation center for concentration camp survivors and wrote The Hiding Place as a testimony to Christ’s presence during horrendous evil.  Today’s prayer from an unknown author in the Ravensbruck camp was scrawled on wrapping paper found near the body of dead girl after the camp was liberated by Allied forces.  It’s one of the most powerful prayers on forgiveness I have ever read, the closest I have known to Jesus’ words on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34).