The Radiance of Ravensbrück

In the winter of 1944, Corrie ten Boom huddled with her sister Betsie in Barracks 28 of Ravensbrück concentration camp. The stench was unbearable. Fleas infested every bunk. Guards patrolled with casual cruelty. Yet each evening, by dim light filtering through filthy windows, the ten Boom sisters gathered women around a smuggled Bible and whispered the psalms aloud.

Betsie, gaunt and growing weaker by the day, insisted they give thanks — even for the fleas. It seemed absurd. But those fleas kept the guards away from their barracks, giving the women freedom to worship openly. Betsie had tasted something the guards could not confiscate.

Corrie later wrote that her sister's face in those final weeks carried a brightness that defied their surroundings. Women who had lost everything — family, home, dignity — would look at Betsie and find themselves drawn to pray. "Those who look to Him are radiant," David sang, and Betsie ten Boom proved it in the darkest place on earth.

She died in Ravensbrück just days before Corrie's miraculous release. But the women who had gathered around that tattered Bible carried something with them into freedom. They had sought the Lord, and He answered. They had tasted and seen that He is good — even in a place designed to strip away every last evidence of His goodness.