The Hiding Place, part 4

“Ja! Herrein!” called a man's voice.

The guard pushed open the door, gave a straight-armed salute and marched smartly off. The man wore a gun in a leather holster and a beribboned uniform. He removed his hat and I was stark staring into the face of the gentle-mannered man who had visited me in my cell.

“I am Lieutenant Rahms,” he said, stepping to the door to close it behind me. “You're shivering! Here, let me get a fire going.”

He filled a pot-bellied stove from a small coal scuttle, for all the world a kindly German householder entertaining a guest. What if this were all a subtle trap? This kind, human manner-perhaps he had simply found it more effective than brutality in tricking the l truth from affection-starved people. Oh Lord, let no weak gullibility on my part endanger another's life.

“I hope,” the officer was saying, “we won't have many more days this spring as cold as this one.” He drew out a chair for me to sit on.

Warily I accepted it. How strange after three months, to feel chair-back behind me, chair-arms for my hands! The heat from the stove was quickly warming the little room. In spite of myself, I began to relax. I ventured a timid comment about the tulips: “So tall, they must have been beautiful.”

“Oh they were!” he seemed ridiculously pleased. “The best I've ever grown. At home we always have Dutch bulbs.”

We talked about flowers for a while and then he said, “I would like to help you, Miss ten Boom. But you must tell me everything. I may be able to do something, but only if you do not hide anything from me.”

So there it was already. All the friendliness, the kindly concern that I had half-believed in-all a device to elicit information. Well, why not? This man was a professional with a job to do. But I, too, in a small way, was a professional.

For an hour he questioned me, using every psychological trick that the young men of our group had drilled me in. In fact, I felt like a student who has crammed for a difficult exam and then is tested on only the most elementary material. It soon became clear that they believed the Beje had been a headquarters for raids on food ration offices around the country. Of all the illegal activities I had on my conscience this was probably the one I knew least about. Other than receiving the stolen cards each month and passing them on, I knew no details of the operation. Apparently my real ignorance began to show after a while Lieutenant Rahms stopped making notes of my hopelessly stupid answers.

“Your other activities, Miss ten Boom. What would you like to tell me about them?” “Other activities? Oh, you mean-you want to know about my church for mentally retarded people!” And I plunged into an eager account of my efforts at preaching to the feeble-minded.

The lieutenant's eyebrows rose higher and higher. “What a waste of time and energy!” he exploded at last. “If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!' I stared into the man's intelligent blue-gray eyes: true National- Socialist philosophy, I thought, tulip bed or no. And then to my astonishment I heard my own voice saying boldly, “May I tell you the truth, Lieutenant Rahms?” “This hearing, Miss ten Boom, is predicated on the assumption that you will do me that honor.”

“The truth, sir,” I said, swallowing, “is that God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours-so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”

I knew it was madness to talk this way to a Nazi officer. But he said nothing so I plunged ahead. “In the Bible I learned that God values us not for our strength or our brains but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or---a lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Rahms stood up abruptly. “That will be all for today.”

He walked swiftly to the door. “Guard!” I heard footsteps on the gravel path.

“The prisoner will return to her cell.”

From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, pp. 172-173.