Though none of this was by design, it proved to be the best possible setting for those who had been imprisoned in Germany. Among themselves they tended to live and relive their special woes; in Bloemendaal they were reminded that they were not the only ones who had suffered. And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive: the neighbor who had reported him, the brutal guard, the sadistic soldier.
Strangely enough, it was not the Germans or the Japanese that people had most trouble forgiving; it was their fellow Dutchmen who had sided with the enemy. I saw them frequently in the streets, NsBers with their shaved heads and furtive eyes. These former collaborators were now in pitiful condition, turned out of homes and apartments, unable to find jobs, hooted at in the streets.
At first it seemed to me that we should invite them, too, to Bloemendaal, to live side by side with those they had injured, to seek a new compassion on both sides. But it turned out to be too soon for people working their way back from such hurt: the two times I tried it, it ended in open fights. And so as soon as homes and schools for the feeble-minded opened again around the country, I turned the Beje over to these former NsBers.
This was how it went, those years after the war, experimenting, making mistakes, learning. The doctors, psychiatrists, and nutritionists who came free of charge to any place that cared for war victims, sometimes expressed surprise at our loose-run ways. At morning and evening worship, people drifted in and out, table manners were atrocious, one man took a walk into Haarlem every morning at 3:00 A.M. I could not bring myself to sound a whistle or to scold, or to consider gates or curfews.
And, sure enough, in their own time and their own way, people worked out the deep pain within them. It most often started, as Betsie had known it would, in the garden. As flowers bloomed or vegetables ripened, talk was less of the bitter past, more of tomorrow's weather. As their horizons broadened, I would tell them about the people living in the Beje, people who never had a visitor, never a piece of mail. When mention of the NsBers no longer brought a volley of self-righteous wrath, I knew the person's healing was not far away. And the day he said, “Those people you spoke of---I wonder if they'd care for some homegrown carrots,” then I knew the miracle had taken place.
Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, pp. 246-247.
Believers such as myself can easily fall into a saccharine view of forgiveness, seeing the joy of reconciliation but neglecting the hardship required to reach that point. Forgiveness may hurt. Even if our hearts are filled with compassion for others, society-at-large may only harbor contempt. Reaching out to the condemned may bring ostracism for ourselves, too.
Another point: it is easy to imagine loving the "deserving," those who suffer via some seemingly cruel twist of fate--a calamity that could befall anyone, including us. Yet who imagines love for the unworthy, those who have brought calamity upon themselves, those who have committed or condoned atrocity? And yet Christ commanded us not only to attend to the hungry, and the parched, and the naked, but the imprisoned, as well. And he made no qualifications: he did not hedge with qualifiers such as the wrongfully incarcerated, or the minor offenders, or the well-behaved. He calls us to love the damned--the rightfully damned.
Caring for them, more likely than not, will be bittersweet. We cannot approach them with naivete; tough love may be needed. They are not monsters, though the temptation to call them that is strong. Many have done monstrous things, and their bodies are scarred, their souls are disfigured. This ugliness has been wrought by their own hands, sullied by blood. But we know of the Fount of blood that washes, heals, renews. When the ugliness is cleared away, we may find they were not monsters, but sons and brothers.
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