The Hiding Place: Ravensbruck Summary & Analysis

For two more days, the train crawls through Germany. Some loaves of bread have been placed in the train and the women pass them around, but there’s no way for the women to relieve themselves and the air stinks. After a while, thirst becomes the dominant concern of the women. Every once in a while, a guard pushes a pail of water in the door, but without any plan or cohesion those nearest drink it all.

After four days, the train car is opened, and the women crawl out on cramped knees. They’re near a lake, with a church on the other side. Some women bring buckets of water for the weak to drink. After a while, the guards—some of them barely more than girls—arrange them in a column and march them down a road. On their way, they pass by local people who seem extraordinarily strong and healthy. The children look at the prisoners with interest, but the adults avert their eyes.

Eventually, an enormous camp comes into view. The women realize with horror that this is Ravensbruck, the “notorious women’s extermination camp.” As they approach, Corrie thinks about the Bible concealed inside her clothes. It seems unimaginable that God designed his teachings for this cruel world.

Marching into the gates, the women wash off in outdoor spigots, surrounding by a squad of guards shouting and swinging their whips. The guards prod them to a large canvas tent, covered with straw. Corrie sinks down, but immediately realizes that the straw is covered with lice. Still, there’s nowhere else to sleep, so they’re forced to endure it. The women pass around a pair of scissors and take turns cutting each other’s hair.

However, at some point the guards drive the women out of the tent, forcing them to lay out their blankets on the hard, unprotected ground. Everyone is distraught, but Betsie starts to sing a hymn in her high, clear voice. The other women join in shakily. In the middle of the night, it starts raining; by morning everyone is soaked and covered in mud.

For two days the women have to stand outside all day and sleep in the mud. Betsie develops a harsh cough and intestinal cramps, which Corrie tries to soothe by wrapping her in Nollie’s sweater and feeding her drops of vitamin oil. However, when they’re finally taken inside for processing, Corrie sees that each woman has to give up her personal belongs, strip down, and walk past the male guards into the shower room.

Corrie knows that Betsie needs the vitamin oil, and she desperately wants to save her Bible. She begins to pray, but suddenly Betsie staggers; it seems like she’s about to faint. Corrie asks permission to use the toilets, and a guard snaps at her to use the drain holes in the shower room. Unwatched in the room, Corrie sees a pile of benches; she quickly hides the sweater, vitamin oil, and Bible under them. When she and Betsie are finally admitted to the shower room, they can hide their possessions under their new prison dresses.

Corrie worries that the Bible is visible under her dress, but she decides to trust in God’s protection. On her way out, the guards body search every woman, but somehow they forget about Corrie and the Bible passes unnoticed. Corrie arrives in another set of temporary barracks “bringing not only the Bible, but a new knowledge of the power of Him whose story it was.” She has to share a bunk with Betsie and three other women, but she’s glad of the body heat and the ability to sleep inside.

Every morning at 4:30, all the women have to gather outside for an excruciatingly long roll call, during which they can hear screams of the prisoners in the nearby punishment barracks. Corrie feels that nothing makes sense, that there is too much suffering to understand. However, she also feels a deep sense of purpose, as she and Betsie spend every available moment sharing the Bible and leading prayers among the desperate and demoralized women. She feels that she lives two separate lives in Ravensbruck—on the tangible level, she is suffering and starving, but in “the life we lived with God,” things “grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.”

Corrie has always believed in the Bible, but reading it now she feels she doesn’t even have to try to have faith—rather, the book is “simply a description of the way things are.” For example, she’s read many times about Jesus’s arrest and humiliation at the hands of the Romans, but she now identifies personally with this story, especially on Fridays when everyone has to strip naked for an interminable medical examination, watched by male guards. One morning, Corrie realizes that Jesus’s captors took his clothes away from him, too.

Eventually, the prisoners are moved from temporary barracks to permanent ones. Corrie hopes that the move will bring a better quality of life—maybe even a nurse to cure Betsie’s cough, as the vitamin oil is running low. However, when they finally arrive at Barracks 28, they see that the building is filthy, smells rancid, and is missing half its windows. Inside are just enormous bunks piled three high.

Corrie discovers the bunks are infested with fleas and asks Betsie how they can possibly live here, but her sister simply asks God to “show us how.” She tells Corrie that the Bible passage they were reading just that morning tells them to “pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances.” Corrie points out that there’s nothing to be thankful for, but Betsie reminds her that they’ve been assigned there together, and that they’ve still have their Bible. She goes on to thank God sincerely for the fleas; when Corrie protests, she responds that the Bible says to give thanks in “all circumstances,” not just “pleasant circumstances.”

When the other women in Barracks 28 arrive home exhausted from hard labor, they are not pleased to share their quarters with new arrivals. The building is so overcrowded that the beds sometimes break, sending their occupants crashing down into the next level. The women are constantly quarreling, and there’s not even a common language in which to communicate.

As Corrie tries to sleep, a group of women are slapping each other in a dispute as to whether the window should be closed or shut. Betsie starts to pray loudly, asking God to “send Your peace into this room.” Eventually, the noise dies down and the women agree to leave the window half-open. Corrie gives thanks for Betsie’s presence.

Here as well the prisoners have to get up before dawn for roll call, which takes place in the increasingly cold square outside the barracks. Everyone is assigned to work crews, and for weeks Betsie and Corrie work in a Siemans factory just outside the camp, doing miserably hard labor that leaves them weak and exhausted. As they shuffle back to the camp at the end of the day, the local people avoid looking at them.

At the camp they line up for their meager dinner and return to the barracks, where Betsie and Corrie lead a nightly prayer service. Each night women from different Christian denominations share hymns, chants, and songs. Afterwards, Betsie reads aloud from the Bible, while other women translate the text into different languages. At such times, Corrie thinks about the many different churches in Haarlem, each fenced off from the others, and concludes that “in darkness God’s truth shines most clear.” For some reason, the guards never enter the dormitory room and catch the women during their service—Corrie is puzzled by this lack of surveillance.

Meanwhile, the vitamin oil bottle, which should have been empty long ago, is still issuing drops of oil. This is especially astounding because Betsie is sharing it with many of the other women, although Corrie is always tempted to hoard it and prioritize her sister’s health. Betsie compares this to a Bible story in which a faithful woman’s oil jar is never empty, but Corrie doesn’t think this is an adequate explanation.

One day, a young Dutch woman who works in the hospital and often steals supplies brings a sack of yeast compound, which can function as a vitamin, to the barracks. Corrie decides to save the yeast until the bottle is finally empty, but that night it won’t produce a single drop.

As winter approaches all the prisoners are issued coats, and Betsie and Corrie are transferred to another work crew, digging up the ground outside the camp wall. This too is grueling labor, and Betsie especially stumbles frequently and is only able to carry tiny amounts of dirt. One day a guard notices her feeble efforts and shouts at her tauntingly, calling her “Madame Baroness” and prodding her to work faster. Corrie feels like she could kill this woman, but Betsie just laughs, admitting that she is too weak to be a good worker. The young guard hits Betsie with her crop and Corrie almost rushes at her before Betsie stops her. Blood is pooling on Betsie’s cheek, but she tells Corrie to “look at Jesus only.”

Betsie begins to cough up blood, but her fever is too low for admittance into the hospital. Corrie hates going to the hospital ward, which is full of the sickest and most suffering women, but Betsie sees it just as another “setting in which to talk about Jesus.” No matter where she is, she always speaks to the people around her about “His nearness and His yearning to come into their lives.”

At last, Betsie’s fever becomes high enough and she’s admitted into the hospital. Reluctantly, Corrie leaves her there and goes back to the barracks, where other women are conducting the service in their place. As she climbs into her bunk, she reflects on the improvement Betsie has wrought on the barracks –the women are polite and kind to each other since her arrival. Still, even packed in with so many people, Corrie feels “miserably alone.”