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“REMEMBERING D-DAY AND THE LIBERATION OF CORRIE TEN BOOM”
Kendall Wingrove
Award of Outstanding Merit - $1,000

Kendall Wingrove is a press secretary with the Michigan House of Representatives and a freelance writer. His commentaries and feature articles earned him a 2004 Media Excellence Award from the National Foundation for Women Legislators. Kendall has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Central Michigan University and a Master’s in journalism from Michigan State University. Kendall and his wife Molly live in East Lansing, MI with their two children.

In Amsterdam, Anne Frank heard the startling bulletin over the wireless in her attic hideaway.

“This is D-Day, came the announcement over the English News,” she wrote in her diary. Then in English, she penned, “This is THE day.”

That memorable scene is just one of the images captured by the late Stephen Ambrose in “D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.”

As we observe the 60th anniversary of this landmark event, historians like Ambrose help us remember the sacrifices necessary to liberate Europe. Victory came at a great cost, with thousands of Allied casualties.

It was a pivotal moment in the 20th century. While freedom forces launched a long-awaited invasion to topple Hitler’s Nazi regime, an anxious world held its breath. In the United States, baseball games were canceled. Broadway shut down. Columbus, Ohio came to a stop as cars, buses, trucks and pedestrians halted and people prayed. The New York Daily News threw out its lead articles and instead printed the Lord’s Prayer.

The editors of the New York Times said: “We have come to the hour for which we were born. We go forth to meet the supreme test of our arms and of our souls, the test of the maturity of our faith...We pray for the boys we know and for millions of unknown boys who are equally a part of us...The cause prays for itself, for it is the cause of the God who created man free and equal.”

Not everyone who fought in this noble cause wore a uniform, but they also paid a price for resisting evil. Among them was a middle-aged Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom. Her family was part of the underground movement in Holland that hid Jewish refugees from the Gestapo. Like Anne Frank, the ten Booms were eventually betrayed. During her imprisonment, the maturity of Corrie’s faith would face the supreme test.

As the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, Corrie and her sister Betsie were also on the move. On June 6, 1944, they were transported to Vught, a concentration camp in Holland. It was a descent into Hell.

The ten Boom sisters endured gloomy cells with small, barred windows. Months after their elderly father had died in confinement, they listened in agony as the husbands, sons and brothers of other women inmates were shot to death.

Still more horrors awaited them at Ravensbruck, a camp in Germany where thousands died of disease or were executed. Struggling with every indignity imaginable, Corrie and her sister clung even tighter to their faith.

Whenever lonely and afraid, Corrie remembered Psalm 91, the last scripture she and her father shared after their arrest: “You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

These prophetic verses sustained Corrie, even when the harsh conditions took their toll on Betsie. Not long after her sister died in late 1944, Corrie was inexplicably freed.

Long before the Nazis let her go, Corrie’s freedom was secure. She had been liberated by the love of Jesus. In the years that followed, she slowly surrendered her anger at those who killed her family. It wasn’t easy, but Corrie eventually forgave one of the prison guards from Ravensbruck and the man who betrayed her family.

Millions responded to Corrie’s message. During the next 30 years, she visited more than 60 countries sharing the Gospel with everyone from convicts in prison to government leaders.

Her ministry was described by Joseph centuries ago in Genesis 50:20: “You intended to harm me but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Corrie ten Boom rescued many disheartened souls in her long and productive life. The battle between good and evil continues, but we can be thankful that the same Biblical wisdom that inspired Corrie can also help us. This is THE day to follow her example and liberate ourselves from the bondage of sin.

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