Casper Ten Boom: Faithful in Small Things

by Martha Hutchens

Casper Ten Boom, Public Domain
sourced from Yad Vashem

Most people have heard about Corrie ten Boom. She lived the first fifty years of her life quietly working in her family’s watch shop, but when the Germans invaded Holland she put together a large organization dedicated to saving Jewish lives. What’s more she did it almost accidentally. Or to be more accurate, as she says herself, God used her to organize it.

I first read The Hiding Place many years ago. It gives snapshots of a lot of people in the Ten Boom family who worked to save people from the German occupation. But the three that we see the most are Corrie, her sister Betsie, and her father Casper. It’s Casper that I want to talk about today.

Casper was born in May of 1859. As an adult he took over his father’s watch shop, where he repaired and sold watches and clocks. The opening scene of The Hiding Place is of the party the ten Booms held on the hundredth anniversary of their shop. This was in January of 1937.

It seemed that the entire town of Haarlem showed up for the party. Later on in the book, Corrie refers to her father as Haarlem’s grand old man, and this scene certainly supports that idea. Casper was seventy-seven on this date and had lived a remarkable life. But it was a quiet life. Casper and his wife, Cornelia, had four children. They lived in rooms above their watch shop, rooms that had originally been two living places and where the walls and floors never quite lined up. Cornelia’s sisters moved in with them, and Casper also reached out to multiple young people who did not have a place to go. In all, he and Cornelia raised four children and ten foster children.

Image by @gitanna, Deposit Photos

But this was not all they did. Somehow, even though the shop never seemed successful, it not only supported all these people, but it also supported carrying food and gifts to people in need all around Haarlem. Corrie notes that many people came to the watch shop not specifically to buy something or to get something repaired, but to talk with Casper, and sometimes to pray with him.

Casper kept the astronomical clock in his shop. Corrie talks about the railroad men and other people who needed to know the exact time coming to check their watches by his clock. What stuck out to me was the care that Casper took in keeping that clock running. Once a week for decades he traveled by train to Amsterdam to check against the official clock at the naval observatory. Corrie frequently traveled with him.

He always arrived a couple of hours early so he could visit the wholesalers who supplied him with watches and parts. Many were Jewish, and Casper enjoyed deep debates over the scriptures with them. Corrie enjoyed the cakes they provided her.

What struck me was how faithful Casper was to keeping that time correct, and the saying that a man who is faithful in little will be faithful in much.

Image by @MonkeyBusiness, Deposit Photos

Casper’s wisdom shines in multiple stories that Corrie shared, but she also spoke of his inability to remember to send a bill. When Corrie took over the office work, she slowly and carefully imposed a bookkeeping system. She never managed to convince him that the shop across the street was deliberately undercutting his prices though, even when they came over, checked his prices, and immediately lowered theirs.

Casper did see what was coming, as the following quotes demonstrate.

“It is wrong to give people hope when there is no hope. It is wrong to base faith upon wishes. There will be war. The Germans will attack and we will fall. Oh my dears, I am sorry for all Dutchmen now who do not know the power of God. For we will be beaten. But He will not.” (Spoken with as much anger as they ever saw him display after the Dutch Prime Minister spoke on the radio saying Germany would respect their neutrality. They invaded that night.)

“That is good, my son. For Holland’s battle has just begun.” (Spoken when many gathered after Holland surrendered, said specifically to a teenaged boy who said he would have fought.)

And, prophetically, “Give the child to me, Corrie.” He turned to a pastor who refused to take in a Jewish infant, “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”

Casper was eighty when the Germans invaded. He was eighty-two when Corrie began her work with the underground. He knew everything that was happening in his home, even if he never could figure out why so many people he met had the last name Smit—the only surname used in the underground. The best estimate is that Corrie’s organization (and by extension, Casper’s) saved about 800 people.

Casper was eighty-four when he and most of his family were arrested by the Germans. When he was taken to the main Gestapo office for all of Holland, the chief interrogator wanted to send the old man home. He said he would take Casper’s word that he would not cause any more trouble.

Casper replied, “If I go home today, tomorrow I will open my door again to any man in need who knocks.”

Barracks at Majdanek concentration camp
Image by nokola@gmail.com, Deposit Photos

Casper only lived ten days in prison. Most of his family was released from prison except for Corrie and her sister Betsie. They were transferred to Ravensbrück, where Betsie died. Corrie was released on a clerical error a week later.

But inside the hidden room at the Ten Booms’ home, six people remained safe despite a long and thorough search. After approximately 48 hours, watching the home was turned over to the local police, one of whom was associated with the underground. Of the four Jews hidden there, three survived the war. Of the two underground workers, one also survived.

Casper, Corrie, and Betsie were all named to The Righteous Among the Nations.

But the thing that stayed with me through the years between my two readings of The Hiding Place, was how simple and ordinary their lives were, until they weren’t. And Casper was eighty-two when that day came.