“The Hiding Place” is a Christian classic. Most boomer Christians grew up with the strangest of all things, a story of hope amidst the human disaster of the Holocaust. During World War II, Corrie Ten Boom and her family risked everything to hide Jewish refugees in their home in the Netherlands. The hiding place is the room they built behind a false wall in Corrie’s bedroom that could hold six people to hide the Jews being exterminated by the Nazi occupiers. It is estimated that this humble family saved some 800 people.
People with disabilities were also sheltered by the resistance movement which the Ten Booms joined, with Corrie bravely advocating for them. Corrie, her sister Betsie and her father Casper were arrested, with only one member of the three, Corrie, surviving the war. Sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp, Corrie and her sister Betsie held worship services using a Bible that they had smuggled in, and through their teachings and examples of unfailing charity, many of their fellow prisoners converted to Christianity. After the war, Corrie ten Boom returned to the Netherlands and ran a shelter for jobless Dutch who had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers.
The book, The Hiding Place, written by Corrie Ten Boom with the Christian biography team of John and Elizabeth Sherrill, was published in 1971 and remains on the goodreads.com recommended list. The new movie, which filmed a stage show adaption of the story, comes to Australian cinemas on August 16.
The movie is not wooden – a suspicion some might have of a staged show film. But it means that a horror story is told in a child-safe way, meaning that this would be a good movie for a Christian family with young children without being childish. Occasionally the stage is distracting, but the film’s mission of bringing the story to a new generation and the dramatic true story drives the viewer forward.
In this clip, Corrie Ten Boom questions whether a Christian can lie to save lives.
Adapted for the first time for the stage by A.S. “Pete” Peterson and stage directed by Matt Logan, The Hiding Place was filmed live for cinema audiences at the Soli Deo Center in Nashville, Tennessee to sold-out audiences in 2022. “Theatre is something that we believe can change the world,” said Peterson. “Even though The Hiding Place is set in the ‘40s, there are parallels to the challenges we still face today. It’s people hating and not accepting one another and a family in the middle of that having to choose how to react. Ultimately, it makes viewers contemplate, ‘Are we going to love the people in front of us no matter who they are?’”
In our current situation, we have many new examples of polarised world views, and the extreme love shown by the Ten Boom family towards their needy neighbours, and even their oppressors still challenges all of us. Can we follow the Ten Booms as they followed Christ?
Here are the cinemas where The Hiding Place has been listed. The movie trailer is at thehidingplacefilm.com
- Dendy Southport, Queensland
- Dendy Coorparoo, Queensland
- Palace James Street, Brisbane
- Dendy Portside, Brisbane
- Dendy, Canberra
- Palace Electric, Canberra
- Dendy Newtown, New South Wales
- Ritz Cinema Randwick, New South Wales
- Palace Byron Bay, New South Wales
- Palace Norton Street, Sydney, New South Wales
- Lido Cinemas Hawthorn, Victoria
- Cameo Cinema Belgrave, Victoria
- Classic Cinema Elsternwick, Victoria
- Palace Brighton Bay, Victoria
- Palace Balwyn Melbourne, Victoria
- Palace Como Melbourne, Victoria
- Wallis Micham Cinemas, Torrens Park, South Australia