This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
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What is Arisierung? How did Nazi polices change life in Haarlem? What did Corrie and the other ten Booms do to fight against Arisierung?
Arisierung is the Nazi goal of Aryanization. They used genocide and other policies to accomplish this goal.
Read about Arisierung and how Nazi policies affected the Netherlands during WW2.
Nazi Policies for Prisoners
One day early in the summer of 1944, Corrie was abruptly ordered by the guards at Scheveningen to pack out and form a line with the other women to evacuate the prison immediately. As she saw the prison being emptied, it became clear what was happening—the Allied armies had landed in Europe and were beginning the process of liberating the occupied countries!
In response, the Germans were moving their political prisoners out of the path of the rapidly advancing Allied forces and deeper into the interior of Europe. Corrie stuffed her few possessions—her sweater, pajamas, toothbrush, and Bible—into a pillowcase and awaited further orders as she was taken to a freight yard on the outskirts of The Hague. She was happy to be getting out of Scheveningen, but she was deeply fearful that something even worse might be in store for her. She was particularly terrified of being transported out of The Netherlands into Germany.
Arisierung and Genocide
One evening that September, the women heard the loudspeaker from the men’s camp calling the names of the male prisoners to report for roll call, though they could not make out the specific names from the women’s camp. Suddenly, the sound of rifle fire erupted. The men had been called to die in a mass execution as part of Arisierung. As the Allied armies drew near, the guards were performing summary executions on the male prisoners. Seven hundred men were murdered by the Nazis that night, including, they later learned, Mrs. Floor’s husband.
The next day, one thousand women, including Corrie and Betsie, were ordered to gather their personal effects. The sisters took toothbrushes, needle and thread, Nollie’s blue sweater, and their precious Bible. By this time, Betsie was astonishingly weak, barely able to carry her meager possessions or stand under her own power. Corrie helped Betsie make the march to a rail depot, where they herded onto a freight train. The car was packed with 80 women, stuffed into the train like cattle. The guards jabbed and pistol-whipped the women to force them onto the increasingly crowded freight car. The women must have feared they were going to be victims of the next phase of Arisierung.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Hiding Place summary :
- Why devout Christian Corrie ten Boom decided to stand up to the Nazi occupation
- How ten Boom and the Jewish neighbors she was hiding were caught
- How ten Boom survived the concentration camp and left with even stronger faith
