Read this mostly this morning; when I was done, I felt like I’d been to a funeral: tired, drained, empty, sore-eyed. I’ve rarely been so moved by a book.

Corrie ten Boom was a 50-year-old watch maker when Holland surrendered to the Nazis. With her sister Betsie and her aged father, she enabled I don’t know how many Jews to get to safety, finally hiding seven in her own home, which was the center of a large network. Eventually, of course, ten Booms were betrayed. Corrie and her sister were taken first to a prison, and after many months to a concentration camp, and then to a death camp in Holland, where Betsie died. Through it all Betsie counted it as pure joy to bring Christ to the suffering in all circumstances, counting her own sufferings as nothing and praying for her guards. Corrie found such radical forgiveness and rejoicing hard to accept, but after Betsie’s death found she could do nothing else. After the war she ministered to prison camp survivors in Holland…and to the Germans, in Germany. She spent the rest of her life spreading her sister’s—Christ’s—message.

That’s it, in a small, woefully inadequate nutshell. Read it for yourself.