Corrie ten Boom was born in Haarlem in 1892 above her father Casper's watch shop, the Beje. After stepping in to run the business during her sister's illness, she became the first licensed female watchmaker in the Netherlands in 1922 and organized youth clubs, quietly acquiring the logistics and leadership skills a resistance network would later demand. The family's active Calvinist faith made their home a refuge long before the war.

When German occupation began, the ten Booms turned their shop, half a block from police headquarters, into a hub of the Dutch underground, building a hidden room and securing a hundred ration cards to help save an estimated eight hundred people. Betrayed in 1944, Corrie was sent to Ravensbruck, where her sister Betsy died. Released through a clerical error, she later ran a rehabilitation center for both survivo ...