The Hiding Place Book - Essay Example

The Hiding Place & World Politics The eventual "Hiding Place" is inside God. Such a short and simple ment, which contains great influence. This simple fact was exquisitely discovered during the Holocaust for Corrie Ten Boom and her family, and in this book "HIDING PLACE"; she shares what had occurred with her and her family. The Hiding Place is an autobiography of writer Cornelia Johanna Arnolda Ten Boom generally known as Corrie Ten Boom who was a Dutch survivor of the Christian Holocaust who helped many Jews escape from the wrath of the Nazis during World War II. Her basic training was in making watches and she was the first trained and licensed watchmaker in the Netherlands. The Hiding place was a bestseller published in 1976 and talks largely about how the Ten Booms family, devout Christians, smuggled Jews into hiding places and provided them food and shelter. At the beginning of the book, Corrie describes the old and strangely built Dutch house, which was the house of her birth because this was to go on to, being the main setting of the book. Inside this house is a secret room where political prisoners and Jews who were getting away from the Nazis were hid. We see from the very beginning of the book that the Ten Booms were essentially very kindhearted people who went out of their way to help the poor and bonded well amongst themselves. Corrie's siblings are portrayed as people she found her best friends in and her aunts as grownups she looked up to. Taking in people to provide refuge started when one Jewish woman ended up at the Ten Booms' doorstep and asked for protection following her husband's arrest by the Nazis. This gave a start to the hiding place for the Jews. However, the story is not a bed of flowers as Corrie and her family soon had to face the Nazi Invasion of Holland, their country of residence. The Ten Booms became an essential part of the Resistance Movement and provided shelter for people fleeing the Nazi forces in a hidden room should the house ever be raided. The book talks about how they did practice runs everyday in case their house was ever raided. During the time all this was happening, Corrie sometimes had serious doubts about whether what she was doing was right or not but always came up with the conclusion that she was by keeping her faith in God strong. Even though the family and their wards prayed very hard that a raid should not happen, it eventually did due to the Dutch traitor named Jan Vogel. Ironically, the Jews in the secret hiding place were saved but the Nazis took the Corrie, her father and sister Betsie into custody. As luck would have it, the father died ten days after arrest and Corrie who was unwell at the time of arrest was put into solitary confinement. The book talks about ho every time Corrie came near despair, her faith in God kept her going y giving her something to do. During her solitary confinement, she just had a black ant for company with whom she shared her bread. This alone gave her the strength she needed to pass the lonely days and nights of her confinement when she saw this ant struggling to take the piece of bread back through the crack in the floor. A few months later both Corrie and Betsie were reunited at Vught Prison and the two sisters were able to catch up on what happened to both of them during the separation. Betsie had a weak heart from birth and Corrie knew she had to be with her sister ever more now. Both sisters wished for release but instead were transported in boxcars into the infamous Ravensbruck Prison in eastern Germany where living conditions were so horrific that Betsie became more and more ill. Despite the uncomfortable living premises and Betsie's continuously failing health, the two sisters kept bringing the word of God to any prisoner who listened and found strength in it. Corrie habitually sneaked in a tiny vitamin bottle for Betsie and also distributed vitamins to whoever needed them. Betsie was very sure that they will be released at the beginning of the year 1945 which miraculously became true but poor Betsie died before the release. Mercifully Corrie was released and sent to Holland but in 1957 she learnt that her release transpired because of a clerical error and all women of her age bracket were sent to the gas chambers but Corrie was saved due to this error. She resumed her work effectively once back home and went back to speaking at churches where she met Mrs. Bierens de Haan a very affluent woman who promised Corrie that if her son returned from Germany, she would provide Corrie her own manor for helping the needy. When the son returned, her dream was fulfilled and she opened up a place for people that taught them how to forgive others they have been wronged by. Corrie and her sister Betsie were two ladies of age forty-five and fifty-two years respectively. They are the improbable heroines of this whole story. They proved the old saying that "you can't tell a book by its cover" as they were never married and relatively innocent of the world. Both sisters risked everything they had including their lives to save people whom they never even know. Time and again, Corrie was capable to hide her small bible that a kindheartedly nurse was able to glide to her. She hid it through abundant, administered showers and naked examinations. God's Hiding Place was in accomplishment. Bedbugs that shocked the guards became another thing to show gratitude for God, as they created a "Hiding Place" for Corrie and Betsy as they exposed God's word to other captives and were able to give new life and hope in God to other as well. It's so encouraging to read a story of a family that truly lived their faith and practiced the Golden Rule, in today's world of "me first". The sisters tolerate many degradations and destitutions that no human being should ever have to even dream about. In the whole story, their faith in God is strengthened and the book gives example after example of how this faith is met by God. At a later stage, she carried her mission forward to Europe and the Near East and her stories earned her a lot of respect and love from people who were both horrified at the horror she had entailed at the hands of the Nazis and proud of her resilience and the work that she has emulated. It was on one of these missions that she met John and Elizabeth Sherril who helped her writes this book. Corrie Ten Boom died on her 91st birthday in California after a series of debilitating strokes, which caused her speech to be impaired, but she has been a source of inspiration to so many people even thirty-five years after she wrote The Hiding Place. The Hiding Place provides the reader with immense hope and the importance of relying on God and having faith in a divine being. This is an enormously amazing book. The spiritual beauty of the author is so reverberated throughout the story. The purity of heart that is apparent itself in this inspirational saga of a heroic. The Ten Booms were religiously Christian and lived a straightforward life. The patriarch of the family ran a watch shop that had been in his family for a century. They also lived in the house in which the shop was located. Some of the family members, the author among them, worked there by selling and repairing clocks and watches. When it turned out to be clear to the Ten Booms that Jews were being targeted for expatriation and death, they had a false wall, which was built, in the author's bedroom, in this manner creating a secret room. In that room, they would hide the frightened Jews who were staying with them, in the event of a Nazi raid upon their home. Ultimately condemned by someone to the Nazis, the Ten Booms were arrested and their home raided and torn apart by the Gestapo, in their search for the Jews they thought to be trouncing there. The Ten Boom home was filled to capacity with Jews in hiding, at the time of the raid. So well covered was the hidden room that had been created by the composition of the false wall, which these poor, terrified Jews managed to escape exposure. The Ten Boom family did not tariff so well. It was upon their arrest that they learned first hand of man's heartlessness to man, and their confidence was put to a test that they had never dreamt possible. However, it was faith that continued the author in what was to be her darkest hour of deepest hopelessness. It is the story of an unbelievable family, who had the nerves to put their convictions to test. In short, this book is a work of genius and a masterpiece. The reader is certain to be fascinated by the civility and spiritual beauty enclosed within its pages. Another book that has to be discussed here is "World Politics" by the authors, Steven L. Spiegel, Jennifer Morrison Taw, Fred L. This book covers the history, economics, issues, and theory of world politics. Through a sequence of articles and essays, the reader can explore theory and applications in the fascinating field of world politics. Steven L. Spiegel is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA and he is specialized in the investigation of world politics, American foreign policy, and American foreign policy in the Middle East. He is, moreover, the Associate Director of UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations (BCIR). His latest books include: WORLD POLITICS IN A NEW ERA, Third Edition THE DYNAMICS OF MIDDLE EAST PROLIFERATION, Edwin Mellen Press, 2001 In June 1995, Dr. Spiegel received the Karpf Peace Prize, which is awarded to the UCLA professor considered to have done the most of any faculty member during the past two years for the foundation of world peace. He was the beneficiary of the impressive Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs in 1993 and also served as the Chair of the Liberal Arts Committee of the Commission of Arms Control and Disarmament of the International Association of University Presidents/United Nations Commission on Arms Control Education from 1992 to 1996. Spiegel served as the senior foreign policy advisor to the late Senator Paul Tsongas, in the 1992 Presidential campaign, and later on as a Middle East advisor to then as Governor Bill Clinton. Professor Spiegel has also published in many well-known magazines and journals, including "The New Republic," "The National Interest," "Commentary," "Orbis," "Middle East Insight," "Middle East Quarterly," and "International Studies Quarterly." Spiegel's foreign policy reader, AT ISSUE: POLITICS IN THE WORLD ARENA, became the most popular of its kind in the United States, and was published in its seventh edition in the fall of 1993. Jennifer Morrison Taw spent ten years at RAND working on issues related to operations other than war. During that time she published at length, presenting briefings to the Army Chief of Staff, the Defense Science Board, and the RAND Board of Trustees. She graduated from UCLA (BA, 1986, Phi Beta Kappa; MA, 1988, with distinction; Ph.D., 1999). Jennifer has served as both Assistant Editor and Contributing Editor for "Studies in Conflict and Terrorism" and has been on the editorial board of "Small Wars and Insurgencies." Jennifer has continued to publish articles, taught International Relations at the University of Southern California AND American Government and Constitution courses for Porterville College, and continues to teach International Relations and World Politics courses for University of California and Los Angeles Extension, since leaving RAND in 1999. Fred L. Wehling is Senior Research Associate and Education Coordinator for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California. Wehling conducts research in fissile material security, national security strategy, and terrorism with weapons of mass destruction, besides to teaching courses on nonproliferation issues and organizing the Center's educational outreach programs. Wehling taught courses on international security and Russian foreign policy at UC San Diego, after receiving his Ph.D. in political science from UCLA in 1992. Wehling was a consultant at RAND, Coordinator of Policy Research for the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), and a researcher at the Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC) at Sandia National Laboratories. Kristen Williams is Assistant Professor at Clark University. Her teaching courses include 'Introduction to International Relations', 'Nationalism and International Security', 'U.S. National Security', and 'World Order/Globalization'. Her center of attention of research is on the correlation between international relations theory, nationalism and ethnic conflict, territory and identity. World Politics in a New Era gives the basic knowledge and skills needed to appreciate the full range of international politics in current affairs. Incorporating a theme of Globalization and Fragmentation throughout, this book enables students to see ahead of the concept of "globalization" as exhortation and to become aware of the trade-offs and tensions that result from a "global community". The authors have introduced the concept of Conflict and Cooperation so that students can see how world leaders balance their relationships with other countries. World Politics in a New Era provides the principal theories used to explain international relations. This systematic foundation is followed by discussions of these various theories that appear throughout the description. Moreover, "At a Glance" characteristics are integrated throughout the text; these summaries help students to see how the theories work and also how they interconnect with individual, domestic, and systemic levels of analysis. More chapters in the text are dedicated to reviewing key historical events, giving students with the context necessary to grasp world politics. The chapter, Imperialism and Its Victims, allows students to move beyond the typical "western" understanding of world proceedings Each chapter presents a role playing exercise known as "What Would You Do" that provides students the opportunity to make decision during the middle of a crisis. This feature outlines real life situations and inquires students to plan a course of action using the material they have learned in the course. This knowledge of analyzing a catastrophe and proposing solutions is a skill that students can use in other political science courses with in their daily lives. This book is easy to read and it is well organized. The authors have distributed the content in a way that allows the reader to quickly comprehend the key concepts. The material of the book is interesting and significant. It is absolutely a book for beginners in the subject of international relations. Contents of this book include material on the world wars, key political and military leaders, the cold war, regional conflict, recent conflicts, world economics, global issues, international security, and a host of theoretical and analytical advances to thoughtful world politics today. This book treats the student of International Relations with respect and dignity, not like most other college textbooks. There are many things common in both books like the mention of Nazis, Holocaust, Hitler, Concentration Camps, Political Prisoners, Jews, Gas Chambers, Solitary Confinement and Boxcars. Nazis were the members of the National Socialist German Workers Party and it was a German fascist political movement which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 under Adolf Hitler. They attacked the Jews to kill them. Another thing that is common in both books is the description of Holocaust. It is a Greek word that means the destruction of life by fire. Since the 1950s, the term has been applied primarily to the Nazi regime's attempted annihilation of the Jews of Europe. Six million Jews-two out of every three living at the time in Europe-were murdered as part of a systematic genocide. Millions of other people also were killed because of their ethnicity, culture, and political ideas. Both books have mentioned about the holocaust. Hitler was a dictator and head of the Nazis. He ordered the killing of Jews and is known as a fascist leader. The concentration camps were the camps where Jews were imprisoned. It was not a camp for Jews but also the place where the opponents of Hitler were imprisoned and tortured. During the period ruled by Hitler, many people were made political prisoners. They were kept in very bad condition and were being tortured. We also find the use of word Jews in both books. Both books explain the situation and condition of the Jews at that time when they were under the attack of Nazis. We also find the concentration posed on gas chambers in both books. The writers have explained that many people were put to death into gas chambers. Hitler was the person who ordered death to his opponents and Jews. Similarly, many people were put into solitary confinement where they had to live in a very bad and critical condition. They were put through various physical and mental torture. Both books explain the term 'Resistance Movement' in which men and women from all social and political backgrounds intent on opposing Nazi occupation created the Resistance movements as early as 1940. They wrote, printed and distributed newspapers and leaflets to inspire a spirit of resistance and organize patriotic events. Corrie in Hiding Place said that she and her family were the part of that resistance movement which is explained clearly in the book World Politics in a New Era. Vught Prison (Holland) is mentioned by Corrie where she and her sister were reunited. In the 2nd book, the writers have explained it a place where many people were imprisoned who were participating in the resistance movement. REFFERENCES: Boom, Corrie Ten (1974). The Hiding Place, Bantam Books. Spiegel, Taw, Fred (2007). World Politics in a New Era, Cengage Learning Read More