Since your boyfriend is Baptist, he’s probably read or at least heard of The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.
For those who don’t know, this marvelous book is the story of the ten Boom family, a Dutch Reformed family who worked in the Underground Resistance Movement and saved hundreds of Jews. They were betrayed, arrested, and sent to prison. The 80-year-old Papa died ten days after his arrest. The 60-year old sister Betsie and Corrie, who was around 50 years old at the time, along with Willem, their older brother, were all sent to prison. Other teenagers in the family also went to prison.
Betsie died in Ravensbruck. Willem survived prison, but contracted TB and died a few years later. Corrie lived well into her 80s and spoke all over the world telling people that “no pit is so deep that God is not deeper still.”
The book is a must-read for all Christians, not just Protestants. It will make your faith expand exponentially.
In The Hiding Place, in Chapter 13, Corrie describes how she and her sister lead a nightly Bible study (using a Bible that God miraculously provides). She also describes what happens whenever she has to take Betsie to the “clinic.” “NIghts when Betsie and I reported to sick call we left the Bible with Mrs. Wielmaker, a saintly Roman Catholic woman from The Hague who could render the Dutch words in German, French, Latin, or Greek.”
In Chapter 13, Corrie describes the Bible studies: “They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a sotto-voce chant by Eastern Orthodox women.”
I’m quoting these because it is obvious when reading this and any other first-hand accounts of concentration camp survivors that there were plenty of Catholics imprisoned, and many of them were imprisoned for “political crimes,” i.e., helping Jews. The Germans kept very meticulous records of all their prisoners, and there are plenty of Catholics on the lists.
Catholics, just like all Christians in those hard times, risked their lives to obey God rather than men.
BTW, I, too, recommend Ronald Rychlak’s excellent book, Hitler The War and the Pope. Very thoroughly-documented and scholarly, but it’s fairly easy-to-read for the non-historian. The Footnotes run from page 313-page 444! And the Bibliography is 23 pages long! It’s not light-weight and fluffy.
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