greatmystery wrote:Through the course of my research I found that Corrie ten Boom said she saw gas chambers. However they weren't even have said to been there until after she was out of the camp. She might have been lying or she might have just heard rumors that she believed. No way to tell for sure.
https://www.holocaust.claims/survivors/ ... vensbruck/
What she tells is not necessarily consistent. But it is difficult to assess due to the volume of stories she used to tell. There is plenty of books subscribed to her. And she made a career out of story-telling. Visiting 60 countries. Which is quite high for that era, when international travel was still a luxury item. There should at least be initial sponsors to do so and one needs to ask who they were and what 'return on investment' they did expect from this.
It seems the targeted audience were churches or groups associated with Christianity. She was Dutch reformed and I'd guess that here audience were also mostly of that persuasion. Got some IMO based on experience they usually try hard to be 'good people', but they are rather gullible, when someone tells an emotional story. Needless to say that this is an invitation to grifters that know how to strike that cord. Notably she was in that camp due to rationing-fraud... Something that was at times punished more severely than detention. So probably set up a good show during the trial and got a lighter sentence. The stories she tells don't sound too false on face value. But they aren't exactly plausible or feasible on second thought. E.g. That they distributed 100 babies in one day by asking people on the street. I'm pretty certain that kind of human trafficking would have rather quickly lead to someone informing the police about this. In fact such a question would make rather suspicious, if this isn't a trick to entrap them by the evil Nazis and the Gestapo.
My experience with the Dutch is that they are more shrewd than the Germans, but also similarly affected by such emotional stories like they are. As for Churches you simply add some themes that conform with Jesus, forgiveness, miracle. And that gets you the triangle of Miracle, mystery, and authority, which is the basics of cult indoctrination. This is a frequent structure in those 'survivor testimonies':
* Miracle. They 'survived the greatest Genocide of all times'
* Mystery. The supposed evilness of them Nazis for example.
* Authority. They are survivors and give testimony as an authority on the subject.
It barely works on 100 % of an audience of course, but repetition and similarity with other information would increase the credibility of what they are told of course. Those engaging in promoting such views are of course aware of others that do something similarly, which leads to an alignment of their practices and narratives. It means they copy each other over time. Conditioning works on association and repetition. That's why it is so difficult to get people of that hook once they bought into the story. Even if you can show them how ridiculous that story actually is.
And Corrie and her friends do put a lot of butter on a rather tiny slice of bread:
She did also talk to Kathryn Kuhlman a 'faith healer' that was also a 'story teller' of note:
They seem really to enjoy each other. Kuhlman's "miracles" were rather controversial at the time. There is plenty of Christians that DID NOT believe in what she was doing and saying. And I find the deceptiveness in their acting and story-telling rather obvious. It reminds me of 'wolves in sheep's-clothing' and little Red riding hood. The Christian literature scene is rife with story-tellers telling the most fabulous tales to audiences and those books sell by the millions. If you are a persuasive story teller, you can make millions with this. Huge incentives to do so. The more sober literature doesn't stand a chance in this. It is as if people aren't interested in the truth any longer, but if a story is heart-warming anything goes.
Now my take is during the era of Corrie ten Bom's post WW2 career. Christian Churches would still have reservations to letting Jews (who are not Christians and are actually ostracized, when they convert to Christianity. And I wonder what is worse for a Jew to become a Christian or to be a Holocaust Denier) speak to audiences at their facilities. Also, if they put too much butter on the bread people may react with disbelief and that could have end very badly with them. Corrie ten Boom is actually the 'witness of choice' there. Her story is Holocaust Light see mingles christianoform themes into her narrative. This is far more palatable to the audience there. And it breaks the ice for more of course. While she is more frugal with hard Holocaust Allegations, the audience will be more receptive to the rest of the narrative. That's what I noticed here as well. People spoke to me about the Holocaust sensing that I'm not really believing it. And they brought up Corrie ten Boom. I briefly looked at it. And told them that detention in concentration camp of Jews and others was not at dispute there. Also that they had a hard time there and that people actually got sick and died there. None of this is what the issue is about. The thing is whether the core Holocaust Claims are true. Was there a program to kill all Jews and were there homicidal gassings. That's the most suspicious parts of the claims and if it was true, why didn't the present applicable evidence for this? The best answer is, because there isn't and because this is actually part of a psychological operation to gas light Western audiences.
