The Eric Metaxas Show - Larry Loftis

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Larry Loftis has written the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by.

And now here's your Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Mat, Texas. Christos Anesti. Hey. Alitha, Nesty. Hey, today is Monday. It is. And for Orthodox Christians, yesterday was Basca, which is, you know, Easter. And so, as you might expect, we celebrated Easter with my family.

yesterday. We'll talk about that in a minute because I've got something very special. I want to play the audio of my dad, who will be 96 in June, reciting a poem that he taught me about spring. But before that, let's talk about what we have coming up. Okay, today, both hours, or actually, mainly the first hour, we have Larry Loftus, who's written a book on Corey Ten Boom. Folks, hard to believe that the hiding place, the great story of Corey Ten Boom that's in the hiding place doesn't begin to tell the whole story. You would think that it did. Larry Loftus has written a biography of Corey Ten Boom. We're going to be talking to him in just a moment. Very exciting. I talk about Corey Ten Boom in my book, Seven Women. Great, great, great, great hero. But he has written a

brand new biography. And I'm actually amazed at all the new stuff that is in the So we're talking to him in just a minute. Later on in the program, I'm going to do a dramatic reading from my book, Fish Out of Water. Yes. Prepare yourselves. That's at the end of the program, dramatic reading. Later this week, we've got Victor Davis Hansen. Yes.

And how about this? George Foreman. Yeah. Yeah. Folks, I interviewed George Foreman. You do. If you don't know who George Foreman is, Albin, what do we even say? Should I try to explain it?

Google it. No, seriously. Oh, my gosh. He's incredible. I can't believe it. Great interview, too, by the way. Well, I'm glad he thought so. I was kind of intimidated because he's such a big deal.

He should be. He kept raising his fist, actually. We'll talk more about who he is. We got Victor at his hands as I mentioned. By the way, today I'm flying in Raleigh, North Carolina. My plane was already delayed, so I don't know when I'm going to get there. But tomorrow night, I'm speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina. On Thursday night, I'm speaking basically in Atlanta, Marietta.

Georgia. So if you live in Raleigh, North Carolina, or in Atlanta, you can go to my website, ericomtaxas.com, under speaking, and you can see the details. Next week, we have a Socrates in the city event in Seattle. You do, yes. Can I believe this is true? In Seattle, folks, April 28th, you can sign up for the live stream, and I got to warn you, if you don't sign up 45 minutes in advance, you won't be able to get on. You want to do it. It's 10 bucks. Like, it should be like $30. We're just doing this. It's an introductory thing. But you can watch it live April 28th, so that's next week in Seattle. And then after that, I'm going to Alaska. There you go. I'm not making that up. I'm speaking at a church in Anchorage, Alaska. A lot of

stuff. You've got to go to the website. And I think that's a second last state you've ever been to. You haven't been to Ohio yet, but other than that. That's funny. No, I think the only state, I think the only state I haven't spoken in. It's like three left. We got, of course, that's Alaska, but then there's also, I've never been to Hawaii. I don't know that I've ever spoken in Idaho, and there's one other, probably Connecticut. I don't know. I don't know. All right. So I want to talk about Greek Easter yesterday. This was very special. My mom and dad have had challenges. I ask you to pray for my dad. He continues to have challenges. So yesterday, We drove to Old Saybrook, my brother and my sister-in-law, you know, they live out there.

And so the whole family was together. This is four generations because my nephew little Nikki is now a father to baby Lily. I mean, just incredible that we, just to get to have the blessing to be together. But my, but I was concerned because of my dad's health situation. So I ask your prayers. But yesterday at the table. You know, we're having our lamb and doing the Greek thing. My father asks me if I still remember the Nicene Creed in Greek.

Because I learned it. He helped me to learn it when I was eight years old. And it's long and it's in Greek. So it's kind of a... But of course I still remember it. I need a little prodding. So one of the most special things ever, I said with my father at the table,

the two of us recited the Nicene Creed in Greek. It's bestévo of San Antonio. I mean, it's so beautiful. But I was so moved that my father initiated this and that he remembers it. It just was, it was really beautiful. But the other thing that we did, my father remembers a poem about spring, a Greek poem.

And it's such a beautiful poem. It's very short. It's extremely simple. but I want to play the recording. This is my father. This is me and my father reciting the poem. Let me see if I can play this if we can...

Because my dad's going to be 96 and this is his voice. So hold on a second. This was yesterday afternoon. Here we go. One more time. It's the falle the anixixis. I've done the lulludia.

Pras in a yis fori and allu haras chore and chas a song. Dad, I tell you, I get choked up because when you know what it means, it's so sweet. I didn't know this.

The word for spring is anixi. And it means the opening, the blooming. And I thought, what an amazing. Greek is an amazing language. So the poem is, Irithen pali i anixi. Once again, spring has come. That alone could get you choked up.

Like we're alive again and it's spring. Spring has come again. Iritha pali onixi. Irithent aluludia. And again, the flag. flowers have come. Prasino and gis fori.

The earth is clothed in green. Ke pandu haras jori and everywhere joyful dancing that charas draudia

and joyful singing songs. And I just think it's so simple, but it's like one of those childhood poems that you learn that you learn. Wow. That you could almost, so I got to say it again,

I got to say it again, Irthepali and anixi, irthent al-uludia, prasino yis fori, that pan du haras-hori, ke haras trahudia. It's not as nice as when my father reads it, but I said, I've got to play that. Yeah, that's great. And so thank you, Albu for letting me do that in the opening segment.

But it just gave me such joy that my dad was with us yesterday, and then we got to do that. It was just... I mean, that's just great. Four generations. and all that. It's, it's, it's, yeah, you just want to say, the only thing you can say is thank the Lord. Yeah. I just want to, I just want to thank God for that. So, um, anyway, and so to the Orthodox Christians out there, I say Christos Anesti, which means Christ is risen. Now, you got to actually

believe that. Otherwise, you know, you're just celebrating Easter eggs. Um, so when we come back, we're talking to the author Larry Loftus about his book, Coyton Boom, a true hero. of the 20th century, a hero of the faith. It's an amazing story. The watchmaker's daughter. And we should remind people to see the film Nefarious. Oh, yeah. That just opened up.

This is kind of a big deal. It is, how do we describe it, Albin? It's C.S. Lewis, the screw tape letters meet silence of the lambs. Right, right. So it's not for little kids, but let me tell you, it's something that people should see. Because the genius of it is his ability to get the theology. right. Because we need to know about evil and how it operates and so on and so forth. And I think there's some Christians who believe evil was, you know, like it got canceled.

But no, evil is still a thing and we need to understand it. In fact, what do you need Jesus to die in the cross for unless there is evil and death and sin? So we need to understand that. So Nefarious is really terrific. I also want to remind people before we go to the break, sign up for my newsletter at metaxis.com because there's so many things that we sent out. We can't possibly keep you up to date, all kinds of stuff that we're doing interviews and so on and so forth. The video of my interview with George Foreman, that alone is worth the price of my newsletter, which by the way is zero. But honestly, I still can't believe I got to talk to George Foreman for 15 minutes. It was amazing. All right. When we come back, Larry Loftus, and then a lot of more crazy stuff. So stick around.

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I feature her as one of the seven great women. Amazing hero. If you don't know the details of her life, well, that's okay. Because we have right now, Larry Loftus, a best-selling author who has turned his attention and talents to writing the story of Corey Ten Boom. The title of the book is The Watchmaker's Daughter, The True Story of World War II, Heroin, Corrie 10 Boom.

Larry Loftus, welcome back. Thank you, Eric. Thanks for having me on again. Well, tell us, you were on this program, I don't know, three or four years ago, talking about another book you had written. Talk about that for a moment. Sure. 2019 we were on talking about codename lease. And actually that's how I found this Corey Ten Boom to be my next subject because when I was researching, if you remember that story, Odette Sampson was an SOE agent operating in occupied France. She was captured.

They sent her to Ravensbrook, the notorious concentration camp for women in Germany. And a friend of mine said, hey, while you're doing your research, you need to read. read the hiding place. And I knew of the book, and I knew of Corey, but I'd not read the book. And I said, why? She said, well, at the same time, Odette was at the concentration camp, Corey was there at the exact same time. And it was perfect for me because my subject in the first book was a spy. She'd already been condemned to death. So they put her in a bunker at Ravensbrook, below ground. She could see nothing. She's in a dark cell, and she never sees any of the camp. Corey, of course, was on the outside in the normal barracks.

So she saw the day-to-day operations of what happened, the roll call in the mornings, the lineups, the beatings, the work parties, all that stuff. So it gave me the other side of the picture of looking at Ravensbrook. So then when it was time, you know, in 2021, I had another spy book out, The Princess Spy about an OSS agent operating in Spain. So I was looking for another book to do, and I wanted to do a different spy agency, and I wanted a different spy agency. and I wanted a different country. And, well, I'd already covered all the spy agencies. My first book was about an MI6 agent. Second was SOE.

Third was OSS. So I ran out of all of the spy agencies. But my mind kept going back to Corey because it was a new country, the Netherlands, and while she wasn't a spy, she was part of the Dutch resistance. Well, practically speaking, the consequences are about the same. Because if you get caught, you either. are going to be executed or you're going to a concentration camp. And, of course, they were caught.

She and her family, and she did go to a concentration camp. But that was how I basically found or my mind kept going back to Corey. So when I was doing initial research, I had to decide, much like you probably did when you wrote Bonhofer, that great book. And I had to decide, is the hiding place the whole story? Because if it is, I don't need to write another book. See, that's the question. I mean, that was my first question to you and the question I think anybody would ask.

They would say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. The hiding place written by Corey Ten Boom telling the whole story, we would think, isn't that definitive? Why would you need to write a biography about Corey Ten Boom? When I wrote my chapter in my book Seven Men, of course, that's the short version. You know, that's the 10,000 word version. You know, a book like this is more like 100,000 words or so. So, yeah, most people would say, didn't that story already get told? I'm sort of glad that you determined that it hadn't, that there's more to the story.

But what was it? I mean, you know, if somebody asked you that question, what do you say, the hiding place? Doesn't that cover the story of Corey Ten Boom? Well, there's two parts to that answer. Number one is Corey did not write the hiding place. that book was written by, if you look on the, underneath, it says with John and Elizabeth Cheryl. Didn't John and Elizabeth Sherrill write all the Christian books for about 20 years? It's so funny.

Probably. No, they really were. They were like the ultimate, you know, the ghost writers, not really ghost writers because their names were on the book. Their names on it. But somebody like Corey Ten Boom, who has this amazing story, who is not naturally a writer, would go to the Sheryl's. And so there's so many wonderful books that they wrote. Right. But, okay, what year roughly did that come out?

The hiding place came out in 71. Okay. And so what I had to, and I know that Corey didn't write a word in the hiding place because it's in her archives. Her archives are at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College where I spent four days pouring through every box of everything she had, all the letters, all the photos, all of her scrapbooks, all of her notebooks, all of her passports. Everything's there at Wheaton College. So in her newsletters, she was in building up to this. She would say, well, John and Elizabeth Cheryl are almost finished with my book, blah, blah, blah, and she refers to it as a biography. And in one newsletter, she refers to it as John Sherrill's book.

So she didn't write it. They did in 71. However, Corey did write an autobiography in 1947, right after the war, called A Prisoner in Yet. But it was a very simple book. It was essentially self-published. It didn't go anywhere. So much like if you remember the Zamperini story. Louis Zamperini had written his own autobiography, but no one really heard about it.

It didn't get any traction. And so Laura Hillenbrand, a professional writer, comes around and says, I'm going to rewrite this story. And Unbroken, you know, what, spent four years on the New York Times list. Turn into a sub-average movie by Angelina Jolie. But, you know, it's interesting because there are very few people that I can talk shop with on this issue. What you're talking about, nobody understands it really. better than I do. The idea that, you know, you have to make a determination. Do we have a book? Is this worthy of a book? Hasn this been done before? When I wrote the Bonhofer book, the reason I wrote it,

it's the same reason I wrote my book on William Wilberforce's Amazing Grace is because as far as I was concerned, no one had done the story justice. I could even say that about my Luther book. I mean, you know, you have to go back to 1950. What's the definitive book on Luther? If you want to get the whole story, well, that book was written in 1950. There's all this new information. So it's an interesting calculus when you're approaching the story of a life or any story. Has it been told before? Has it been done justice? Is there new information? Is there information that didn't make it into the book that everybody thinks tells us the whole story? So it really was your determination that as good as the hiding place was, is, of course, that there was

all kinds of other stuff. So I'm, I got to tell you, I'm excited that that's the case. It's kind of like, you know, discovering new information, new material. You think, holy cow, we've just discovered something that nobody really knew before. Let's get it out there. Yeah, that was my process. I had learned in my prior books, I had written three spy books, all nonfiction. All of them had a prior biography or an autobiography, in some cases, in one case, both. And I found that in doing that research, as you remember when you were researching Bonhofer, for example, I just, it felt like there's more to this story than what this person is writing about. And it's an intuition. So, of course, I had to do the research, just like you did and had to find out. And after I finished all of the

research, by the way, the second most important character in Corey's story is a young Dutch boy named Hans Polly. He was the first refugee into the Baye, as they called their house. He stayed longer than anybody else, nine months. He was the one that said we need to create a hiding place. He was the one that first tried to develop it. He cut a hole in the attic and they tried to get people up there. Now, I know Larry Loftus, author of The Watchmaker's Daughter, that there are people listening right now who we've lost them because they actually don't know the story. So give us the basics. I mean, the absolute, you know, bottom line basics of Corey 10 Boom. Just give us, you know, the 60-second version so that people are tracking. You have a very godly family living in Harlem Holland, which is just about 10 miles outside of Amsterdam.

And there's a whole lineage of Corey's great-grandfather to her grandfather, to her father. These were all very godly men. And they loved the Jews and they prayed for Jerusalem. And that tradition carried down generation to generation. So by the time World War II breaks out, it's natural for Corey and her family. Her father's still in the house. Casper, he's 80. Corey's sister Betsy, who was also unmarried, is still in the house. She's in her mid-50s.

Her brother Willem had already married and moved out. Her sister, Nali, had already married and moved out. So it's just the three of them. But they would pray every morning. they would pray before all of the meals. Casper would say, let's read a psalm. And so that was their daily routine every day. So by the time, you know, they're caught.

They hid Jews. They hid what are called Dutch divers as well, boys that had to hide because the Germans were snatching Dutch boys off the street to send them to send them to factories in Germany because their men were in the war. So they had to hide these people and they got caught. They were sent to prison and then concentration camps. And so I'll pause there. Well, and we need to be clear.

The reason the book is called The Watchmaker's Daughter is that this family, this house in Harlem, outside of Amsterdam, they had for generations been profound Christians who were watchmakers. This was what they did. And of course, this culminates World War II. Corey Ten Boom at the center of it. They start hiding Jews and others. It's an amazing story. We'll be right back with more.

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We were just talking about how many of you know her story from the book, The Hiding Place. And you know what we didn't mention Larry Loftus is that a film was made not long after the book came out in the 70s, starring one of my favorite actresses in the world, Julie Harris. Oh, my gosh, I love Julie Harris so much. What a great actress. So that film was made, I don't know, maybe you know the year, but it was not long after the book. Seventy-five. Okay. It came out in 75. It's, it's, what an extraordinary film and how extraordinary that they got Julie Harris to star in it, because, you know, typically when you make a quote-unquote faith film, you know, you might get Michael York or Kevin Sorbo. That's it.

But they got Julie Harris, one of the truly great actresses of our time of the 20th century. Well, so when you were doing your research, you were just talking about the basics of the story are known

to many of us. Again, I know some people, a lot of times when I write a book like seven women or seven men, I'm doing it to wet people's appetite, to peak their interest, P-I-Q-U-E, in the subject so that they'll read the whole book because you just think, wow, I didn't, I never heard of Corey Ten Boom. And what kind of a weird name is that?

Prentices, it's a Dutch weird name. The Dutch have, they have some weird names. But you determined that the hiding place didn't tell the whole story. So what, what parts of the story did the hiding place not cover? I mean, let's just start there. Yeah. Yeah, my upshot, after I finished all of the research, was that it told less than 10% of the story.

What? And I felt like, yeah. What a rip off. I'm just kidding. No, that's sort of like, I'm sorry to interrupt. I've got to tell the other 90%. And so that's why I mentioned there, I'll give you a couple of names, three names, for example. The, what was completely omitted in the Cheryl's biography was this guy Hans Polly, who I just

told you about the first person in there. He's the one that got them involved in the resistance. He felt guilty. He was 18. He wanted to help. He got involved in the resistance. And then he had to tell Corey because it puts them at risk. He's hiding in their home. And the resistance gave him a fake ID. They gave him little assignments. He was going to be a courier. And since he was a boy, he had to dress up as a girl. So they'd put a wig on him in a dress to run courier messages. That's unbiblical, by the way. I think Deuteronomy and Leviticus expressly says you don't do that kind of stuff. You've got to cut that. So he had to go on these errands. Anyway, he felt like I've got to tell Corey because if I get caught, they're going to raid the house. They're going to arrest everybody because they know I'm involved. And then they gave him a gun.

The resistance gave him a gun and said, okay, your next assignment is to shadow a Gestapo agent, a notorious Gestapo agent that we're thinking about taking out. Well, can I take the dog? Taking out to a ball game, night on the town, dinner and dancing, maybe taking a show. when they say take out a Gestapo agent, how do they mean that? Yeah, fascinate, you know, to kill him because he was resulting in so many arrests and deaths and executions. So Polly knew they gave me the gun. So I'm the one that they're going to ask to kill this guy.

And I won't spoil it. I'll stop there. But he had to tell Corey, look, I'm involved. This is going to, you know, put risk to you in the house. And to his surprise, Corey said, oh, that's great. She's like, give me the gun. I want to take out the Nazi bum. She didn't know about the gun, but she said, that's great.

I want to be involved. Use our house as your headquarters. And so that's what got them started in the whole process. And he is the central figure. If you go look through her archives, there are dozens and dozens of photos in that time. And the one person that's basically in all of them is Hans Pauley. And in the one where he's not, on the back it says, likely taken by Hans Poli. He's not even in the story.

Okay, so the Sherrills didn't even touch on that part of the story. This is what's so interesting when you're telling a story. It's kind of like when you're making a movie. We've got the Bonhoeffer film is coming out a year from now. And you can only tell a part. You can't tell everything. And in writing the hiding place, the Sheryls obviously made some decisions. They said we want to just give the nut of the story, the center of it.

But they did not tell all of this stuff that you discovered. Let me say it again. This is exciting, Larry Loftus. This is actually very exciting that you found this stuff. Before we get more into the story, there's a lot here. Let me just ask you, remind us, because it's been four years almost, since we spoke. But what is your background? How did you find yourself writing stories about espionage in World War II? How did you find your way into that? Yeah, I'm a lawyer by background, so, but I've spent a career there, but I've paid my penance. My purification is complete. So I wanted to write books, and I had been a political science major, and of course I love James Bond, who doesn't grow up with James Bond when we were young and watching Sean Connery.

So I thought I would do a book on a big spy. So I was thinking of historical fiction, and I found this guy, Dusko Popoff, who was Ian Fleming's and. inspiration for Bond and submitted it to my agent. And he said, well, is most of this true? And I said, it's all true. And he said, well, just do it as straight narrative nonfiction. And I structured it as a thriller because I like thrillers. Vince Flynn was sort of what me got on, got me on to the kick of writing drama, you know, exciting Hitchcock type drama. And so I use as my rule of thumb, what Hitchcock said is suspense. It's the life with the boring parts taken out. This is, again, because I'm a writer, I'm really interested in this.

So when we come back, we're going to talk more with Larry Loftus about writing and about the new book, The Watchmaker's Daughter, about Corey Ten Boom. Very exciting. Don't go away. Welcome back. I'm talking to Larry Loftis, L-O-F-T-I-S. The book is The Watchmaker's daughter. The whole story of Corey Ten Boom. Some of you thought you knew the whole story.

I thought I did. We were wrong. And thanks to Larry Loftus. and its research, we get the whole story. It's exciting. But I was asking you, Larry, how you got into this whole thing. So you're a lawyer. And I guess because, you know, you wanted to do something for your soul, you said, hey, maybe

I'll write some books. But you started out wanting to write like a novel, right, a fiction version of the story of the man who was the basis of James Bond, this fictional character. And then you publish just, why, why are you doing that? just tell the actual story, just write a biography of this guy because it's exciting enough. You don't need to fictionalize it. So I'm glad he advised you that way because sometimes, you know, it's the cliche truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes these true stories read exactly like fiction or even

better than fiction because they're true. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what led me in. And then once I started with that one, then I just thought, okay, I've found my genre. and I write what I call nonfiction thrillers. So I blend the true story

and then I just structured it as a thriller so that it reads like a Vince Flynn book or a Brad Thor book or a Jack Car book, anything that has that type of pace. But it's all true. So when I put in dialogue, I can't make any of that up.

Every quote in every book comes from a primary source and people can check that if I go in the back and look at it. That's my rule as well. I mean, you've got to get it exactly right. This is history. And you can't fictionalize it.

You can't gildal lily. You can't say, well, it makes the story a little better if I say this or if I create this character. So when people do that, like I forgot, who the biographer, Reagan's biographer, who wrote the book Dutch, and he kind of inserts himself. I just thought, you know what, dude? That's just creepy and wrong. You're not serving history. So thank you for sticking to do. to the facts and to the truth, nonetheless, telling the true story in a way that reads like fiction.

So it's exciting. So I'm still amazed that those of us who are familiar with the hiding place, whether it's the movie or the book, didn't get a lot of the story. And so how far do you carry the story? Do you carry it to the end of her life? Or is this just basically the story of her World War II exploits? Yeah, no, I care it to the end of her life. In fact, in all of my books, I've been putting a section in the back called The Rest of the Story that says what happened, a brief synopsis of that person after the war until they died.

So keep people in the story like Hans Roms, the famous, if you read her book, the German judge, if you will, that decided their fate when they first went to prison. he's a story in himself. It's an incredible, he was not a Nazi, but he was trained in Nazi ideology. And so he couldn't understand why Corey and her brother and her father were all putting their lives on the line for the Jews because they could have just behaved, quote unquote, behaved themselves. And so next thing he knows, Corey and. And Betsy and we haven't talked about yet Peter Van Warden, who was Corey's nephew, that was Nollie's son, who's also really not in the hiding place, not much about him. They're all witnessing to this guy when they're supposed to be interrogated by him.

And so that's a whole story within the story. And it's very moving. And I've had multiple people tell me they wept when they read this, the dialogue that goes back and forth. but Peter, for example, and by the way, the reason the Sheryls didn't know about any of this, their book comes out in 71. When did all this happen with Corey? Well, during the war, so it's until 45. They're going on Corey's memory from, what, 30 years earlier?

There are no archives. Corey didn't keep a diary. Well, Hans Poli did keep a diary. Hans Poli, the guy, the first guy in and the last guy out, and he went to, prison too. He went through the same stuff. Hans Polly kept a detailed day-to-day diary. Now, where in the world did you find his diary? Let me guess. Was it in the garage with Biden's Camero? Where did you find this, this classified information? It was in the garage with Hunter Biden's laptop, but that's a story. No, but I mean, it's so funny to think that there's a diary

out there. How did you get your hands on that? It's pretty big news. You know the drill. When you're doing research, you have to look up every book that contains everything about your person and all of the people related to the story. So I knew that Hans Poli was, in fact, he wrote his own book in 83 called Return to the Hiding Place. So he details a lot of this that comes out of his diary as well as photos. Well, Corey's nephew also wrote his own book called The Secret Place. That came out in 1954. This is Peter Van Warden's book. And so you have these mirror tracks of what's going on from Poli's perspective in his diary. Peter Van Warden, who is very much involved in the story. So you get the hiding place, back to the hiding place, the secret place, bride of the hiding place,

Abbott and Costello meet the hiding place. Like it just goes on and on over the years. Unbelievable. Well, and don't forget seven women. I had. that too. I don't think there was much in my book, Seven Women, that you needed to use. But that is so interesting that something kind of gets set in stone in 71. This book comes out. But then obviously all this other stuff comes out. And nobody, until you circle back to say, okay, let's see if we can tell the story. I only wish Julie Harris were still living and she could play. I mean, honestly, that's such a wonderful movie. But, well, so, it must have struck you as exciting when you discovered how much had not been told in the hiding place.

Yeah, it really did. And it was just a, it was just a culmination of one thing after another. It was Hans Polly's book. It was Peter's book. It was the archives, which was just a treasure trove. Literally, I was there open to close for four days and barely finished at the end of the fourth day. So all of that information, by the way, I wanted to bring in people that are involved. in this story a little bit on the periphery. Well, who's on the periphery? Well, to begin with, there's Anne Frank, the 13-year-old girl who's

10 miles away in Amsterdam. She kept a diary. So, when she's writing about what is happening in Amsterdam, well, that's the same thing that's happening in Harlem or planes coming over, bombing, so she's giving a picture. You're telling me, Anne Frank kept a diary?

We'll be right back talking to Larry Loftus. The book is the watchmaker's daughter. Welcome back. We're talking to Larry Loftus, the author of The Watchmaker's Daughter, brand new book. Very exciting. The whole story of Corey Ten Boom. You thought you knew the story. Well, it turns out we didn't. But the idea, Larry, that there are all these other books that came out after the hiding place in 1971 and that you were able to augment the story. I'm trying to remember. Corey Ten Boom died in, what, the 70s? No, I think it was 91. Oh, you're kidding. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Because I know that, you know, I knew people who knew her, but it's an extraordinary thing to think that she went around the world telling this story. And again, for people who don't know any of the story, just the nutshell version of Corey Ten Boom, she's at Ravensbrook concentration camp.

This family has been hiding Jews. The Nazis catch them. Take them to Ravensbrook, this women's concentration camp. There's so much that goes on there. But it's the, her sister's killed. I don't remember the details. But the idea that Corey Ten Boom does the ultimate, if you want to know, like does God exist?

She forgives the people who've murdered her sister. Like this is where it goes next level. because most of us say, I don't get that, I can't do that. That's why we need to read these stories. We need to understand the power of God and the reality of God. But it is so amazing because what you said earlier is most people would think, hey, why should I get involved? I'll just keep my nose clean.

I'm not a Jew. Let the Jews suffer. Well, if you care what God thinks, you can't behave that way. If you do behave that way, you're working for the devil. Sorry to break the news to you. So here we have these heroic figures. But her story is just one of those. It's a signature story of heroism.

As was Bonhoeffers. In fact, if you look at the front of the book, the epigram is a Bonhofer quote, which I pulled from letters and papers from prison, which I'm sure you used in your research. So she is sort of the Dutch version of Bonhofer doing what she can because of her faith, you know, fighting the Nazis because of her faith. So that's an integral part of the story. Well, it's interesting because we need to know these stories to encourage ourselves

because each of us is involved in a battle in our own way. We might not be fighting the Nazis. Maybe we're just fighting the globalist communist elites, whatever. Whoever you're fighting, there's evil behind it. And if you're not fighting, you're helping evil. And so that's why we need to be encouraged by these stories. We've just got a minute left in this hour, but I want to drag you over into hour two. So what can we say in our final minute before we go to hour two?

You mean, from my perspective? Yeah. Well, I mean, the other thing I was going to say, because we kind of left off on it, was who else is involved in the story? And Anne Frank has her diary. She's writing. Well, at the same time, Audrey Hepburn is in... Whoa, whoa, what?

Yeah, she's in the story, too. You're not kidding. And Frank, Audrey Hepburn, no, she's Dutch. She's there. I didn't know that Audrey Hepburn was Dutch, and she is somehow in, but please tell us the 20-second version, and then we'll cover that in the next segment. Sure, sure. She was a ballerina, and she was in Arnhem.

So there was a biography about her and she's writing or commenting on what she saw when Jews are herded up into cattle cars and shipped off. So that was just part of my research. I had to learn everything about her as well. All right. When we come back, folks,

plenty more Larry Loftus, The Watchmaker's daughter. We're covering Julie Harris, Coyton Boom, Audrey Hepburn, and I believe Jimmy Durante is coming into the story. We'll be right back.