Everybody has heard of Anne Frank or Corrie ten Boom at some point. Whether they heard about their childhood, something significant they did, or just heard it in a passing conversation, they’ve probably heard of these two women.

Judging from her book and many articles about her, Anne Frank is more popular than Corrie ten Boom. She was born in 1929, and Anne was a Jew. When she was around 4 years old, she and her family moved to the Netherlands because Hitler had gained control of Germany, where Anne had been born.

In 1942 when she was 12, she and her family were hidden in a secret annex to be concealed from the Germans who were trying to arrest the family. There, she started her diary which is what made her story known and famous. All throughout their hidden years (around two years) in the annex, she documented their time there. Unfortunately, she and her family were captured by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz, a concentration and extermination camp.

Anne Frank and her elder sister, Margot, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. She and her sister presumably died of typhus a few months after their transfer. She was 15 years old.

Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was the only known surviving member of the Frank family. When he returned home, he found that his secretaries, who had helped hide the Frank family, had kept Anne’s diary safe. He then published it in 1947. It was translated from Dutch, (published in English in 1952,) and is titled The Diary of a Young Girl and has been a popular success ever since.

Now, Corrie ten Boom’s story is much more vast, considering she lived to be 91, and died in 1983. She was born in 1892, 53 years after Anne Frank was born. She was raised in a Christian family, and her family was the owner of a watch shop, where she learned the trade of a watchmaker like her father.

In 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands where she was born. Shortly after the Germans invaded her country, people came to her family’s door, asking for shelter because they were Jews. She, her father, Casper, and sister, Betsie, were willing to go all-in for these people, even though their home was half a block away from the police station.

After many families had come and gone to the ten Boom home, Corrie and Casper decided that they must have a real hiding place and alert system. With the help of the underground, they made a secret annex in Corrie’s room behind her closet. After months of hiding Jews in her home, the Nazis came to the ten Boom household and arrested Casper, Corrie, and Betsie for hiding Jews.

They were taken to the concentration camps, and Casper unfortunately died in prison. After being sent to around 3-4 concentration camps, Betsie died at age 59 in 1944 from the terrible conditions in the camps. Corrie was released 12 days later because of a clerical error. If that error hadn’t been made, she would have been gassed to death with the other women her age.

After being released in 1945, on New Year’s Day, Corrie returned home where she wrote books of her journey. None of the Jews she hid had been killed, lost, or arrested.

After the war, Corrie opened a rehabilitation center. She traveled to Africa, Asia, the Americas to share the Gospel. In 1983 she died on her 91st birthday, April 15. She was buried in California.

You can see both Corrie ten Boom and Anne Frank’s homes, which have been turned into museums. I’d also highly recommend reading The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, which is her autobiography and it is fantastic, with a faith-based perspective, and stories of her experiences during World War II. Anne Frank’s book, The Diary of A Young Girl is also fascinating, but she does have some vulgar, slightly pornographic thoughts, as it is a diary filled with her opinions.

Which of the two brave women is more historically significant? Corrie ten Boom. She aided people, even when she was threatened, her family members died, she had no hope of saving herself and others, and had no idea what would happen to her future.

Although Anne Frank was incredibly brave during the time where Jews were considered impure, she hid. She didn’t help other people or risk her life, and in the end? She died. She didn’t have a positive impact on those around her, other than the fact that she was brave when Nazis were trying to kill her race. But, she is still considered a hero in our world.

However, hiding or not, Anne Frank and Corrie ten Boom are both enormously historically significant women who made an incredible impact on our world.