Rebecca Davis

AFA Journal staff writer

Above, actor John Rhys-Davies (left) and director Peter C. Spencer on set of Hiding Place 
Photo by Andrea Dougherty

November 2015 – Corrie ten Boom. A familiar name. A remarkable life. An untold story … until now.

Director Peter C. Spencer beautifully captures and portrays the story of Corrie ten Boom’s “teenage army” in Return to the Hiding Place. A follow-up to the 1975 movie The Hiding Place, Spencer’s film introduces viewers to the real-life account of a group of untrained college students who come alongside ten Boom in her heroic efforts to save a host of innocent Jews from Hitler and his Nazi regime.

Return to the Hiding Place focuses on physics student Hans Poley, resistance fighter Peit Hartog, and ten Boom’s niece Aty van Woerden. Together, with the help of others, the trio become a part of “an intricate web of espionage and clandestine activities centered in the famous Hiding Place.” The “members” of the Hiding Place also find counsel and companionship from Eusi, a Jewish synagogue cantor. Eusi is played by actor John Rhys-Davies.

With wisdom and wit, Eusi challenges the teenage army and its leaders to examine their hearts and motives and to consider the source of their bravery, courage, and convictions.

Rhys-Davies told AFA Journal that his role in the film actually caused him to look within and ask a lot of difficult questions.

“We all like to think that we have what’s inside us to stand up for what is truly right and truly good,” Rhys-Davies said. “But I wonder how many of us really have the courage to do that.”

Rhys-Davies, best known for his role as Dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings, describes the film as “basically a celebration of those young people whose moral beliefs are not just theoretical but whose beliefs form a moral imperative to act wisely and justly and in a spirit of true self-examination.”

Poley, Hartog, and Woerden were real people with a real desire to give of themselves – even give their lives – in order to save others. Return to the Hiding Place is candid and raw, and it tells their story well.

Rhys-Davies describes the film as generous but austere, without a lot of frills yet noble in sentiment. A story that is brave and uplifting, important and entertaining, not preachy but so very relevant.

In fact, Spencer finds the atrocities of Nazi rule, as portrayed in the film, chillingly similar to what is happening to Christians in the present-day Middle East. He told TheBlaze.com: “The ethnic and religious purging of Christians today is exactly like Hitler’s ethnic cleansing of Jews in WWII. True Christians are today obligated to rescue the perishing from the blades of [the Islamic State].”

Answering his own challenge, Spencer has organized the Orange Resistance effort to raise awareness about Christian persecution in the Middle East. The name comes from the orange color of jumpsuits worn by victims of Islamic extremists as well as from an association of the color orange to the Netherlands, the setting of the movie.

The effort plans to use a variety of ways to bring about awareness, including scheduling screenings of the film and following them with a panel discussion about the similarities between persecution then and now.

“This is a film that really gets us thinking about our world, thinking about ourselves, thinking about the nature of courage and faith and whether we have what it takes to do what is right,” Rhys-Davies said.

He added: “See it! It will move you, and it might just change you.”  

Return to the Hiding Place DVD is available at
afastore.net or by calling 877-927-4917.