Naked and Humiliated

No one enjoys being humiliated. People go to great lengths – even to murder – to avoid exposure and humiliation.

Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) was interred in a Nazi concentration camp during World War 2. She was there with her Christian parents and sister for hiding Jews during the Holocaust. In her biography, The Hiding Place, she wrote of being humiliated by the German guards. Every Friday, the skin and bone prisoners, starved, unwashed, and sickly, were stripped naked and forced to parade before the soldiers. She wrote:

I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus’ arrest – how soldiers had slapped Him, laughed at Him, flogged Him. Now such happenings had faces and voices…. He hung naked on the cross…. The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at the least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh…