Alida Bosshardt—better known as Major Bosshardt—was a well known officer in The Salvation Army and more or less the public face of The Army’s work in the Netherlands (AKA Holland).
Born in 1913 in the city of Utrecht Alida did not grow up as a religious person, though her father was a Roman Catholic and her mother was Dutch Reformed. It wasn’t until Alida was 18 years old, when she attended a Salvation Army meeting, that she was saved and became a member of the church.
In 1934 she began work in a Salvation Army children’s home in Amsterdam. During the German occupation during World War II, Bosshardt cared for 80 children (who were mostly Jewish) during the difficult days of Nazi control. She often helped these children go into hiding by riding them to safe houses on her bicycle.
After the War, she worked at the Army’s National Headquarters in Amsterdam. She soon realized that the Army was not ministering in Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District and obtained permission to start ministering there.
She stormed the hearts of many with her heartwarming smile, charming Dutch accent, implicit faith, trust in Jesus, and a love for people that could not be hidden. “How or where can we meet the people in their time of need if we are not in the midst?” she often replied to questions about her life in such a dangerous and corrupt part of Amsterdam.
In 1948, Alida was given responsibility for all social service work in Holland and set up her headquarters in the inner city of Amsterdam, where she was already known for her work from her work with the children’s home. For many years her one room served as her bedroom, living room, office, counseling room and any other function directly or indirectly connected with her official position. She was often woken up in the middle of the night by a knock on her door and a desperate cry for help. “I have no food…I am stranded…I need shelter…I need money…my child is sick…my wife is in labor…my husband beat me.”
She became a motherly figure to the 3,000 prostitutes of the area, most of whom she knew by name. She was loved and respected by the girls, the pimps, the alcoholics and the drug users. She did not excuse their sin; but was desperately concerned with the sinner. “One sin is not worse than another,” she often said. “The banker and the prostitute are both separated from God, and it is the separation that is the sin.”
The people of the Red Light District knew that Alida was a woman of God who actually accepted them as they were. In his biography of Alida Bosshardt, Here Is My Hand, Denis Duncan commented on Bosshardt’s “wholly extrovert approach to everyone. Be it workman, alcoholic, princess, prostitute or peer, her attitude was the same, her greeting warm, her comments frank, her friendship real.”
Those who knew Alida understood why she could never consider turning back from her chosen way of life. The calling she had undertaken was to her exciting and rewarding. “Heavy?” she said to someone who asked her about the ‘heavy’ burden she had undertaken. “It’s not heavy for me.” She truly found that God’s burden is light, though it meant self-denial, poverty, physical strains and demands almost beyond anyone’s endurance.
“It has meant scrubbing floors and cleaning up other people’s mess. It has meant conducting the funeral of a mother, 11 of whose 12 children she had brought into the world. It has meant constantly dealing with drunks and the derelicts of human society at any hour of day or night. It has meant walking in the rain selling War Cry’s to people in nice houses; cycling miles and miles to deliver her papers. It has meant living with the sin and evil of this world to the point of descending into other people’s hells.”
“I sometimes found it difficult to have nothing of my own,” she once wrote, “no house of my own, never to be able to put my legs under my own table. But if you haven’t much to lose, you haven’t much to look after.”
On April 14, 1962, The Salvation Army opened its Goodwill Centre in Amsterdam’s inner city, a day of triumph for Bosshardt and also the day she was awarded the Order of the Founder, the highest award the Army can give. When Mrs. Colonel Frederick Holland pinned the decoration on her uniform, Alida said, “Please tell the General I shall do my best in the future and not to worry about me.”
Bosshardt saw her approach to ministry as both evangelical and social. “The two strands are inseparable if work is to be effective. To enable people to help themselves is important and must be done. But real change of character that will bear fruit in due season depends on conversion, the surest means’ of change.”
“The entire work”, she said, is an expression of “love toward God, who gives us the ability to love our fellow man, regardless of who or what he or she may be. This means the clients of the prostitutes and those who profit from prostitution. All are God’s creatures and have a right to renewal of contact with God through the mercy of His Son, Jesus Christ.”
Alida’s work for the prostitutes of the Red Light District gained her national fame. In 1965, she was accompanied in secret by then Princess Beatrix Armgard (now Queen of the Netherlands) during her rounds where they distributed copies of The War Cry in bars and visited prostitutes and poor families of the Red Light District.
She continued to be a prominent member of the Army after retirement and regularly appeared on television and often spoke at conferences and church services. In 2004, Bosshardt was honored with the prestigious “Righteous Among the Nations” award for her work during World War II.
On June 25, 2007 Alida Bosshardt was promoted to glory at the age of 94. More than 3,500 people passed by her coffin to pay their last respects, 15,000 people signed the register for condolences and more than one million viewers watched her funeral live on television.
During her funeral a statement written by General Shaw Clifton was read: “The colonel was the recipient of many awards which she received with humility and grace. These honors were fully deserved. She received the Order of the Founder, our highest recognition. Now she has the greatest reward that any human being can receive, a Crown of Life in Heaven, and those words from the Master that no other words can surpass, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’…Where are those who will now step forward, inspired by her example, to continue the sacred work for which she was renowned? The world is waiting for you!”
(Compiled and edited from articles from the International Heritage Centre Website and Salvationist.org)
Youth Department