Product Description

Etty Hillesum (1914-43) lived in Amsterdam, like Anne Frank, and like her she kept a diary. 'All the writings she left behind,' writes Eva Hoffman in her Preface to this edition of her diaries and letters, 'were composed in the shadow of the Holocaust, but they resist being read primarily in its dark light. Rather, their abiding interest lies in the light-filled mind that pervades them and in the astonishing internal journey they chart. Etty's pilgrimage grew out of the intimate experience of an intellectual young woman - it was idiosyncratic, individual, and recognisably modern...The private person who revealed herself in her diary was impassioned, erotically volatile, restless...Yet she had the kind of genius for introspection that converts symptoms into significance and joins self-examination to philosophical investigation...In the last stages of her amazing and moving journey, Etty seemed to attain that peace which passeth understanding...Finally, however, the violence and brutality she saw all around her overwhelmed even her capacity to understand...But by knowing and feeling so deeply and fully, an unknown young woman became one of the most exceptional and truest witnesses of the devastation through which she lived. '

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82963 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-22
• Original language: Dutch
• Binding: Paperback
• 430 pages

Customer Reviews

An incredibly inspiring book
The diaries of this young woman, 27 years of age, during wartime in Holland (1941 - 1943)is being read all over the world since the discovery in 1981. Etty is the mature 'Anne Frank' a true writer, chroniquer and human being, where she goes through a spiritual growth when facing her own death and the death of all her Jewish friends.

An Inspiration
The incredible thing about Etty Hillesum is that she was saint-like (she couldn't actually be a saint of course, because she was Jewish) and yet she was so human, so ordinary, so like you and me. This is why her diaries, written in the last two years of her life before she died in the Holocaust, are so amazing and everyone should read them. They are completely extraordinary, and yet about someone funny and hard-working yet Great. I often think about Etty and hope I am inspired by her. But, mostly, these diaries should be read for what they teach us about life, the universe, humanity.

Humbling and truly heartbreaking
Etty was 28 when she volunteered ... imagine it, volunteered ... to accompany thousands of Jews who had been arrested in Amsterdam into the Westerbork transit camp, their last stop before Auschwitz. For a while, she was able to travel back and forth to Amsterdam, as a privileged worker for the Jewish Council, but she refused the offers of friends to take her into hiding. Her final letters describe in heartbreaking detail this community for whom time was running out ... every Tuesday a freight train was dispatched packed with men, women, babies, children, the old, the sick, 1000 people a week. She describes the wild lupins surrounding the camp; the madness of camp concerts as famous cabaret stars literally sang for their lives in front of the commandant; the desperation of a frightened young boy who ran to hide when his call-up came and inadvertently brought retribution on many others. Mostly what sings out is the humanity and dignity that can survive against all odds.

Even if you struggle with Etty's diary, which focuses on her spiritual growth and her intense relationship with an older man, a rather dodgy-sounding psychoanalyst/guru type ... do persevere to read the letters at the end. They are truly humbling.