Etty Hillesum

Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman from the Netherlands, died in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine. In March of 1941 she began a practice of journaling in a personal diary and writing letters to friends and family. We have her diary and we have a great many of her letters. In her writing we find the remarkable path she took into the depth of her own being where she found God, and then emerged from a place of union to love everyone including and especially her captors with a profoundly compassionate and wise heart. Etty was transformed by her suffering and that of her fellow Jews and came to the conclusion that while she understood that those who hate had reason to do so, she could not choose anything but love for herself.

An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork contains the collected works of Etty Hillesum from March of 1941 to September of 1943. In just a few short years Etty went through a remarkable spiritual transformation. 

“Become simple and live simply, not only within yourself but also in your everyday dealings. Don’t make ripples all around you, don’t try to be interesting, keep your distance, be honest, fight the desire to be thought fascinating by the outside world.”