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fields 's review for:
Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork
by Etty Hillesum
A diary reveals something unpolished and earnest in the soul, something one cannot always utter when aware of being seen and heard. The writer may walk more freely, perhaps, in the fields of a diary. I was drawn to Etty Hillesum’s diary after reading about her in Anne Michael’s Correspondences. She wrote her diaries and letters at around the same age as I am now, so I imagined her as someone akin to myself, with similar longings, although her afflictions were as unmeasurable as they are unimaginable to us on this side of time and land.
The diary begins when Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman, is twenty-seven years old. We already know how it ends, that she will die at the age of twenty-nine in Auschwitz, and so it’s disquieting to find lines likes these, written while still in Amsterdam: “Sometimes I think that my life is only just beginning. That the real difficulties are still to come, although at times I feel that I have struggled through so many already. I shall study and try to comprehend, I shall allow myself to become thoroughly perplexed by whatever comes my way and apparently diverts me, yes, I shall allow myself to be perplexed time and again perhaps, in order to arrive at greater certainty.”
She was a passionate, tender and giving lover, and much of the first half of the book encompasses her relationships, particularly with Spier. But there, too, she emphasizes that to give is more valuable than to receive and that we mustn’t dwell excessively on ourselves, or else we might miss the mighty, eternal current that is life. It is not naivety, for Etty was aware of the destruction and torture of her people, something she soon felt upon herself. She bore her suffering with grace and did not grow bitter when the world built more walls around her—for being part of the Jewish element—but kept the candle of herself lit, burning, guiding: “I feel so strong; it matters little whether you have to sleep on a hard floor, or whether you are only allowed to walk through certain specified streets, and so on, these are all minor vexations, so insignificant compared with the infinite riches and possibilities we carry within us. We must guard these and remain true to them and keep faith with them.”
Beauty, synonymous with hope, can be found where there is none, because “heaven is inside one, like Rilke's "cosmic interior."
In the second half of the book, when she is in Westerbork, her voice becomes more serious and spiritual, and yet it is still a voice of compassion and empathy, a more mature voice that recognizes the importance to give at a time of violence and darkness, even if one’s own hand is growing impossibly weak. The biblical line, the peace that passeth understanding, can be attached to Etty. She held an exceptional degree of gratitude to be able to live and help her kin even for a single more day. This manifested in kindness spread to those suffering beside her. Her love did not always stem effortlessly. She was as haunted and aching as others at the time. Her love was an act, a tree rooted in the soil of her own reflective and passionate soul. Perhaps for Etty love was, as Simone Weil wrote, a direction and not a state of the soul.
I don’t leave reviews very often, but I want to remember Etty. I want to find her voice, again and again, a short-lived (indeed, an interrupted) and luminous sound in the long, dark corridors of history.
“In the evenings we go and watch the sun setting over the purple lupins behind the barbed wire.”
The diary begins when Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman, is twenty-seven years old. We already know how it ends, that she will die at the age of twenty-nine in Auschwitz, and so it’s disquieting to find lines likes these, written while still in Amsterdam: “Sometimes I think that my life is only just beginning. That the real difficulties are still to come, although at times I feel that I have struggled through so many already. I shall study and try to comprehend, I shall allow myself to become thoroughly perplexed by whatever comes my way and apparently diverts me, yes, I shall allow myself to be perplexed time and again perhaps, in order to arrive at greater certainty.”
She was a passionate, tender and giving lover, and much of the first half of the book encompasses her relationships, particularly with Spier. But there, too, she emphasizes that to give is more valuable than to receive and that we mustn’t dwell excessively on ourselves, or else we might miss the mighty, eternal current that is life. It is not naivety, for Etty was aware of the destruction and torture of her people, something she soon felt upon herself. She bore her suffering with grace and did not grow bitter when the world built more walls around her—for being part of the Jewish element—but kept the candle of herself lit, burning, guiding: “I feel so strong; it matters little whether you have to sleep on a hard floor, or whether you are only allowed to walk through certain specified streets, and so on, these are all minor vexations, so insignificant compared with the infinite riches and possibilities we carry within us. We must guard these and remain true to them and keep faith with them.”
Beauty, synonymous with hope, can be found where there is none, because “heaven is inside one, like Rilke's "cosmic interior."
In the second half of the book, when she is in Westerbork, her voice becomes more serious and spiritual, and yet it is still a voice of compassion and empathy, a more mature voice that recognizes the importance to give at a time of violence and darkness, even if one’s own hand is growing impossibly weak. The biblical line, the peace that passeth understanding, can be attached to Etty. She held an exceptional degree of gratitude to be able to live and help her kin even for a single more day. This manifested in kindness spread to those suffering beside her. Her love did not always stem effortlessly. She was as haunted and aching as others at the time. Her love was an act, a tree rooted in the soil of her own reflective and passionate soul. Perhaps for Etty love was, as Simone Weil wrote, a direction and not a state of the soul.
I don’t leave reviews very often, but I want to remember Etty. I want to find her voice, again and again, a short-lived (indeed, an interrupted) and luminous sound in the long, dark corridors of history.
“In the evenings we go and watch the sun setting over the purple lupins behind the barbed wire.”