A Few Thoughts After Reading Etty Hillesum

I have finally finished reading Etty's diary and letters, and it has been a profound experience. I was as moved as I ever have been. I know that some people refrain from indulging in the holocaust genre because it is too depressing. I understand that. I do not dwell on the horror; there is no point in that.

Yet, Etty herself was never depressed. Spiritually and psychologically, she rose above her circumstances. In the weeks over which I was reading the book, it impacted my mind significantly. I looked at life differently, saw the meaning of life more profoundly.

I read every footnote avidly, particularly the footnotes about individuals. Each character mentioned was vivid and vibrant to me--after all each was a friend of Etty.  She has made the Dutch people--Jews and non-Jews very attractive to me. I do not wish to diminish the tragedy of anyone's death, but the persecution and impending deaths of so many deeply talented intellectuals, artists, musicians, doctors, teachers, rabbis, is...well I don't know what words to use.

In the midst of the Nazi program to exterminate the Jews, Etty chose to embrace life and deal with her circumstances as best she could. She chose to live the highest of virtues of religion and humanity in every  moment of her life, even in the transit concentration camp at Westerbork.

Every moment of her time in the camp was spent working to alleviate the sufferings and difficulties of the other inmates. A letter from Jopie Vleeschhouwer, a fellow Westerbork inmate, described Etty on the platform before boarding the unpainted freight train bound for Poland: "Talking gaily, smiling, a kind word for everyone she met on the way, full of sparkling humor, perhaps just a touch of sadness, but every inch the Etty you all know so well."  And later in the same letter Jopie says: "After her departure I spoke to a little Russian woman and various other proteges of hers. And the way they felt about her leaving speaks volumes for the love and devotion she had given to them all."

Do you recall the 1997 film, Life is Beautiful?  The scriptwriter must have read Etty.  In the latter part of Etty's writings--as the illnesses, the hunger, the suicides, the numerous suffering and dying children, and all the despair and horror of the Nazi program continued, and as more and more Jews were packed into freight trains bound for the gas chambers in Poland--amid all this, every day Etty insisted that the gift of life was beautiful. Her life is the most powerful witness to truth that I have ever read.

Here in America, we live in the most politically free and economically prosperous society in human history. It is the opposite of a Nazi concentration camp. And yet everyday, we fail to live the values that we have been taught to live by. If Etty could think, feel, and live the way she did in the concentration camp, then what excuses could we Americans possibly have for not doing so?

.

On September 7, 1943, Etty and her family boarded the train for Auschwitz where died, on November 30 of the same year.

The Human Heart

In the English language unfortunately, the word heart is synonymous with feelings. That is not the case in the romance languages or the Bible's usage of the word. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw." The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

Thomas Merton on Self Awareness

When I am not present to myself,
then I am only aware of that half of me,
that mode of my being which turns outward to created things.
 And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them.
 Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull
of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God.
 My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties.
 My senses, my imagination, my emotions,
scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth.
 Recollection brings them home.
 It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit,
and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love
that reaches down into the mystery of God.

—Thomas Merton from No Man is an Island

Under Nazi Persecution, the Jewish Etty Hillesum Prays for a German Solder

The Nazis have occupied Holland, are vigorously persecuting the Jews and forcing them into Westerbork, a transient concentration camp in Holland, from which they were packed onto trains bound for Auschwitz (Oswiecim). Early in her diary, Etty notes that among the citizens of Holland, every discussion of the situation is one of shouting and enraged cursing of the Germans.  In contrast to the situation, I found the following quote to be utterly astonishing:

July 3, 1942

And if this day has brought me nothing else--not yet that fine and final confrontation with death and extinction--then I am nevertheless grateful for that kosher German Soldier at the kiosk with his bag of carrots and cauliflowers. First he pushed that note into Liesl's hand on the tram, and then came the letter that I had to read and reread: she reminded him so much of the late rabbi's daughter whom he had nursed on her deathbed for days and nights on end. And tonight he is paying a visit. 

And when Liesl told me all this, I knew at once: I shall have to pray for this German soldier. Out of all these uniforms one has been given a face now. There will be other faces, too, in which we shall be able to read something we understand: that German soldiers suffer as well. There are no frontiers between suffering people, and we must pray for them all.

 -  A quote from the book, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, by Etty Hillesum, p.156.  

Etty Hillesum was a secular, assimilated Jew living in Amsterdam who died in Auswitch in 1943. The diary was written after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, while the Nazis were persecuting the Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps. Etty had a degree in law and then studied Russian language and literature. On her own, she read philosophy, psychology, especially, Carl Jung, and poetry, especially Rilke. She was a patient,  personal secretary, and physical intimate of the psychoanalyst Julius Spier, also a Jew. He introduced her to the gospels and the writings of St. Augustine. Etty had several opportunities to escape the Nazi persecution, Instead she insisted on serving her fellow Jews to the very end and chose to suffer the same fate as they. Her last letter was a postcard tossed from the window of the train as it left for the Aushwitz concentration camp. It was found by a farmer.

Liesl is Liesl Levie, Etty's best friend. She survived the Holocaust and moved to Israel.

Love and Hate in the Concentration Camp

Below is an entry from the diary of Etty Hillesum. On this day, she writes from a concentration camp in Westerbork in the Netherlands. It was a transition camp, a place where the Nazis sent the Dutch Jews before shipping them off by train to Auschwitz (Oswiecim).  In the below, Klaas is Klaas Smelik, Sr. (1897-1986), a Communist and an author, first met Etty in Deventer in 1934. They remained friends, and he and his daughter Johanna ("Jopie") Smelik reportedly tried to persuade Etty to go into hiding  and offered her various places to stay. She always refused.  After the war, Etty's friend Marie Tuinzing gave Etty's diaries to Klaas Smelik who first tried to get them published.

September 23, 1942

We shan't get anywhere with hatred, Klaas. Appearances are so often deceptive. Take one of my colleagues. I see him often in my thoughts. The most striking thing about him is his inflexible, rigid neck. He hates our persecutors with an undying hatred, presumably with good reason. But he himself is a bully. He would make a model concentration camp guard. I often watched him standing beside the camp entrance to admit his fellow hunted Jews, never a pleasant sight. I also remembering his throwing a few grubby pieces of licorice to a sobbing three-year-old across the table and saying gruffly, "See you don't get it all over your face." Thinking back, I'm sure it was more awkwardness and shyness than lack of goodwill that made him seem curt--he simply couldn't hit the right tone. When I saw him walking about the others with his rigid neck and imperious look and his ever-present short pipe, I always thought, All he needs is a whip in his hand, it would suit him to perfection. But still I never hated him, I found him much too fascinating for that. Now and then I really feel terribly sorry for him. He had such an unhappy, miserable youth, if the truth be told. The mouth of a three-year-old who has been unable to get his way with his mother. He himself had meanwhile passed the thirty-year mark, a clever fellow, a successful lawyer--one of the most able in Holland--and the father of two children. But the mouth of a dissatisfied three-year-old had been stamped on his face. There was never any real contact between him and others, and he would give much covert, hungry looks whenever other people were friendly to each other. (I could always see him do it, for we lived a life without walls there.) Later I heard a few things about him from a colleague who had known him for years. During the German invasion he jumped into the street from a third-floor window but failed to kill himself. Later he threw himself under a car, but again to no avail. He then spent a few months in a mental institution. It was fear, just fear. I also learned that his wife had had to walk on tiptoe in the house because he could not bear the slightest noise and that he used to storm at his terrified children. I felt such deep, deep pity for him. What sort of life was that? In the end he hanged himself. (I must make sure his name is taken off the card index.)

Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn't even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. We are hurtful enough to one another as it is. And I don't really know what I mean when I say that there are bullies and bad characters among our own people, for no one is really "bad" deep down. I should have liked to reach out to that man with all his fears, I should have liked to trace the source of his panic, to drive him ever deeper into himself, that is the only thing we can do Klaas, in times like these.

And you Klaas, give a tired and despondent wave and say, "But what you propose to do takes such a long time, and we don't really have all that much time, do we?"

And I reply, "What you want is something people have been trying to get for the last two thousand years, and for many more thousand years before that, in fact, ever since mankind has existed on earth. "

"And what do you think the result has been, if I may ask?" you say.

And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, "It is the only thing we can do Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable."

And you Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, "But that--that is nothing but Christianity!"

And I amused by your confusion, retort quite coolly, "Yes, Christianity, and why ever not?"


At night the barracks sometimes lay in the moonlight, made out of silver and eternity: like a plaything that has slipped from God's preoccupied hand.

It Is Possible to Suffer with Dignity and Without

From the diary of Etty Hillesum:

July 1, 1942

It is possible to suffer with dignity and without. I mean: most of us in the West don't understand the art of suffering and experience a thousand fears instead. We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred, and despair. God knows it's only too easy to understand why. But when we are deprived of our lives, are we really deprived of very much? We have to accept death as part of life, even the most horrible of deaths. And don't we live an entire life each one of our days, and does it really matter if we live a few more days or less? I am in Poland every day, on the battlefields, if that's what one can call them. I often see visions of poisonous green smoke; I am with the hungry, with the ill-treated and the dying every day, but I am also with the jasmine and with that piece of sky beyond my window; there is room for everything in a single life. For a belief in God and for a miserable end. When I say, I have come to terms with life, I don't mean I have lost hope. What I feel is not hopelessness, far from it. I have lived this life a thousand time over already, and I have died a thousand deaths. Am I blase then? No. It is a question of living life from minute to minute and taking suffering into the bargain. And it is certainly no small bargain these days. But does it matter if it is the Inquisition that causes people to suffer in one century, and war and pogroms in another? To suffer senselessly, as the victims would put it? Suffering has always been with us, does it really matter in what form it comes? All that matters is how we bear it and how we fit it into our lives. Am I merely an armchair theorist safely ensconced behind my desk, with my familiar books around me and the jasmine outside? Is it all theory, never tested in practice? I don't think so. All our conversations are now interlarded with sentences such as, "I hope he'll still be there to enjoy these strawberries with us." I know that Mischa, with his delicate physique, has been ordered to report at Central Station, and I think of Miriam's and Renate's pale little faces, and many, many worried people, and I know it all, everything, every moment, and I sometimes bow my head under the great burden that weighs down on me, but even as I bow my head I also feel the need , almost mechanically to fold my hands. And so I can sit for hours and know everything and bear everything and grow stronger in the bearing of it, and at the same time, feel sure that life is beautiful and worth living and meaningful. Despite everything. But that does not mean that I am always filled with joy an exaltation. I am often dog-tired after standing about in queues, but I know that this too is part of life, and somewhere there is something inside me that will never desert me again.

The above quote is from the book, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, by Etty Hillesum, p.150.

Etty Hillesum was a secular, assimilated Jew living in Amsterdam who died in Auswitch in 1943. The diary was written after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, while the Nazis were persecuting the Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps. Etty had a degree in law and then studied Russian language and literature. On her own, she read philosophy, psychology, especially, Carl Jung, and poetry, especially Rilke. She was a patient,  personal secretary, and physical intimate of the psychoanalyst Julius Spier, also a Jew. He introduced her to the gospels and the writings of St. Augustine. Etty had several opportunities to escape the Nazi persecution, Instead she insisted on serving her fellow Jews to the very end and chose to suffer the same fate as they. Her last letter was a postcard tossed from the window of the train as it left for the concentration camp.

God Is Not Accountable To Us, But We Are To Him

From the diary of Etty Hillesum:

June, 1942

God is not accountable to us, but we are to Him. I know what might lie in wait for us. Even now I am cutoff from my parents and cannot reach then, although they are only two hours away by train. But I know exactly where they are, and that they're not going short of food and that there are many kind people all around them. And they know where I am, too. But I am also aware that there may come a time when I shan't know where they are, when they might be deported to perish miserably in some unknown place. I know this is perfectly possible. The latest news is that all Jews will be transported out of Holland through Drenthe Province and then on to Poland. And the English radio has reported that 700,000 Jews perished last year alone, in Germany and the occupied territories. And even if we stay alive, we shall carry the wounds with us throughout our lives. And yet I don't think life is meaningless. And God is not accountable to us for the senseless harm we cause one another. We are accountable to Him!  I have already died a thousand deaths in a thousand concentration camps. I know about everything and am no longer appalled by the latest reports. In one way or another, I know it all. And yet I find life beautiful and meaningful.

This is from the book, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, by Etty Hillesum, p.150. Etty Hillesum was a secular, assimilated Jew living in Amsterdam who died in Auswitch in 1943. The diary was written after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, while the Nazis were persecuting the Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps. Etty had a degree in law and then studied Russian language and literature. On her own she read philosophy, psychology, especially, Carl Jung, and poetry, especially Rilke. She was a patient,  personal secretary, and physical intimate of the psychoanalyst Julius Spier, also a Jew. He introduced her to the gospels and the writings of St. Augustine. Etty had several opportunities to escape the Nazi persecution, Instead she insisted on serving her fellow Jews to the very end and chose to suffer the same fate as they. Her last letter was a postcard tossed from the window of the train as it left for the concentration camp.

Listening...

From the diary of Etty Hillesum,  p46:

4 September, 1941

Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think you way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Reestablish contact with a slice of eternity.

This is from the book, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, by Etty Hillesum, p.150. Etty Hillesum was a secular, assimilated Jew living in Amsterdam who died in Auswitch in 1943. The diary was written after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, while the Nazis were persecuting the Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps. Etty had a degree in law and then studied Russian language and literature. On her own she read philosophy, psychology, especially, Carl Jung, and poetry, especially Rilke. She was a patient,  personal secretary, and physical intimate of the psychoanalyst Julius Spier, also a Jew. He introduced her to the gospels and the writings of St. Augustine. Etty had several opportunities to escape the Nazi persecution, Instead she insisted on serving her fellow Jews to the very end and chose to suffer the same fate as they. Her last letter was a postcard tossed from the window of the train as it left for the concentration camp.