Etty Hillesum

"I know that a new and kinder day will come . . . . And there is only one way of preparing the new age, by living it even now in our hearts." Like Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) was a young Dutch Jewish woman who would perish as so many did in the Auschwitz death camp. Forty years after her death at the age of 29 the publication of her diaries, An Interrupted life , revealed to the world her remarkable voice. In the last two years of her life, Etty expressed a deeply ecumenical mysticism, drawing on scripture, literature, and Christian sources. As the noose of repression grew tighter, she faced up to her fate with extraordinary grace and courage, determined to affirm the goodness and beauty of life, and to make of her soul a haven for God. As she surrendered herself to the Westerbork Transit Camp she expressed her desire to serve as the "thinking heart of the barracks." This volume, drawn from her letters and diaries, lays out the themes of her distinctive and inspiring spiritual vision, startling in its relevance and moving in its openness to the possibilities for hope in a world of brutal violence.

"I know that a new and kinder day will come . . . . And there is only one way of preparing the new age, by living it even now in our hearts." Like Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) was a young Dutch Jewish woman who would perish as so many did in the Auschwitz death camp. Forty years after her death at the age of 29 the publication of her diaries, An Interrupted life , revealed to the world her remarkable voice. In the last two years of her life, Etty expressed a deeply ecumenical mysticism, drawing on scripture, literature, and Christian sources. As the noose of repression grew tighter, she faced up to her fate with extraordinary grace and courage, determined to affirm the goodness and beauty of life, and to make of her soul a haven for God. As she surrendered herself to the Westerbork Transit Camp she expressed her desire to serve as the "thinking heart of the barracks." This volume, drawn from her letters and diaries, lays out the themes of her distinctive and inspiring spiritual vision, startling in its relevance and moving in its openness to the possibilities for hope in a world of brutal violence.

For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear together to give us the fullest possible portrait of this extraordinary woman in the midst of World War II. In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.

For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear together to give us the fullest possible portrait of this extraordinary woman in the midst of World War II. In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.