Etty Hillesum with her family in 1931.
A highly documented biography on Etty Hillesum
The 1900s with the tragedy of the Second World War and the horror of the Shoah left us inheritance extraordinary figures, precious references for those who aspire to relate to pain and evil without losing their humanity. Among these Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who in Resistance and yield He theorized – and then embodied with his life and his choices – an “active” model of reaction and commitment against evil, and Etty Hillesum, the Dutch Jewish writer who died on November 30, 1943 at 29 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A figure, that of Etty Hillesum, which despite the publication of the Diary and of Letters (both for Adelphi) has not yet been studied as assimilated as it deserves. To fill this gap and stimulate a new comparison with her contributes the exit of A very detailed biography, the result of seven years of work, which reconstructs their life, the family and historical context almost day by day from 1941 to 1943, making use of an exceptional amount of testimonies: Etty Hillesum. The story of his life by Judith Koelemeijer (Adelphi).
Who was Etty Hillesum?
So who was Etty Hillesum? Was A girl of great vitality, tormented, full of relationships, also characterized by a strong sensuality and intense eroticism, for a long time in search of itself. He came from a mother of Russian origin and a Jewish Dutch father who was a teacher of classical subjects and Liceo principal for all his life. He had two brothers, marked by episodes of psychic fragility, especially the minor, Mischa, however an exceptional talent of the piano. Also to detach himself from a family to whom he was very tied, but full of tension, from the province he moved to Amsterdam to study law. At the time Etty was a girl full of doubts, with the ambition to become a writer, but still not very aware of himself.
Julius Spiers in 1930.
The decisive meeting with Julius Spiers
A decisive meeting took place in the capital: «In February 1941 he met the German chilologist Julius Spier, a therapist who used the reading of the hand as a starting point for psychological treatment, Psychoanalysis expert with a letter of recommendation nothing less than Carl Gustav Jung », says Judith Koelemeijer. «A meeting that changed her life. He became his patient, pupil and then also a lover. It was Spier to induce Etty to discover the strength and freedom of the inner soul and that hatred is never the right answer, not even in the face of evil, because “responding to hatred with hatred would only drag people even more into the mud” “.
Etty ventured into a path that, step by step, led her to discover the extraordinary strength hidden in our interiority, where God is found, and hence the ability to face even the hardest evidence without ever indulging in violence (e Etty’s as a teacher of non -violence is still an aspect to be explored), to revenge, but on the contrary keeping an impregnable purity: «Once it is a hitler; Another is Ivan the terrible, as far as I’m concerned; In a century it is the inquisitor and in another they are the wars, or the plague and earthquakes and the famine. What matters ultimately is how it brings, stands and resolves the pain, and if you can keep intact a piece of one’s soul “, wrote in the Diary on 10 July 1942. In short, the challenge is to be inside the evil, when this surrounds us and dominates, without selling its soul, without accepting its logic.
The relationship with God
In this fascinating and mysterious place that is his own interiority Etty said to meet something that called God. And his faith seems to be more intense just when evil seems to triumph and hope no longer makes sense: “Under the guidance of Spiers and the firm faith of his dear friend Henny Tideman, Etty became deeply spiritual”, explains Koelemeijer. “Although she had grown like a Jewish girl – her father had studied for years in the seminary and knew the Jewish tradition like few others – she, like many Dutch Jews in the 1930s, had grown in an integrated environment, still formally connected to the Jewish community. During the war, however, Etty began to read the New Testament and gradually matured a very personal relationship with God. For her, God was not a distant and dominant power, but “the good within himself”. What made his perspective so surprising was moral responsibility that he attributed to humans: only humanity brought the consequences of his own decline, God was not fault. Each person had before “extracting the God within himself”, discovering the seed of goodness buried in the depths of his heart: only then did the world begin to heal ».
The refusal to escape to share the fate of his people
While Etty travels his psychological and spiritual journey to become himself, The context around her gets harder and harder. The Nazi occupation precipitates towards the final solution, the extermination of the Jews. For them, the only possibility of salvation is to run the risk of escape, to be clandestinity. The network of friends, many of whom involved in the resistance and therefore with the right knowledge to disappear without giving eye, repeatedly offer them the opportunity to escape, but she always refused. Why this choice? Here emerges the concrete outcome of the spiritual path of Etty, his personal response to evil: “Etty wanted to be solidarity with his Jewish companions who had no possibility of hiding”, says the author from the biography. “He decided, therefore, to” share the fate of his people “, renouncing every opportunity to guarantee their security, a choice that often met the anger or misunderstanding of his friends. It must be said that Etty had no clear understanding of what that “fate” really meant. Like almost all his contemporaries, he believed that he would be sent to a “work field” in the East, he could not have imagined the sad reality that hid behind the name of that name “.
Employment at Jewish Council
In this perspective, his painful decision must also be read to accept employment to the controversial Jewish Council, an entity made up of Dutch that mediated the relationships with the Nazis, To limit the negative effects of employment according to supporters as much as possible, to save their lives even at the expense of compatriots according to the detractors. “Etty was very critical of the Jewish Council,” says Koelemeijer. «However, on July 14, 1942, after the insistent stresses of his brother Jaap, he wrote a letter of request to the Jewish Council. Just that same day in Amsterdam took place a great racia, during which 700 Jews were captured at random by the streets and deported. Etty thought that working for the Jewish Council not only offered her protection, but would also give her the opportunity to help her Jewish companions, until she had been able to. He was convinced that even the members of the Jewish Council one day would be deported, which actually happened. Etty worked for the Jewish Council until June 1943. Subsequently his “protected position” ended. In September 1943 she and her family were deported to Auschwitz ».
Etty in his room in 1937.
The last few years between Westerbork and Auschwitz and the spiritual legacy
Etty was now ready to live her destiny to the end. He wanted to stay in the transit field of Westerbork, then transformed into the concentration camp, as a volunteer to give a word of comfort to men, women and children who arrived full of terror and hungry And then, since 1943, with the acceleration of the Nazis on the final solution, they would have been deported to Auschwitz. Destiny that also touched Etty and his family, except brother Jaap.
The day of death – on November 30, 1943 – is not certain, but calculated thinking about what happened of many other Jews deported to Auschwitz to be exterminated in the gas chambers. Certainly it is instead the precious moral and spiritual legacy of this woman: “We live in an era of growing polarization and growing hatred, with politicians who increasingly put communities against each other. These are dangerous dynamics, and Etty’s warning that “every hatred atom added to this world makes it even more inhospitable than it is already” seems more urgent than ever. His reflections are universal and timeless. The belief that, even if you cannot change the circumstances, you are always free to choose how to react to them, can offer comfort to anyone. Etty refused to consider himself a victim. That vast inner freedom and that silent force still continue to inspire people all over the world ».
Let’s listen, then, Etty: «The only thing we can save these days, and also the only one that really counts, is a small piece of you in ourselves, my God. And perhaps we can also help to dissect you from the devastated hearts of other men … There will still be a piece of sky to be able to look, and enough space inside me to join hands in a prayer ».
