etty

"The few big things that matter in life are what we have to keep in mind; the rest can be quietly abandoned. And you can find those few big things anywhere, you have to keep rediscovering them in yourself so that you can be renewed. And in spite of everything you always end up with the same conviction: life is good after all, it's not God's fault that things go awry sometimes, the cause lies in ourselves. And that's what stays with me, even now, even when I'm about to be packed off to Poland with my whole family." 

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"I have noticed that in every situation, even the most difficult, man generates new faculties that help him go on living. As far as that is concerned, God is merciful enough. And as for the rest: several suicides last night before the transport, with razors and so on. This morning, while I stood at the tub with a colleague, I said with great emotion something like this:  'The realms of the soul and the spirit are so spacious and unending that this little bit of physical discomfort and suffering really doesn't matter all that much. I do not feel I have been robbed of my freedom; essentially no one can do me any harm at all.'" 

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"Last time I saw my father, we went for a walk in the dusty, sandy wasteland. He is so sweet, and wonderfully resigned. Very pleasantly, calmly, and quite casually, he said, 'You know, I would like to get to Poland as quickly as possible. Then it will be all over and done with and I won't have to continue with this undignified existence. After all, why should I be spared from what has happened to thousands of others?'...Westerbork really is nothing but desert...'Jews in a desert, we know that sort of landscape from before.'  It really gets you down, having such a nice little father, you sometimes feel there is no hope at all...All I wanted to say is this: The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart...like some elementary force-- the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world.  Against every outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb." 

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"The main path of my life stretches like a long journey before me and already reaches into another world. It is just as if everything that happens here and that is sill to happen were discounted inside me. As if I had been through it already, and was now helping to build a new and different society. Life here hardly touches my deepest resources-- physically, perhaps, you do decline a little, and sometimes you are infinitely sad-- but fundamentally you keep growing stronger." 

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Yes, really, it's true, there are compassionate laws in nature, if only we can keep a feeling for their rhythm. I notice that afresh each time in myself:  when I am at the limits of despair, unable, I am sure, to go on, suddenly the balance shifts over to the other side, and I can laugh and take life as it comes. After feeling really low for ages, you can suddenly rise so high above earthly misery that you feel lighter and more liberated than ever before in your life. I am now very well again, but for a few days I was quite desperate. Equilibrium is restored time and again. Ah children, we live in a strange world. 

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This is something people refuse to admit to themselves:  at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept. And although that is something I learned a long time ago, I also know that one can only accept for oneself and not for others. [!!!!!!!!!] And that is what is so desperately difficult for me here...I have never been able to 'do' anything; I can only let things take their course and if need be, suffer. This is where my strength lies, and it is great strength indeed. But for myself, not for others." 

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"Many feel their love of mankind languishes at Westerbork because it receives no nourishment-- meaning that people here don't give you much occasion to love them. 'The mass is a hideous monster; individuals are pitiful,' someone said. But I keep discovering that there is no causal connection between people's behavior and the love you feel for them. Love for one's fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you. The fellow man himself has hardly anything to do with it. Oh Maria, it's a little bare of love here, and I myself feel so inexpressibly rich; I cannot explain it." 

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"Had a stab at philosophy late at night, with eyes that kept closing with fatigue. People sometimes say 'You must try to make the best of things.'  I find this such a feeble thing to say. Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time. The two are in balance, everywhere and always. I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things; everything is fine just as it is. Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself and contains the good as well as the bad." 

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[A prayer she shared in a letter]:

"You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life...I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one word:  God. And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches." 

[Etty Hillesum wrote these lines while in a transport camp waiting to be sent in a train to Auschwitz to die. She lost everything, over the course of many long agonizing days: her past life, her loves, her friends, her family, her experience of sanity in the world, while all around her was ultimate evil and cruelty and sickness and death. She knew everything that was happening to the Jews of Europe.]  

The final note: 

"Christine, 

Opening the Bible at random I find this: 'The Lord is my high tower.'. I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning. On sudden special orders from the Hague. We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too. We shall be traveling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. Friends left behind will still be writing to Amsterdam; perhaps you will hear something from them. Or from my last letter from camp. 

Goodbye for now from the four of us. 

Etty"