The mysticism of Amsterdam which chose the deportation
In 1985, almost forty years after the death in Auschwitz d’Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), his diary, An upset life . We discover a woman inhabited by a deep spirituality which led her to accept her deportation to bring aid and love in the camps, and “help God” to go there. The literary quality of the text and faith in man will affect millions of readers.
Besides these notebooks depicting her inner life, we know little about her. Dutch journalist Judith Koelemeijer remedies it with a biography nourished by archives and testimonies of rare relatives still alive, to understand “which Etty hides behind the myth”.
A spirituality nourished by its reading of the Bible
Thus we learn that Etty Hillesum was born into a secular Jewish family, a Dutch father, doctor of letters, and a Russian mother exiled to flee the pogroms. His two young brothers intended to become a pianist and doctor. For her part, without passion, she embarks on law studies. Activist, she establishes very strong friendships in anti -fascist groups.
Fearing to sink into schizophrenia like her brother Mischa, in 1941 she met the psychotherapist Julius Spier of which she became the patient, the secretary and the lover. He helps him tame his sensitivity and also guides her in his journey to inner peace.
She starts her newspaper. We read the hatching of an original spirituality, nourished by its reading of the Bible but far from any dogmatic relationship to religion. For her, God is “what is deepest and better in oneself”.
While Nazi troops swept through the Netherlands in May 1940 and anti-Jewish laws prohibited her to continue her studies, she developed the conviction “that there is no other response to terror than to eradicate Hatred where it arises: in the hearts of men, starting with its own, ”underlines her biographer.
She shares the “mass destiny” of the Jewish people
When the concentrationary system is set up, Etty is resolved to share the “mass destiny” of the Jewish people. Since the Nazis have fixed the number of Jews to send to the camps and that her life is not superior to another, she considers that she does not have to escape deportation, but to make herself useful to others as long as possible.
An incomprehensible idea for his friend Petra, engaged in resistance, who sees it as a form of collaboration and judges his mysticism hard: “How to save people by contenting himself with descend in oneself?” Other relatives, on the other hand, share his choice, based on the Jewish idea of a community of destiny.
In the Westerbork Transit camp, then on the train for Auschwitz, Etty, contemplating “the moor illuminated by the yellow of the lupins in bloom”, will seek until the end to comfort people, and to make grow “the heavens in her ».
