Customer Reviews

Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943

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Etty began life with the same silly angst and shallow aspirations that we endure each day. Then came the war and her experience as a Jew in Holland. The transformation of this young intellectual to a woman of great depth takes the reader on a soul journey of such transcendence that one's paradigms are forever changed.

Add to the story a great and musical quality of writing and a brilliant mind . You have Etty, my heroine, my mentor.

A young woman who is running out of time writes about her experiences as a prisoner of the Nazis in a concentration camp in World War II in 1940s Europe. She responds to the demands of society and of life as she finds it in both its pedestrian and hopeful forms, while also musing about what a distracted God might be doing up in heaven as so many innocent people perish at the hands of so many cowardly and sadistic oppressors. Ultimately she converts to Catholism and she dies in a concentration camp at the age of 29. Even with the crushing and depressing burden of a predatory society of captors constantly hovering over her, captors to whom she would soon sucuumb by her physical death, she wrote about life, social roles, her relationships with others and God prodigiously before her life was stolen from her in a dark place and a dark time by the human forces of evil. The strength she must have called upon to do this work while living in day to day oppresssion and unrelenting misery is stunning to imagine.

This book is one of the most touching and inspiring books I ever read. This book will touch the heart of anyone - whether Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. and even an atheist!

The battle of a soul in those dark days (the German Occupation in the Second War World) trying to keep sane, asking herself how not to loose hope and remain human, avoiding hate, in spite of all what is going around her. This is a journey of a Soul from focusing in herself changing to focus in the world around her.

I bought the book also for 3 friends of mine as a New Year present!

P.S.: Since my English is NOT my mother tong (I'm an Israeli), I'm apologizing in advance for spelling (and other mistakes). Thank you for understanding.

I read this book over twenty years ago and it remains one of the most inspirational books I've ever read. I leant it to a client who lost it so I must buy another. Thankfully it's still available.

THIS BOOK IS AMONG MY GREATEST TREASURES. WRITTEN DEEP DOWN - READING DEEP DOWN AS WELL.
NO WONDER HER BOOKS ARE CULTBOOKS.
I RECEIVED THIS ONE AS ESPECIALLY BELOVED AS IT WAS DONATED TO BUILD A NEW LIBRARY.
WHICH MADE MY COPY EVEN MORE PRECIOUS TO ME.
JUST THE SIGHT OF THIS BOOK IN MY SHELF AND MY HEART IS WIDE OPEN.
WRITTEN 70 YEARS AGO AND STILL SO FRESH AND MOVING.