Disturbed times produce some who, though buffeted by wild waves, move through the deep waters to embrace all who suffer. Even when undergoing fierce suffering themselves, they still extend kindness to others. Bearing vessel after vessel of water to relieve those dying of thirst, they are able to satisfy the unbearable cravings of beings.”
The 11th century poet Ksemendra
I had that quote file for decades and thought I’d finally haul it out. It’s appropriate for Etty Hillesum. I’m reading her war diaries, written in the early 40s as the screws tighten on the Dutch Jewish community she’s part of. Hers is a powerful testimony to the willingness to endure and rise above the excruciating external circumstances. Her life is an exemplar for our own increasingly perilous time. She went down in the end but this is not a scary or sad story but an unmitigated triumph.
Her face says something of who she is and maybe tells it all.
I see a woman who is present, open-eyed, unafraid. There. I like spiritual autobiographies and this has become a favourite. Like the best of them, hers is a voice unlike any other. She likes the company of other self-disclosing writers. She has little time to read or write in her busy life but she snatches moments with highly personal voices like Rilke, Augustine, Dostoevsky. They accompany her as she scribbles in her diary and grapples with the stuff of her days: her love for her spiritual mentor teacher, her friendships, dealing with men, the increasing anxiety of those in her community, sudden disappearances, family, meals, the tree outside her window. (All this is before the camps.) Not a trace of self-pity. She knows her own time is coming but she refuses to stop living and loving day by day.
Although she highly values writers and writing, she probably never imagined her diary getting so out there. First published in English in 1986 the New York Times reviewer said it was “A story of spiritual growth such as I have seldom seen anywhere, written with the interior richness and woven design of a Jamesian novel . . .” That interior design and richness is a mark of its honesty, not artifice.
She’s determined to live by the highest ideals and never stoops to blame her oppressors and the increasing restrictions on life.
She noticeably doesn’t blame God either as in this beautiful pasage.
“I think, alas, there doesn't seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.”
We must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last!
Or again . . .
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.
No victimization here. (The idea of helping God by acceptance of one’s lot found in Gurdjieff as well as some Christian mystics but Etty demonstrates it’s a human thing.)
To read her is to reflect on the social control forming around us and how we might be with that. If you know me you’ll know that I sense we’ll be facing much more invasive challenges than the Covid lockdowns of recent years. Many Holocaust survivors and their families have pointed out that they see this time as an echo of the earlier stages of that one.
Etty is all woman and in her personal and intimate voice there’s no sugar coating her faults and struggles. It’s all there and she doesn’t hide. She bears witness to her time and her voice coming down to us shows how one brave person navigates a time of intense struggle, moving through with blame or fuss.
It can be the courage demonstrated when no one’s looking. As she wrote in her diary not knowing others would read:
This morning, I cycled along the Station Quay, enjoying the broad sweep of the sky at the edge of the city and breathing in the fresh unrationed air, and everywhere signs barring Jews from the paths and the open country. But above the one narrow path still left to us stretches the sky intact. They can't do anything to us, they really can't. They can harass us, they can rob us of our material goods, of our freedom of movement. But we ourselves forfeit our greatest assets by our misguided compliance, by our feelings of being persecuted, humiliated and oppressed by our own hatred, by our swagger which hides our fear. We may of course be sad and depressed by what has been done to us; that is only human and understandable. However, our greatest injury is one we inflict upon ourselves. I find life beautiful and I feel free.
Even the unhappy German soldier ordering her about before she’s packed off to the camps . . she’d like to spend some time with and help him out.
Later on she does spend a lengthy time in a camp, Westerbork, before being taken off to the gas chambers.
”Those two months behind barbed wire wire have been the two richest and most intense of my life in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learned to love Westerbork.”
She didn’t turn away from what was happening around her but turned toward it. In the end it turned it into a human triumph.
Thanks for this, Andrew, sounds like worthwhile reading. But when you bring up social control, it would help if you were to tell us who is doing it. There are lots of suspects I can think of, but I'd like to hear from you, otherwise why would I believe it? What evidence is there besides people saying it is so?
Turning a difficult time/situation into a source of beauty/inspiration, confirms my knowledge that no one/nothing, can make me feel like anything without my permission.