Etty Hillesum Biography Quotes 5 Report mistakes

Early life
Elisabeth Henriette (Etty) Hillesum was born in 1914 in the Netherlands and grew up in a family that placed learning at the center of daily life. Her father, often referred to as Levie (Louis) Hillesum, was a classics teacher and later headmaster of a secondary school, known for his erudition and dedication to students. Her mother, Riva (Rebecca) Bernstein, had come to the Netherlands from Russia years earlier, carrying with her memories of upheaval and flight from persecution. Etty was the eldest of three children. Her brother Jaap trained as a physician, and her brother Mischa was a gifted pianist whose musical promise was widely remarked upon. The household could be stormy and intense, but it exposed Etty to languages, literature, and a strong sense that books and ideas mattered.

Education and early work
As a young woman Etty moved to Amsterdam to study. She enrolled in law but did not become a practicing lawyer; her intellectual curiosity led her beyond legal studies into Slavic languages and literature. She taught and translated Russian and was known among friends for her voracious reading. Writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Fyodor Dostoevsky became touchstones for her moral and spiritual imagination. In Amsterdam she kept house in a communal setting and formed a close relationship with the older widower Han Wegerif, whose presence provided both practical stability and companionship. Her circle included students, artists, and seekers who discussed psychology, religion, and the mounting crisis brought by occupation.

Turning inward: Julius Spier and the diaries
In 1941 Etty met Julius Spier, a German-Jewish analyst and counselor who had studied Jungian ideas. Spier became her mentor, therapist, and eventually her beloved. He encouraged her to keep a disciplined diary, to practice self-scrutiny without self-pity, and to cultivate an inner life grounded in honesty, prayer, and work. The notebooks she began that year record a remarkable transformation: in response to tightening restrictions and growing danger for Jews in the Netherlands, she chose to deepen her compassion rather than sharpen her resentment. She wrote of discovering a space of freedom inside herself, a place where prayer and attention to others could counter fear. Spier died in Amsterdam in 1942, before he too could be deported, and his death was a profound loss. Yet Etty carried forward the spiritual training he helped awaken in her, shaping her ethic of service and refusal to hate.

Occupation, service, and Westerbork
As anti-Jewish measures intensified under German occupation, Etty worked for the Jewish Council in Amsterdam for a time and then volunteered to serve at the Westerbork transit camp, where Jews from across the Netherlands were assembled for deportation to the East. At Westerbork she assisted people in transit, comforted the sick, and tried to meet practical needs in impossible circumstances. For a period she moved between Amsterdam and the camp, using scarce freedom to gather supplies and advocate for individuals. Eventually she relinquished exemptions that could have kept her in the city and chose to remain with those being transported. Her diaries and the letters she wrote from Westerbork testify to relentless compassion: she described night-time transports, the exhaustion of families, and the necessity of creating a small oasis of dignity through listening, writing, and prayer. She refused to surrender her inner life to hatred, insisting that the human capacity for goodness must be protected even when surrounded by cruelty.

Family, deportation, and death
Etty's family was drawn into the same machinery of persecution. Jaap, trained as a doctor, was caught up in camp assignments; Mischa, the pianist, struggled under the pressures of war and confinement; their parents faced the shock of displacement after decades of teaching and homemaking. Etty's notes and letters show her constant effort to sustain them and countless others with parcels, visits, and words. In 1943 Etty, together with her parents, was put on a transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz. A brief postcard she threw from the train was later found, a fragment that preserves her composure and care for those around her even in the final journey. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. Her parents and brothers also perished; the war would extinguish nearly the entire immediate family whose life had once revolved around music, medicine, and classical learning.

Writings and legacy
Before her deportation Etty entrusted her notebooks to friends, asking that they be kept safe and, if possible, brought to readers after the war. Decades later they were published, first in Dutch and then in many languages, as her Diary and Letters from Westerbork (often known in English as An Interrupted Life together with Letters from Westerbork). These writings chart the moral education of a young Jewish woman who, without formal religious affiliation, forged a candid, intimate practice of prayer and responsibility. They place her within a web of relationships that shaped her voice: the stern humanism of her father Louis, the tenacity of her mother Riva, the fragile brilliance of Mischa, the medical vocation of Jaap, the domestic steadiness of Han Wegerif, and above all the catalytic guidance of Julius Spier. Etty Hillesum is not remembered as a lawyer; her brief legal studies mattered far less than what she learned to do with language itself. In a time defined by dehumanization, she made language serve compassion, clarity, and courage. That legacy has made her diaries a touchstone for readers grappling with suffering and with the question of how to keep the heart open while resisting evil.

Our collection contains 5 quotes who is written by Etty, under the main topics: Motivational - Peace - Knowledge - Letting Go - Meditation.