Every once in a while you find a book that literally changes your life. It changes your outlook, how you approach situations, or it may actually change you. I found such a book a handful of years ago. Picked up at the Little Free Library just around the corner from my house, this collection of letters written during the Holocaust promised to be a profound account of a nightmare I can only imagine, and I know those imaginings do not compare to the reality that people lived during that time.

Letters from Westerbork is the collection of letters Etty Hillesum wrote to friends living in Amsterdam while she was working in the prison camp of Westerbork, and to those confined in the prison camp while she was still free to come and go. Etty was a member of the Jewish Council, and worked as a social worker during the early days of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Friends in Amsterdam tried repeatedly to get her to leave the country and each time she refused, saying that people needed her and there was still much good she could do. Eventually she was no longer permitted to leave Westerbork, and ultimately she was sent to Auschwitz with the rest of her family.

I found this book entirely by happenstance, and I am forever grateful that I did. I picked it up because I love reading letters and journals; I reread it because it has so much to teach me. I read it cover to cover a few times a year; at least once a week I pick it up and open to a random page to read words that Etty wrote 80 years ago, messages to people she loved and cared for, brimming with hope, carrying messages of consolation and strength. The forward of this copy that I own states that Etty did not expect to survive whatever came after Westerbork; you would never know that from her words.

From what I understand, it is very difficult to find a copy of the Letters. Her journals, An Interrupted Life, are easier to find. I have read this as well, and while it gave me a clearer picture of who Etty was as a whole person, I feel it is in her letters that her soul shines the brightest. Nothing I write will adequately convey the admiration I feel for someone so fully invested in serving others, and I cannot hope to speak as truthfully about humanity as Etty. All I can do is offer you words from Etty herself.

Etty’s Pen

My heart failed a few times again today, but each time it came back to life.

This is no time for poets and philosophers.

***

It is strange that in such a short time a person can come to feel as much at one with a place and its inhabitants.

I’m no good for anything, it’s really very sad, there is so much to be done here.

“We don’t want to remember anything from before; otherwise we couldn’t manage to live here.”

In a few hours you can accumulate enough gloom here to last a lifetime.

I shall be fully composed when I return.

I realized again that where there are people, there is life.

Everything here is full of paradox.

***

I often have conversations with you, but feel no need to write them down.

Am I a dreamer?

May I smile on you again from afar?

How are the yellow lupins—are they out again?

You can still entertain hopes that I will be wise one day.

Your coffee must have grown cold by now, but it’s not my fault.

Now and then I join the gulls.

I have to stop right in the middle of the fairy tales—

It’s not right for a human being to take the easy way out.

I find it difficult to say honestly how I feel.

Ah, children, we live in a strange world—

It is late; I can’t tell you how tired I am.

My soul is content.

***

I do not feel I have been robbed of my freedom.

In the evenings we go and watch the sun setting over the purple lupins behind the barbed wire.

We shall all of us bear up, on both sides of the barbed wire, won’t we?

The barbed wire is more a question of attitude.

It is a glorious day—how different life suddenly looks!

***

I feel quite strong and brave, although sometimes I can see nothing but blackness and nothing makes any sense at all.

I have been here a hundred years already.

I am experiencing so much that is good here.

And in spite of everything you always end up with the same conviction: life is good after all.

And yes, please, pray for us a little.

Suddenly it’s all coming to an end.

***

A terrible day, a terrible day!

The people were dignified, calm, and disciplined.

“This whole business is slowly driving me to the edge of despair.”

What all those thousands before us have borne, we can also bear.

For us, I think, it is no longer a question of living, but of how one is equipped for one’s extinction.

There was a moment when I felt in all seriousness that after this night, it would be a sin to ever laugh again.

If I were to say that I was in hell that night, would I really be telling you?

“It’s going to come to an end soon, it’s all going to come tumbling down.”

If we fail to draw new meaning from the deep wells of our distress and despair, then it will not be enough.

And the absence of hatred in no way implies the absence of moral indignation.

***

One concentrates so much on others that one forgets oneself, and that’s just as well.

And I am left to live and work and stay cheerful.

And that too is cowardice.

Why am I being left behind?

***

A human being is a remarkable thing.

Love for one’s fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you.

I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things; everything is fine just as it is.

There are many miracles in a human life.

I believe the world is beautiful all over, even the places that geography books describe as barren and dull.

***

Each of us still lives under his own star, it appears.

We have not yet gained a common sense of history.

Like circumstances do not yet seem to produce like people.

A name occurs to me: Herod.

***

“I can’t take it all in.”

“I would like, oh, I really would like, to be able to swim away in my own tears.”

“I do not know why the roses bloom.”

All I really want to say is this: I am no poet.

Life is glorious and magnificent, and one day we shall be building a whole new world.

The main path of my life stretches like a long journey before me and already reaches into another world.

As for the future, I am firmly resolved to return to you after my wanderings.

If.

We left the camp singing.

***

~Etty Hillesum died in Auschwitz on 30 November 1943~

All lines taken from Letters from Westerbork by Etty Hillesum; English translation, 1986, Random House, Inc.