«I have just gone to declare my Jewish ancestry,» Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary in 1941. The registration form she had to fill out included ten questions. The most important one for the Nazis was number nine: «How many of your grandparents are Jewish?» «Four,» Etty replied in all sincerity. That answer sealed her fate forever.
What we know most about Etty Hillesum comes from her diaries, written between 1941 and 1942 and published in their entirety by Adelphi in 2012. These dense pages were written one after the other at her desk, the place Etty called «the most beautiful place in the world.» Etty Hillesum's life is marked by those very diaries: there is a before and after, as if the beginning of her writing, on the advice of her psycho-chirologist and lover Julius Spier, had marked her second birth. But who was Etty Hillesum before the diaries? What do we know about her childhood in Deventer, spent in a house that was «a sensational mixture of barbarism and high culture»? Who were those parents from whom she wanted to emancipate herself at all costs in order to learn to walk on her own? Judith Koelemeijer, with delightful attention to detail and a pen capable of enchanting even those who know only Etty Hillesum's name, retraces that “before” that does not appear in the diaries but which forms the foundation of a woman who embraced life and loved it until the end.
I started reading Etty Hillesum. The story of her life (Koelemeijer, Adelphi, 2025) because I needed to answer a question that had been haunting me for some time: how did a Jewish woman of only twenty-seven come to the realization that if she found herself in front of a defenseless German, she would save him? How did this young woman, who had recently graduated from university, manage to eliminate all desire for revenge against the enemy? An enemy who, let us remember, had ordered the total annihilation of her people and all those she loved.
For Etty Hillesum, hatred was a disease of the soul. No one, not even the most feared Nazi leader, would have the power to decide what Etty should think. Etty's thoughts were free and would remain so forever, even on the morning when she left the Westerbork camp for Auschwitz and never returned. «The Nazis could rage against her,» writes Judith Koelemeijer in her book, «but humiliation always requires two parties: one that humiliates and wants to humiliate, and the other—the most important—that allows itself to be humiliated. If you are immune to humiliation, if you prevent it from taking effect, it melts like snow in the sun.»
Judith, let's start at the very beginning. Before volunteering to work with the Jewish Council in Westerbork, Etty was one of the most emancipated women of the 20th century. Female talent was often stifled at the time, but she managed to find her place, refusing to be merely a muse, even in her relationship with Spier. He managed to bring Etty out of her shell and bring to the surface a talent that she had kept secret. But what remains at the end of this story is Etty's account. Spier always remained behind the scenes, he was the driving force behind her growth, the one who helped her blossom. Can we consider Etty an avant-garde figure? What aspects of her character determined her emancipation?
Etty Hillesum was a very independent personality and thinker. She did not wish to align herself with any political party or church, nor was she faithful in the relationships she had with men; she simply did not want to bind herself to anything or anyone. I believe these aspects defined her emancipation; Etty was not an activist who was consciously engaged with women’s rights. For years she had a secret relationship with her landlord, Han Wegerif, which she herself referred to as a “marital life” — within which she nevertheless followed her own path. While writing my biography, I discovered that there were more women in Etty’s circle of friends who strongly charted their own course, and I was surprised that these female students already adopted such independent attitudes in the 1930s. I think that in the 1950s a strong “restoration” took place, which led to the forgetting of the fact that some women in student circles in the 1930s were already quite emancipated.
Etty managed to express her emancipation through writing. However, we know that for her, the line between reality and imagination was blurred. We see this very clearly in the account given by Dicky de Jonge, her young friend: «Etty tended to romanticize, spicing everything up with a tasty sauce.» This raises an ethical and historical question: is it possible that she also romanticized the horror of the Westerbork camp in her famous letters? How do we draw the line between chronicle and literary narrative?
Etty was a writer through and through. From a young age, she was constantly occupied with capturing her experiences in words in her mind, and she read voraciously. She possessed a powerful imagination, which sometimes led her to see and experience things differently from her more down-to-earth friends or contemporaries. Nevertheless, I do not think that her Westerbork letters present a “romantic” image of life in the camp; on the contrary, she describes in great detail the horrific reality of the departure of a transport. Consider the words: “My God, are all those doors really closing? Yes, they are. The doors are being shut over the tightly packed, backward-pushed masses of people in the freight wagons. Through the narrow openings at the top one can see heads and hands, which later wave as the train departs.” In the Westerbork letters, Etty reveals her great literary talent precisely through her attempt to describe reality as accurately as possible, showing a keen eye for detail while maintaining her own voice — sharp, with a light, ironic undertone.
If diaries are a world, the life behind them is a universe. Your research work seems almost like an archaeology of the soul. What was the process of creating this book, and how did you manage to recover such intimate material?
It took me seven years of full-time work to research and describe Etty’s short but intense life. I was extremely fortunate that, at the initiative of the Etty Hillesum Foundation, a large number of interviews were conducted in the 1980s with Etty’s friends who were still alive at the time — interviews I was grateful to be able to draw upon. The only witness I was still able to speak to myself was Etty’s friend Dicky de Jonge, who was already 100 years old when I interviewed her, yet still had remarkably vivid memories of Etty. I also had long conversations with the daughters of Etty’s friend Liesl Levie, who had known Etty as children and likewise had very sharp memories of the war.
In the United States, I stayed for a week in the house of Etty’s friend Leonie Snatager, who had passed away a few years earlier. Her son had not yet cleared anything away, and together we went through all of her correspondence. An enormous amount of material emerged from overstuffed, deep cupboards, including many letters and the diary that Leonie herself wrote in 1942 — prompted, like Etty, by Julius Spier. It was a gold mine for a biographer. In addition to these personal testimonies, I also made extensive use of archival research, with the help of an outstanding historian, Erika Prins, who was able to dig deeper into the archives than anyone else. I also travelled extensively, including a visit to Auschwitz.
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Photo by Matteo Baldi
