Ode to Etty Hillesum | Role model and mystic

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Etty Hillesum was a Jewish-Dutch writer and mystic. Decades after her death in Auschwitz, she gained world fame after the publication of her diary The Disturbed Life. In it, she gives a glimpse of her beautiful soul life and optimistic disposition and how she made it her life's goal not to add the slightest dissonance to a world full of dissonants.

Etty did not escape the Holocaust. She had the chance to go into hiding, but she refused: on principle, she wanted to share the fate of her people.

As a member of the Joodse Raad (Jewish Council), she did social work in deportation camp Westerbork, which she described in her diary as ‘hell’. She took the opportunity to help some Jewish children escape. Until she became a prisoner herself.

Eventually, she was put on the train to Auschwitz. She reportedly stepped into a cattle car singing. At Auschwitz, she was gassed around 30 November 1943. Etty Hillesum was 29 years old at the time. Her parents and two brothers were also murdered by the Nazis.

She wrote: ‘And even if only one decent German still existed, he would be worthy of being protected from the whole barbaric mob, and for the sake of that one decent German, one should not then pour hatred on an entire people.’

I wish forgiveness of that order could be inspiration for many more people than I think possible.