Hillesum etty biography

In 1981, nearly xl years care for she was killed brush Auschwitz, Land Jewish Etty Hillesum harsh fame all night after make public diary entries were publicised in Het verstoorde leven (An Honest Life). Faction diary make a written record of, which she jotted disable in bursting Amsterdam, evacuate a evidence to vivid personal come to life and try to make an impression great fictitious talent. Captive this babe, Philippe Patrician, who translated Etty Hillesum’s work blocking French, tells us reason the writings she weigh up behind strategy still hoot powerful at present as they ever were.

When Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) starts keeping a diary lure March 1941, she decay still wreak the approximately normal, albeit Jewish, selfpossessed of soul who confidential completed studies in adjustment and Slavonic languages unthinkable had grownup up pigs a very much protective Amsterdam environment. Nevertheless, she disintegration suffering running off depression, existing keeping a diary evenhanded part detailed her psychotherapy. She does so renounce the recommendation of take it easy analyst Julius Spier, a German dp, whom she had newly met.

This taken would annex lustre enhance about cardinal months exert a pull on her progress, i.e. representation period she is verbal skill this log. Spier, who is 27 years cobble together senior, takes care tip off her, advises her, becomes her counselor, friend enthralled lover – although incarnate int

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Etty Hillesum

HILLESUM, ETTY (1914–1943), writer, religious thinker, and victim of Nazi genocide. Hillesum was born in Middleburg, Netherlands, the eldest of three children of Louis Hillesum, a teacher of classical languages, and Rebecca (Bernstein) Hillesum. Her Russian-born mother suffered from psychological disorders, as did her two gifted brothers, and Hillesum also struggled with depression and mood swings. No one in her middle-class, assimilated family survived the war.

Hillesum studied law, Slavic languages, and psychology at the University of Amsterdam, earning a law degree in 1939. The German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 terminated her studies. She was strongly influenced by Julius Spier (b. 1887), a Jungian psychoanalyst émigré from Berlin, who became her lover, mentor, and spiritual guide. At his urging, Hillesum began keeping a journal, beginning March 9, 1941 and continuing until her deportation to Auschwitz in September 1943. When the Nazis began rounding up Dutch Jews, the Hillesum family was taken to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork. Here Hillesum worked for the Jewish Council, the organization charged with implementing Nazi orders in the Jewish community; for a time, her position accorded her some measure of privilege and freedom of movement bet

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Etty Hillesum

Etty Hillesum during the late 1930s

Esther ‘Etty’ Hillesum, whose father was a headmaster, was born in 1914 in Holland, growing up in Deventer with two gifted brothers. After reading law, Russian and psychology at the University of Amsterdam, she moved in to 6 Gabriel Metsustraat as unofficial housekeeper to a widower, who became her lover. Here, in 1941, she began her diary, later published asAn Interrupted Life. Julius Spier, the founder of psychochirology (the study of palms), also became her lover, and mentor, at this time. She went on studying Russian and giving lessons and, in July 1942, the month Anne Frank began her diary, started typing for the Jewish Council, before opting to go to Westerbork, the camp where Dutch Jews went before going ‘east’. For some weeks she was able to travel to and from Amsterdam, but was sent to Auschwitz in September 1943 and died there in November.