As we enter into the fifth week of Lent, the readings for this week come from a chapter of Sacred Journeys titled “Bearing Witness: Etty Hillesum.” We traveled briefly with Etty earlier in this season when she appeared in a couple of reflections, including this one.
Invocation
God of history,
you are present
with all who suffer.
In these words
and in these times,
O God,
may I perceive
the movement of
your restless spirit.
Text
Context
“If I have one duty in these times,” wrote Etty Hillesum, “it is to bear witness.” A Dutch Jew born in January of 1914, Etty witnessed one of the most terrifying times of the twentieth century. Shortly after the forces of Nazi oppression moved into Holland, Etty began to keep a diary. Into a series of eight exercise books filled during 1941 and 1942, Etty poured her soul. At the same time that she was deeply affected by the times, she also passionately sought life, hope, and connection within herself and with her people.
A brilliant thinker and a graceful writer, Etty involved herself intimately in the lives of her friends and fellow Jews. When a roundup of Jewish people occurred in Amsterdam, Etty volunteered to go with them to Westerbork, a work camp considered to be the last stop before Auschwitz. By special arrangement, she traveled to Amsterdam from Westerbork many times, transporting letters, messages, and medicine to and from the outside. Although she had many opportunities to escape, Etty refused, even resisting an attempt by friends to kidnap her to safety. She considered her destiny to be bound with those who were suffering.
Reports from her companions at Westerbork confirm the luminous personality that her journals reveal. As the train that took Etty, her mother, her father, and her brother Mischa to Auschwitz left Westerbork on September 7, 1943, she threw a postcard from the train. On it she had written, “We left the camp singing.”
Etty died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943. Her mother, father, and Mischa were killed there also; her other brother Jaap left the camp but died on his way back to Holland.
Etty left her diaries with a friend in hopes they would one day be published. In 1983, J. G. Gaarlandt took an interest in them and published them in Holland. They have now been translated and published in nearly a dozen countries under the title An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum. In 2002, Etty’s unabridged diaries were published in Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik and translated by Arnold J. Pomerans).
Questions for reflection
In these times, to what are you called to bear witness? How does this, or how might this, happen for you; what form will your witness take?
Adapted from Sacred Journeys © Jan L. Richardson
For an introduction to the Lenten journey we’re making here at Sanctuary of Women, visit A Season of Spiraling. Today’s artwork originally appeared here at The Painted Prayerbook.
