ETTY: A DIARY 1941-43 Etty Hillesum
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ETTY: A DIARY 1941-43 Etty Hillesum
First UK edition, first print hardback of ETTY: A DIARY 1941-43, by Etty Hillesum and published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. Introduced by J G Gaarlandt and translated from the Dutch by Arnold J Pomerans.The book is in fine condition with only minor wear to the dust jacket, which is not price clipped (no more than light rubbing and creasing to edges, light bumping to corners). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no inscriptions. Light age spotting to top page ends.
From 1941 to 1943 in Amsterdam, a young Dutch Jewish woman kept a diary recording what were to be the last experiences of her life. It is an extraordinary document, both as a work of literature and as evidence of a profound and unshakeable faith in humainty in the face of its blackest deeds. For during the very years when annihilation was closing in upon European Jewry, Etty Hillesum's diary bears witness to an avid personal quest for spiritual liberation, to what can best be described as a radical altruism, and to her own consuming love of a man.
As the clouds gather, and lives are increasingly disrupted around her, Etty dedicates herself wholeheartedly to the plight of others. Even up to the moment when she stands radiantly on the railway platform at Westerbork awaiting transportation to Auschwitz, somehow she is lifted up by the force of a deeper reality. 'Despite all the suffering and injustice I cannot hate others,' declares Etty. To feel vindictive would have been too simple for her, and to hold God accountable - preposterous. 'I am a happy person and I hold life dear indeed,' wrote Etty in 1942. 'I know just as long as one small street is left to us, the whole firmament still stretches above it, I've died a thousand deaths in a thousand concentration camps... and yet I find life beautiful and meaningful. From minute to minute.'
Far from being a book about death, Etty's diary constitutes a moving and luminous affirmation of life.
226 pages including Notes.
ISBN: 0 224 02121 4
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ETTY: A DIARY 1941-43 Etty Hillesum