Etty Hillesum: an interrupted life

“In what sort of fatal mechanism have we become enmeshed?  The answer cannot simply be that we are all cowards”

Etty [Esther] Hillesum, born to Jewish parents in the Netherlands in 1914, died with them and her brothers in Auschwitz in 1943.  She lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation and from 1941 kept a diary of her mental and spiritual development.  In 1942 she voluntarily went to work at Westerbork transit camp, from where she and her family “left singing” in 1943.  The last volume of her diary went with her to Auschwitz, but the others were kept by a friend, and published in 1981, along with some of her letters.

“I’m not finished with you, God, not by a long chalk, or with this world”

Susan Stein, an American actress, has known of Etty and loved her work since 1994. Using material from the diaries she has developed a one-woman show, letting Etty speak in her own words, to bring Etty to people who might not otherwise encounter her, and to promote thought and discussion about the wide range of issues her story raises.

“If I should not survive, how I die will show me who I really am”

Susan is coming to perform her play in Edinburgh.  We hope that many people will take the opportunity to encounter this extraordinary young woman who had such an effect on people she encountered in her ‘interrupted life’ and who continues to influence people throughout the world. 

Suggested donation to cover costs:  £5.00

(for those who are able to pay)

“More than forty Friends and non-Friends paid rapt attention…  We Quakers badly need to rediscover and learn to articulate the intense spiritual experiences which so energised and galvanised early Friends, from which they received such power and which sustained them against persecution.  Etty’s diaries record her progress towards a deep relationship with God, from which she received such power…” 

The Friend [21 March 2014] after Susan’s performance in Jesus Lane Friends Meeting House, Cambridge