An interrupted life : the diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943

"Etty Hillesum is thoroughly recognizable. Independent, 'liberated' in the modern sense, sophisticated, she lives with friends in a communal household, studies psychology and literature, has lovers, sees an analyst. Jewish by birth, she feels no strong religious affiliation. She could be any contemporary twenty-seven-year-old woman, but in fact Etty Hillesum lived in Amsterdam and kept her journals in the dark years from 1941 to 1943, years of occupation and genocide... Etty's diaries are intimate and immediate, full of details about her consuming love for an older man; her questions about love and sex, friendship and family; her daily routine, her walks along the city's canals, the smell of jasmine in her yard, the view outside her bedroom window... The Holocaust enters her diary obliquely, as it must have entered her life. She notes the appearance of a German soldier, the suicide of a professor, the blisters she gets on her feet after the Jews are no longer permitted to ride bicycles; then the relentless proliferation of restrictions—Jews may not walk in parks, play the piano, visit one another's homes—until the final deportations... The diary breaks off in September 1943, on her deportation to Auschwitz, where she died." —Book jacket