Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum was a Jewish Dutch woman who wrote her diaries during the Second World War. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943, at the age of 29. Her diaries, written during the last two years of her life, are a testimony of love and compassion, of trust in life and deep spirituality. She describes in her diaries and in the letters she wrote from the concentration camp “Westerbork,” a process of a woman who chose to believe in humanness. She Wrote:
"I am ready to bear witness in any situation and unto death that life is beautiful and meaningful and that it is not God's fault that things are as they are at present, but our own. We have been granted every opportunity to enter every paradise, but we still have to learn to handle these opportunities." (7 July 1942)