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Aug 27, 2010

Abailart rated it:

The writing is wonderfully alive. It is like having a conversation.

That Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman suffering the terrors of Nazi occupied Holland and finally the death camp, that she was engaged in the most peculiar relationship with therapist Julius Spier, that her age, circumstance, background and education are so different from my own, I feel makes no impact on the sense of my conversing with a contemporary. Her psychological insights, particularly her guards against More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2007

Lord rated it:

I'm glad I finally got to read her diaries after reading her letters. I have to say, start with the diaries. I actually read "An Interrupted Life" but goodreads wouldn't let me add it twice for some damned reason.

Reading her diaries is like having a conversation with a close friend. She was an amazing, interesting person. The same things she talks about twentysomethings are still grappling with. She had such a tender, sweet soul. All the time I was reading this, it just kep More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2007

Lord rated it:

It's a shame Etty Hillesum is not as well known as Anne Frank. She's the Anne Frank for girls in their 20s-30s. She was someone I wish I could be friends or make out with. She was a cool, complicated, intellectual Jewish Dutch girl who died in the gas chambers. She was recomended to me by a friend a long time ago, and this was the first book of hers I was able to get my hands on. I wish that I could have gotten her diaries before I read the letters. While these were interesting, they weren't (I' More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 28, 2007

Lorraine rated it:

If I could only take 10 books with me to a deserted island, this would be one. Sort of "Anne Frank" for adults, it is the journals of a young Dutch Jew caught up in the Holocaust. She is brilliant and outgoing and living life to the full, when Hitler's ugly shadow begins to fall over her world. The struggles and dramas that ensue highlight the development of her soul into a loving and courageous being,who was able to write, even as the net drew tighter around her: "I know that More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2008

Hedwig rated it:

I took this book out of the library in Amsterdam when I had a couple of weeks to spend there. Man! Out of nowhere it blew me away. Or rather, it wasn't even on such a large outward scale. It was the story of someone going deep inside their own soul, in the hardest of hard time, to open up to all of her life. Because it's written without pretension (because it is a diary she was just keeping for herself), and because she writes through the ups and downs, it feels like a very real journey and the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

Trisha rated it:

Etty Hillesum a young Jewish woman living in wartime Amsterstam not far from Anne Frank, also kept a diary of her experiences. Unlike Anne who was 15 years younger and still living with her family, Etty was on her own, living a rather bohemian life filled with friends, intellectual and artistic pursuits and love affairs that were was as natural and normal a part of her life as her increasingly mystical approach to spirituality. But it is her spiritual development as it unfolds over the two year More...

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Jul 07, 2011

Maria rated it:

Etty Hillesum was "discovered" dozens of years after her death, when her diaries were recovered and published.

I would advise everyone to read this book, which includes both her diaries and a number of letters exchanged by her and her friends.
This is an INCREDIBLE HUMAN BEING, someone who's Soul opened up in the midst of the terrible persecutions during the second world war.
A mystic of a kind, Etty made her incredible spiritual development during two plus years, from More...

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Jun 08, 2011

Pam rated it:

If you're looking for a traditional story format here..this is not it..and rather it is an extraordinary collection of journal entries and letters during an incredible time in our history that was WWII.
It's about the woman she becomes through a discovery of self awareness and the power of our mind and heart and it's interconnections with everything.

As you read, you will experience 'with her' her transcendence into a spiritual awareness of herself, where she passes from a prolong More...

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May 04, 2010

Margaret rated it:

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jew from Amsterdam; she studied Russian, gave Russian lessons, and kept a diary, focusing mainly on her love affair with psychologist Julius Spier and her efforts to deal personally with the effects of the Nazis taking control of the Netherlands. In 1942, she went to Westerbork, the camp where Dutch Jews were assembled for deportation to other concentration camps; she wrote letters to friends back in Amsterdam, before she was eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she died More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

For most of the book, I kept waiting for it to start. Who wants to read page after page about that feeling of being 28 and all sexed up over some guy you can't have? Tedious. There was a nice paragraph on page 70, beginning with "Then something dawned on me." in which she explains how she came to an understanding about her father. Also, I liked the passage on page 87 that starts "There was one bright spot." about taking responsibility for rooting out the evil within and n More...

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Oct 23, 2009

Kirsten rated it:

The record of a beautiful, questioning soul who sees life as whole and meaningful, even when it's most visibly divided and meaningless. She kept the diary in the two years before she was sent to Westerbork camp and then sent letters from the camp in the year before she was sent to Auschwitz and died there. She is humble and proud and fearless and scared and yearning, entirely human and brimming over.

“But I still suffer from the same old complaint. For the one word that sums up every More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Laura rated it:

I read this book in my undergraduate philosophy class and was absolutely blown away because I felt like I knew Etty Hillesum. I identified so much with her and she was able to express feelings that I had but couldn't express myself. She was Jewish and living in the midst of a Nazi occupation. Not something I can identify with at all, yet we had so much in common. I wanted to know her.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 06, 2010

Karla rated it:

This is the diary (and letters) of a young, sensitive, intelligent, loving Dutch Jewish woman during the Nazi occupation, living in Amsterdam and ultimately dying In a concentration camp. Sounds familiar? Yes, but Etty is older than Anne Frank, more mature, more complex. She is highly spiritual in a completely personal way. Her mind and heart continue to shine even as the Nazi net around her slowly closes, and ultimately kills her. I'll never forget this book, though I find it hard to re-read it More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Hannah rated it:

always free-thinking through the ordinary and extraordinary circumstances of life. ultimately uplifing in the face of insanity and death through the Holocaust. Etty is alive through these words exploring relationships, love, work, study, survival, sex, literature, God, and what's happening in the world. She has an ability to clearly and gently and powerfully express her complex emotions and thoughts to her pages (and to us). I weep out laughter with her diaries and letters, and her sex and soul More...

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Dec 15, 2008

Jessie rated it:

Among Holocaust literature, one of the most hopeful; EH is a sensual, compassionate, honest & nonreligious woman of prayer. One of her prayers:

"the jasmine behind my house has been completely ruined by the rains and storms of the last few days; its white blossoms are floating about in muddy black pools on the low garage roof. but somewhere inside me the jasmine continues to blossom undisturbed, just as profusely and delicately as ever it did. and it spreads its scent round th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2011

Mari rated it:

Bellissimo diario intimo in cui la scrittrice descrive principalmente la sua interiorità, il suo sentire, il suo rapporto con Dio, il suo modo di intendere e vivere la vita in un periodo in cui era difficile vivere in Europa x il popolo ebraico, ma anche per tutti le altre vittime della guerra.

E' un testo molto particolare, che può toccare le corde più profonde dell'io: va letto con attenzione, lentamente, e nel periodo giusto della vita... non è x tutti ma chi legge ne può trarre grande giovam More...

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Oct 25, 2011

Lorrie rated it:

Etty Hillesum’s diary and letters written between 1941 and 1943 give an extraordinary portrait of a woman with an open loving heart and a vivid picture of the repression of the Jewish people during the 2nd world war. She is the adult counterpart to Anne Frank. Her diary portrays her spiritual growth and her love for God and her fellow man. She did not hate her oppressors.
She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.

I’d like to share a quote from one of Etty’s last l More...

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Feb 05, 2011

Susann rated it:

I'm glad I got this Persephone book from the library, because I didn't even get halfway through it. I'm giving it two stars, though, because I don't actively dislike it; it's just not for me. Etty was a Jewish woman in her late 20s living in Amsterdam during WWII. A number of online reviewers describe Etty as the grown-up version of Anne Frank, but I think that's unfair to both Anne & Etty.
Etty was on a spiritual quest which I just can't relate to in any way. Her diary entries are infused More...

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Aug 31, 2011

Kat rated it:

Beautiful, incredible book! Basically an older Anne Frank, Etty is a super modern woman in her late-twenties in Amsterdam. Her diaries make her feel so present, with her evocative writing style and intelligent, ahead-of-her-times kind of life. She lives in a house with roommates from all over, takes lovers of both sexes, and works as a Russian teacher and assistant psychologist. What's most spell-bounding is the way in which the Nazi regime appears in her diary: slowly, through comments such More...

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Apr 12, 2011

Todd rated it:

Not a book that would have caught my attention were it on the shelves - I read this one entirely at a friend's suggestion. And even if I had picked it up on my own, I'm pretty sure that I would've given up in the first fifty or so pages, her relationship with 'S' seeming to dominate the story and truth be told, generating more than a few eye rolls on my part. However, that aspect of the book made what came that much more powerful. To see so much love, kindness, and strength in someone whom I More...

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Jan 29, 2009

Sarah rated it:

Wow. This is one of the most moving, and definitely haunting, books I have read in a long time. It evoked so many emotions in me. Anger, sadness, a feeling of helplessness, yet also wonder and joy at the beauty and the meaning of life. I wish the last diary hadn't been lost. In case you haven't heard of Etty Hillesum (I hadn't), she was writing diaries in Holland just a couple of miles away from Anne Frank, at the same time, during the WWII years. A truly remarkable book by a remarkable person.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2009

bookczuk rated it:

I first became aware of this book when I heard our pastor at the time mention it in a homily. He lent me his copy to read, and afterward, I got one of my own. I found Etty's diaries very moving- tracing her growth from a frivolous party girl into a young woman beginning to test the boundaries of her spiritual faith.

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Nov 20, 2008

Mary Helene rated it:

One of the 10 best books I've ever read. It is in translation, so this rating is for content and not lyric quality. An adult parallel of Anne Frank, Etty resolves "I will not hate the Germans." Her love is gritty and practical. I reread this text regularly for insight.

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May 25, 2009

Marina rated it:

If you are interested in expanding your Buddhist bookshelf, you couldn't do better than to add this diary of a Jewish woman who died in a Nazi concentration camp in World War Two.

I'll try to write more about this amazing book later...

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Jun 23, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

before concentration camp life....i had a difficult time digesting the book until the last third when all of a sudden it was interesting. The first two thirds are very introspective and quite boring and discombobulated.

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Jun 08, 2008

Mindy rated it:

While I was reading the diary I was not especially impressed. I mean, she was obvious a highly intelligent, introspective and independent woman, something of an anomaly at that time, and I loved her reflections on sexuality and love. But it was mostly just someone's journal, a recording of someone's innermost experiences while they are living them, and all of the occasionally self-indulgent pathos inherent in journaling. (I shoud know, I've been journaling for almost ten years now!) But once I s More...

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Jul 02, 2009

Madeleine rated it:

Het verstoorde leven. Dagboek van Etty Hillesum.
De vergevingsgezindheid en ongebroken vertrouwen in de mensheid is voor mij niet te bevatten. Ik merk dat ik er boos van wordt.

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Apr 16, 2010

Irene rated it:

Not sure quite how to take this book, rather odd in places, seemed improbable in other places, and inspiring in still other places.

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Apr 21, 2010

Kerry rated it:

abandoned. Very slow going but intense account of a young woman's journey leading up to being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

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Oct 09, 2009

Liz rated it:

Etty wanted to be heard. May she only know that her writings have been published and read and appreciated. Rest In Peace.

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