Kids interview Etty Hillesum
by Charactorium · Etty Hillesum (1914 — 1943) · Spirituality · Literature · 5 min read
That morning, two twelve-year-old visitors pushed open the door of an old house in Amsterdam, notebooks in hand. A young woman with bright eyes greeted them with a smile. Her name was Etty, she loved to write, and she had agreed to tell them everything.
—How old were you when you started writing your diary?
I was twenty-seven, my child. It was in March 1941, and believe it or not, I didn't even know where to begin. It was a strange man who urged me to do it: Julius Spier. He read people's hands, their character, like you'd read a map of a country. It was called chirology. He told me: write to know yourself better. So I took school exercise books, very plain, just like yours. Imagine eight little notebooks filled day after day. At first, I wrote about my fears, my loves, my anger. Not for a second did I think that these pages would one day reach you.
Write to know yourself better, he told me.
—And your notebooks, how did they survive without being lost?
Ah, that's thanks to a big-hearted friend, Maria Tuinzing. You know, when you're taken far from home, you can take almost nothing with you. So before leaving, I entrusted my eight notebooks to Maria. She hid them, kept them safe for years. It was like keeping a candle burning in the dark. Without her, my words would have disappeared forever. Imagine a treasure wrapped in paper, waiting patiently, year after year, until someone finally dares to open it. That's what happened. My young woman's thoughts traveled through time to reach you.
It was like keeping a candle burning in the dark.
—You could have hidden to escape the Nazis. Why didn't you leave?
That's the question everyone asked me, my child. My friends begged me: hide, flee! I did have chances to escape, it's true. But I wrote this, one day in July 1942: “I don’t want to dodge. I can’t. If I hid, I would lose my reason for being.” Do you understand? If I saved only myself, I would betray all the others. I wanted to stay with my people, to share exactly what they were living. Not to suffer pointlessly. But to be a thinking heart in their midst, to help, to bear witness. Fleeing would have extinguished me from within.
If I hid, I would lose my reason for being.
—What was the Jewish Council, where you worked?
It was a strange thing, and rather sad, I warn you. The Nazis had forced the Jews to create an office, the Jewish Council, to handle the paperwork between them and us. The problem was, we also managed the lists of people to be taken away. Can you imagine the terrible position? I joined as an employee in 1942. Many hated this office, and I understood them. But for me, I saw it as a door to go toward those who suffered the most, in the camp. It was like holding someone's hand at the edge of a cliff. You can't always prevent the fall, but you can be present.
—What was the Westerbork camp like, where you lived?
Westerbork was a camp of wooden barracks, set in the middle of a flat, windy heath in the north of the country. Hundreds of us were crammed in, on plank bunk beds. The cold bit, and a wool blanket was worth more than treasure. But it wasn't a prison like you imagine: it was a waiting room. A waiting room for horror. People arrived, stayed a while, then left again by train. Yet even there, I wrote these words: “In spite of everything, I find this life beautiful.” In the middle of the mud, I still looked at the sky and the heather flowers.
In spite of everything, I find this life beautiful.
—Why do you always talk about Tuesdays in your letters?
Because Tuesday had become the most terrible day of the week, my child. Dinsdag, they said, “Tuesday” in Dutch. Every Tuesday, a long train of cars left the camp for the East, for a place no one returned from. All the night before, you could hear crying, you read the lists of names. They called it doorsturen, “send further,” a cold office word to hide a dreadful thing. I wrote letters to my friends in Amsterdam to tell about those mornings. They circulated in secret. Imagine a letter passed from hand to hand, read in a low voice, because the truth had to get out from behind the barbed wire.
—How did you stay brave, trapped behind barbed wire?
You know, courage didn't come all at once, like magic. It came from books and silence. I always carried two companions: the Bible, especially the Psalms, and a little book by Rilke, a poet, the Letters to a Young Poet. In the evening, I read them and prayed. And then I wrote this sentence, which saved me: “I live freely inside, even if I am surrounded by barbed wire.” Do you understand? They could lock my body in a camp, but not my soul. Imagine a window at the top of a tower: even imprisoned, I could look at the sky through that window.
I live freely inside, even if I am surrounded by barbed wire.
—Weren't you afraid of dying?
Of course I was afraid, sometimes, like everyone. It would be a lie to say otherwise. But I understood a strange thing while writing my diary. I noted: “You must accept death in order to live fully.” As long as you spend your life trembling at the end, you don't really live, you hide. The day I looked death in the face, without fleeing it, every small thing became precious: a piece of bread, a ray of sunlight on the heath, a friendly face. Imagine holding the hand of a loved one very tight, precisely because you know time is short. That was my secret.
You must accept death in order to live fully.
—Is it true that you threw a postcard from the train window?
It's absolutely true, my child. On September 7, 1943, they made us, my family and I, board a freight car, the kind used to transport animals. The door was almost closed, but through a crack, I was able to throw out a postcard scribbled in haste. It fell on the tracks. A farmer picked it up, and he had the heart to mail it for me. On it, I had written: “We left the camp singing.” Imagine a little piece of paper thrown from a train, like a message in a bottle. It was my last sign, my last way of saying: I remain free, until the end.
We left the camp singing.
—If people read you today, what would you want them to remember about you?
What a beautiful question to end with. I wouldn't want them to remember only the sadness, you see. My diary was only published much later, in 1981, long after my death at age twenty-nine. And children like you still read it. What I'd like to leave you is very simple: even in the worst moments, you can choose to keep a heart that thinks and loves. No one can take that from you. I wrote in a freezing barracks that life remained beautiful. So when one day you are afraid or sad, remember little Etty and her window to the sky. And look up, too.
No one can take from you a heart that thinks and loves.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Etty Hillesum's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.