ANDtty Hillesum, sixty years after his disappearance in Auschwitz, remains a symbol and a guide of spiritual resistance in the face of Evil. While history sank into one of her blackest moments, she was able to travel it in the opposite direction and ignite, even for all of us, an inner light unattainable by any darkness.
“God wants us happy. Etty Hillesum or youth” by Elisabetta Rasy, HarperCollins160 pages, €18
Elisabetta Rasy tells us about it in a Bildungsroman eloquently titled God wants us happy (HarperCollins), in which her own story is intertwined with that of this young Dutch Jewess and that of other extraordinary young women from the same terrible historical periodfrom Edith Stein to Simone Weil, thus increasing “the supply of love” in the world.
Can you tell us about your love for Etty?
Many years ago I came across a book by a complete stranger. It was the diary of a girl born in 1914 who hadn’t had time to reach the thirty years I was reading: she had died in Auschwitz in 1943. What struck me while reading, however, was not only her tragic end and the infinite spiritual strength with which he had endured it. It was the extraordinary tale of her youth. Mine was then coming to an end and reading Etty’s diary it was as if someone were talking to me and explaining everything I had experienced. From that moment Etty became a close friend, who I would always keep with me.
How is Etty similar to and different from other female writers or writing protagonists who have gone through the same wild times?
She is a young woman who experiences firsthand the terrible grip of the Nazi occupation in Holland which began in May 1940 and the consequent anti-Semitic persecution. Etty, however, tenaciously defends her life, her youth and the passionate and difficult love she is experiencing. Hers is also a beautiful love story. She knows that maybe there won’t be a tomorrow yet she goes in search of herself, of an identity far from stereotypes, of a fragile and very strong woman.
Etty’s love for life despite everything. How can there be a mirror and a guide today?
His love for life stems from the stubborn will not to compromise. Not even to save his life. You write that 1941, a year of terrible persecution of the Jews, was the happiest year of her life: she fell in love with a man who does not offer her marriage and a family but instead proposes the difficult way to meet the she soul of her. She is a restless woman who cultivates her inner restlessness as a weapon of diversity from the world and also as a fortress. Today the younger ones risk being crushed by the same buzzwords, fashions, trends and lose sight of their own singularity: I dedicate the book to them.
Writer and journalist, Elisabetta Rasy, scholar of nineteenth-century fiction, has published many essays on women’s literature. Among her latest works, The Science of Goodbyes and The Disobedients. (AGF)
In this book, she too talks about herself…
Retracing Etty’s diary, in its two editions published by Adelphi (the complete one is almost eight hundred pages that I seem to have read all in one breath) it was like finding, through her voice, pieces of myself. From here were born the autobiographical associations that alternate with the story of her and also those of her with other writers and beloved characters, Katherine Mansfield for example or Micòl of The garden of the Finzi-Continis by Bassani. Deep down we love a book because it tells us about us, telling us things about ourselves that we didn’t know.
His lesson of peace to be built internally first: in which and how many ways are we disregarding it?
Etty’s lesson is extraordinary because it comes not from an ideology but from a feeling. I would define it as a feeling of acceptance towards others, towards those we feel are different from us. With each closure that we oppose to others, this feeling is shattered. Naturally it is not a question of a naive movement of the soul, as they often want us to believe: accepting others is not always easy, one must implement the intellect of love, that is, an intelligence that is cultivated not only with rationality but also emotionally.
Is there a Hillesum quote that we should hang in the mirror?
One that I love very much and that I report in my book: “One thing, however, is certain: we must help increase the supply of love on this earth. Every crumb of hatred that is added to the exorbitant hatred that already exists makes this world more inhospitable and unlivable”.
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