Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork

Rating:
Summary: Etty is a spiritual role model
Review: This book is filled with some of the deepest most meaningful words I have ever read. Etty begins her diaries "struggling for true inner freedom" (p. 55) She achieves this. She turns inward to her faith at a time when thing around her are in total despair. She is a role model for others. In her twenty eight years she reaches a point of spirituality many of us do not. Excellent book. Begining was a little hard to get into but stay with it! Her writing becomes more clear, you can learn a lot from Etty.

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and full of hope in the midst of human desolation.
Review: Through her journals, we watch Etty Hillesum grow from a self-absorbed intellectual into what I can only imagine spiritual teachers such as Buddha or Jesus were like. Hillesum offers a blueprint for spiritual growth, detailing the process as she lives it. In the end, in spite of a chance to flee the camps, Hillesum chooses to stay in order to help others. Hillesum was supremely human and supremely blessed with the spirit of God at the same time, and we are allowed to watch her live her beautiful truth during a terrible time in history. How can that not offer us hope?