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Etty Hillesum 1939 750WC
Knowing God’s presence through the hard times 

Suzanne Cooke has been reflecting on how rapidly political climates can change, and how such changes in 1930’s Europe prompted a young Dutch woman to take action.

I am sure that many of us are particularly relieved that Joe Biden has won the US Presidential election, denying Donald Trump a second presidential term.  I mention this because over the last few weeks I have been reading the dairies of a young woman called Esther (Etty) Hillesum and I’ve been reflecting, as I have many times before, upon just how the political situation in 1930’s Europe could have led to the terrible events of World War 2 - how societies, communities and individuals could have stood by as such abominations happened in their own backyards, to their neighbours, friends and work colleagues.  
 
I hope that Etty’s story acts as a reminder of what happens when we give in to our worst and most fearful, shadow-selves. Etty was a Dutch Jewish woman living in Amsterdam as these horrors unfolded across Europe, and her diaries tell the story of this most disturbing time. 
 
Etty was at the very heart of the Jewish persecution, working in July 1942 at the Westerbork Transit Camp, volunteering for the Jewish Council’s department of  ‘Social Welfare for People in Transit’. 
 
She began to write in 1941, at the suggestion of her therapist, at a time when the realities of Jewish persecution by the occupying German forces were a growing reality.   She must always have shown signs of a deep spiritual pre-disposition because her therapist also suggested that she might try reading the Bible and other Christian writings. 
 
Etty was not without her own person struggles, and it seems that what this encounter with Christianity enabled was an intense, transformational journey or relationship with God and the Christian story.  Although this connection to God was, for her, intensely real still she at one time described herself as ‘The girl who could not kneel’.  
 
So, as Etty grappled with her own emerging spiritual evolution and her relationship with God, the brutality of what was happening in Hitler’s Germany began to be felt by across Europe, and Etty was beginning to write about what her profound relationship with God meant and how it affected her understanding and responses to what she was experiencing.   
 
As the war years passed, her growing love and sense of connection to God gave her the foundation she needed to continue to mature spiritually and emotionally despite the horrors of those terrible times.  Culminating tragically in July 1942, when her personal status was revoked and she was taken back, this time as an internee, to Westerbork, along with her father, mother, and brother Mischa. 
 
What I think Etty develops towards the end of her sadly short life was a way of looking at and experiencing the world that enabled her to transcend or see beyond the suffering and pain she saw around her.  In 1942 she wrote ‘Very well then, this new certainty, that what they are after is our total destruction, I accept it.  I know it now and I shall not burden others with my fears… I work and continue to live with the same conviction, and I find life meaningful – yes meaningful.’    
 
Etty died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943.   Like many of the Christian mystics before her, Etty saw the world and of living in that world as pure revelation – she was able to understand the experience of living as one long blissful opportunity to be part of and to participate in the ongoing unfolding of God’s presence in reality.  This might seem hard to understand and an unrealistic goal, but what Etty emphasises is the importance of simplicity as the crucial key to our relationship with God and ultimately to inner peace.
 
I’ll leave you with her wise words: 
‘Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.’
 
Esther (Etty) Hillesum : 15 January 1914 – 30 November 1943
 
 
The image of Etty Hillesum above is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, author unknown.



Suzanne CookeRev Suzanne Cooke is the vicar of four rural churches, sitting at the foot of the Cheviot Hills in the far north of Northumberland.  Her call to ministry came whilst living with her family in North Norfolk and she is proud to have begun her ordained life in the Norwich Diocese.

 



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