Etty Hillesum

Och vid nionde timmen ropade Jesus med hög röst: »Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?« (det betyder: Min Gud, min Gud, varför har du övergivit mig?). Med ett högt rop slutade Jesus att andas. (Mark 15:34, 3)
Och Jesus ropade med hög röst: »Fader, i dina händer lämnar jag min ande.« När han sagt detta slutade han att andas. (Luk 23:46)
När Jesus hade fått det sura vinet sade han: »Det är fullbordat.« Och han böjde ner huvudet och överlämnade sin ande. (Joh 19:30)

Hur möter vi döden? 

   

Vi vet inte hur Jesus mötte döden. 

   Trots att vi har berättelser om ögonblicket.

   Kanske var det i ångest "Min Gud varför har du övergivit mig?".

   Kanske var det i acceptans "Fader i dina händer lämnar jag min ande", "Det är fullbordat". 

   Kanske var det både och.

   Säkert var det både och.

Denna Långfredag sitter jag med An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43.

   En favoritmystiker, judinna från Nederländerna, jag gärna återkommer till. 

   Denna bok på drygt 400 sidor, har jag bara bläddrat lite i tidigare. 

   Men idag kändes som rätt dag att äntligen fördjupa mig lite mer i den.

   Och vandra tillsammans med Etty mot korset. 

   

Etty berättar om då, men talar också till oss om nu! 

   Idag kan vi säga att jag mest är redaktör i denna blogg, författaren är Etty! 

   Jag kan inte återge alla drygt 400 sidor, men de är verkligen värda att läsa! 

   För här finns erfarenhet och klokskap som vi behöver i vår tid! 

   Vi börjar i hennes dagbok.

19 februari 1942

"What is it in human beings that makes them want to destroy others?" Jan asked bitterly.

I said, "Human beings, you say, but remember that you're one yourself."

And strangely enough he seemed to acquiesce, grumpy, gruff old Jan.

"The rottenness of others is in us, too," I continued to preach to him.

"I see no other solution, 

I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. 

I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world 

until we have first changed ourselves. 

And that seems to me the only lesson to be learnt from this war. 

That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else."

3 juli 1942

Something has crystallised.

I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, 

which has already begun in so many small ways in our daily life, 

straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, 

and my love of life has not been diminished. 

I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged. 

I continue to grow from day to day, 

even with the likelihood of destruction staring me in the face. 

(...) 

By "coming to terms with life" I mean: 

the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; 

my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, 

by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, 

by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death 

or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. 

It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, 

and by admitting death inte our life we enlarge and enrich it. 

5 juli 1942

Last night we talked about the labour camps.

I said "I don't have any illusions about them, 

I know that i shall be dead within three days because my body is so useless."

Werner was sure he would fare no better.

But Liesl said, "I don't know, I have a feeling that I'll come through."

I can sympathise with the feeling of hers, I used to have it myself. 

A feeling of indestructible resilience. 

And I still have it now, that's the whole point, but no longer in a purely material sense.

It doesn't matter whether my untrained body will be able to carry on, 

that is really of secondary importance; 

the main thing is that even as we die a terrible death 

we are able to feel right up to the very last moment that life has meaning and beauty, 

that we have realised our potential and lived a good life.

10 juli 1942

One moment it is Hitler, the next it is Ivan the Terrible;

one moment it is resignation and the next war, pestilence, earthquake, or famine. 

Ultimately what matters most is to bear the pain, to cope with it, 

and to keep a small corner of one's soul unsullied, come what may.

11 juli 1942

In a few day's time I shall go to the dentist and have lots of holes in my teeth filled.

For that really would be awful: suffering from toothache out there.

I shall try to take hold of a rucksack and pack only what is absolutely essential, 

though everything must be of good quality.

I shall take a Bible along and that slim volume Letters to a Young Poet, 

and surely I'll be able to find some corner for the Book of Hours.

I won't take along any photographs of those I love; 

I'll just take all the faces and familiar gestures I have collected 

and hang them up along the walls of my inner space so that they will always be with me. 

(...) 

Many accuse me of indifference and passivity when I refuse to go into hiding; 

they say that I have given up.

They say everyone who can must try to stay out of their clutches, 

it's our bounden duty to try. But that argument is specious.

For while everyone tries to save himself, 

vast numbers are nevertheless disappearing. 

And the funny thing is I don't feel I'm in their clutches anyway, 

whether I stay or am sent away.

I find all that talk so cliché-ridden and naive and can't go along with it anymore. 

I don't feel in anybody's clutches; I feel safe in God's arms, to put it rhetorically, 

and no matter whether I am sitting at this beloved old desk now, 

or in a bare room in the Jewish district, 

or perhaps in a labour camp under SS guards in a month's time - 

I shall always feel safe in God's arms. 

Den 15e juli 1942 får Etty jobb på "the Cultural Affairs Department of the Jewish Council".

16 juli 1942

"Have You any other plans for me, O God?"

Tomorrow I must betake myself to hell, and if I am to do the work properly, 

I shall have to get in a good night's sleep.

(...)

I hope to be a centre of peace in that madhouse.

I shall get up early in order to embrace myself. 

"O God, what are Your plans for me?"

(...)

A miracle has happened, and that too is something I must accept and learn to bear. 

20 juli 1942

They are merciless, totally without pity. And we must be all the more merciful ourselves.

That's why I prayed early this morning:

"O God, times are too hard for frail people like myself.

I know that a new and kinder day will come.

I would so much like to live on, if only to express all the love i carry within me.

And there is only one way of preparing the new age, by living it even now in our hearts. 

Somewhere in me I feel so light, 

without the least bitterness and so full of strength and love. 

I would so much like to help prepare the new age."

Den 22a juli 1942 blev Etty volontär på "the Jewish Council for Deportation to Westerbork". 

23 juli 1942

Last night, walking that long way home through the rain with the blister on my foot, 

I still made a short detour to seek out a flower stall, 

and went home with a large bunch of roses. 

They are just as real as all the misery I witness each day.

"There is room for many things in my life, so much room, O God."

As I walked down those overcrowded corridors today, 

I suddenly felt the urge to kneel down right there, 

on the stone floor, among all those people. 

The only adequate gesture left to us in these times: "kneeling down before You."

Each day i learn something new about people and realise more and more 

that the only strength comes, not from others, but from within. 

Etty följde frivilligt med den första gruppen judar som sändes till lägret i Westerbork.

   I slutet på augusti fick hon återvända till Amsterdam.

15 september 1942

To think that one small human heart can experience so much, O God, 

so much suffering and so much love, 

I am so greatful to You, God, for having chosen my heart, 

in these times, to experience all the things it has experienced. 

20 september 1942

Max, did you see that deaf and dumb woman in her eighth month, 

with her epileptic husband?

I wonder, Max, how many women in their ninth month 

are being driven from their homes in Russia 

this very moment and still reach for their guns?

Etty återvände till Westerbork i november 1942, men återvände till Amsterdam i december. 

   Den 6e juni 1943 återvände Etty för sista gången till Westerbork.

   Under den här tiden skrev hon brev. 

18 december 1942

The barbed wire is more a question of attitude.

"Us behind barbed wire?" 

an indestructible old gentleman once said with a melancholy wave of his hand. 

"They are the ones who live behind barbed wire" 

- and he pointed to the tall villas that stand like sentries on the other sid of the fence. 

(...)

Finding something to say about Westerbork is also difficult 

because of its ambiguous character. 

On the one hand it is a stable community in the making, a forced one to be sure, 

yet with all the characteristics of a human society.

And on the other hand, it is a camp for a people in transit, 

great waves of human beings constantly washed in from the cities and provinces, 

from rest homes, prisons, and other prison camps, 

from all the nooks and crannies of the Netherlands - 

only to be deported a few days later to meet their unknown destiny. 

(...)

You sometimes think it would be simpler to put yourself on transport 

than have to witness the fear and despair of the thousands upon thousands of men, women, 

children, infants, invalids, the feeble-minded, the sick, and the aged 

who pass through our helping hands in an almost uninterrupted flow. 

(...)

What matter is not whether we preserve our lives at any cost, but how we preserve them. 

(...)

That's why it seemed such a great danger to me when all around one could hear, 

"We don't want to think, we don't want to feel, it's best to shut your eyes to all this misery."

As if suffering - in whatever form and however it may come to us - 

were not also part of human existence.

(...)

I know that those who hate have good reason to do so.

But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way? 

It has been brought home forcibly to me here 

how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place.

And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, 

that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love 

that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth 

in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter. 

8 juni 1943

Just now I climbed up on a box lying among the bushes here to count the freight cars. 

There were thirty-five, with some second-class cars at the front for the escorts.

The freight cars had been completely sealed, but a plank had been left out here and there, 

and people put their hands through the gaps and waved as if they were drowning. 

The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, 

two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, 

the sun is shining on my face - and right before our eyes, mass murder. 

The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension. 

26 juni 1943

People here fritter their energy away on the thousand irksome details 

that grind us down every day; they lose themselves in detail and drown.

That's why they get driven off course and find existence pointless. 

The few big things that matter in life are what we have to keep in mind: 

the rest can be quietly abandoned.

And you can find those few big things anywhere, 

you have to keep rediscovering them in yourself so that you can be renewed. 

And in spite of everything you always end up with the same conviction: 

life is good after all, it's not God's fault that things go awry sometimes, 

the cause lies in ourselves. 

And that's what stays with me, even now, 

even when I'm about to be packed off to Poland with my whole family.

3 juli 1943

The misery here is quite terrible: and yet, 

late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, 

I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire.

And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart - 

I can't help it, that's just the way it is, like som elementary force - 

the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, 

and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. 

8 augusti 1943

Many feel that their love of mankind languishes at Westerbork 

because it receives no nourishment - 

meaning that people here don't give you much occasion to love them.

"The mass is a hideous monster; individuals are pitiful", someone said.

But I keep discovering that there is no causal connection between people's behaviour 

and the love you feel for them. 

Love for one's fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you.

The fellow man himself has hardly anything to do with it. 

Oh Maria, it's a little bit bare of love here, 

and I myself feel so inexpressibly rich; I cannot explain it. 

18 augusti 1943

"My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, O God, one great dialogue.

Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth,

my eyes raised towards Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, 

tears of deep emotion and gratitude.

At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, O God, 

tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer."

2 september 1943

How terribly young we were only a year ago on this heath, Maria! 

Now we've grown a little older.

We hardly realise it ourselves: we have become marked by suffering for a whole lifetime. 

And yet life in its unfathomable depths is so wonderfully good, Maria -

I have come back to that time and again.

And if we just care enough, God is in safe hands with us despite everything, Maria. 

15 september 1943

Opening the Bible at random I find this: "The Lord is my high tower."

I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. 

Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. 

In the end, the departure came without warning. 

On sudden special orders from The Hague.

We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too.

We shall be travelling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. 

Friends left behind will still be writing to Amsterdam; 

perhaps you will hear something from them. 

Or from my last letter from camp.

Goodbye for now from the four of us. 

Etty

Det sista kortet, kastades ut från tåget av Etty och hittades av bönder som postade det. 

   Etty Hillesum dog i Auschwitz den 30 november 1943.  

Jesus må ha dött för våra synder skull.

   Men vad betyder det om vi fortsätter att leva och döda och kriga och avhumanisera? 

   Då var det Auschwitz, och vad lärde vi oss? 

Nu står vi här vid korset igen! 

   Varje dag finns det ett kors, eller oräkneliga, som människor vandrar mot.