For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear together to give us
the fullest possible portrait of this extraordinary woman. In the darkest years
of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life who
se lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves
a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testi
fies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most deva
stating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of
twenty-nine.
