Volume 31, Number 12 · July 19, 1984
In Hell
By Neal Ascherson
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943
translated by Arno Pomerans, with an introduction by J.G. Gaarlandt
Pantheon, 226 pp., $12.95
The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm: The SS Doctor and the Children
by Günther Schwarberg, translated by Erna Baber Rosenfeld, by Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Indiana University Press, 178 pp., $17.50
Etty Hillesum was a young woman, a Dutch Jew, who lived in Amsterdam. She was twenty-six when the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands took place. In the spring of 1942, the mass deportations of the Jews began, at first to the huge transit camp of Westerbork in eastern Holland. From there, that summer, the sealed trains began to leave for an unknown destination in Poland, which in fact was Auschwitz. Etty Hillesum went to Westerbork in July 1942 of her own free will, to work in the camp hospital. Her turn for the transports came on September 7, 1943. She died at Auschwitz on November 30 that year, although it seems to be unknown whether she was sent to the gas chambers or perished of disease and hunger. Her entire family died there too, with the exception of one brother who survived Auschwitz but died on the way back to Holland.
Review, 3115 words
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