New Book Explores the Life of Etty Hillesum During WWII

Editor’s Note: The following article focuses on a new book, The Jungian Inspired Holocaust Writings of Etty Hillesum: To Write is to Act (Routledge 2024) by CIIS Professor Emerita Barbara Morrill, Ph.D. Dr. Morrill served as Program Chair, Associate Professor, and a core faculty member in Integral Counseling Psychology from 2009 – 2022. Dr. Morrill will host a book launch on Tuesday, October 22, 2024 at Notre Dame de Namur University from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

The diaries of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish writer who lived in Amsterdam while the city was under Nazi occupation during World War II, are the subject of a new book, The Jungian Inspired Holocaust Writings of Etty Hillesum: To Write is to Act (Routledge 2024) by CIIS Professor Emerita, Dr. Barbara Morrill. Morrill came across Hillesum’s abridged diary in the late 1990s while at a Jewish bookstore.

According to the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Etty (Esther) was born in 1914 in the Netherlands; her father taught classical languages and her mother fled Russia during the pogroms. Hillesum began keeping a diary in 1941 while she was in therapy with Dr. Julius Spier. Spier had been a student of Carl Jung, the Swiss evolutionary theorist who founded the school of analytical psychology. Though it started as a chronicle of her therapeutic experience, Hillesum’s diary became a record of the brutality of life under Nazi rule. Hillesum described being forced to wear the yellow star and adhere to rules set forth by Nazis including limiting Jewish peoples’ ability to patronize certain shops, ride their bicycles or use public transportation, and strict nighttime curfew laws. Eventually, Hillesum, her parents, and a brother were arrested and transported to Auschwitz where they were killed in 1943.

Dr. Morrill had long been drawn to the history of Europe during the war, especially through the eyes of Holocaust survivors, when she came across Etty’s diaries. The layering of globally traumatic events with an already complex time in Hillesum’s life made Morrill especially intrigued by the text.

“Initially, I was drawn because of Etty’s ‘voice,’ her unusual self-awareness as she grapples with her fears and somatic complaints, and her deep and painful experience of being ‘lost’ in life. She begins this journey as she begins therapy,” Dr. Morrill explained. “I am a depth psychologist, and very interested in Jungian work, so it was a natural for me given Spier’s Jungian training and sensibility.”

In her book, Dr. Morrill describes how Hillesum’s relationship with Spier began when he became her analyst, and later evolved:  

“It progressed into a professional [relationship] as she became the secretary of the 'Spier Club’ a group who read together, practiced therapy, breath work, and meditation — much like a mini CIIS or growth group,” Morrill said. “It moved to a more personal and sexual relationship when the restrictions began with the yellow star and when time was short to the destination of most Jewish people, especially in Holland. And then it moved to something I would call an agape friendship that was deeply mutual as they called it their ‘joint project.’ Spier had a major influence on her life and Etty on his — a transformational one.”

Dr. Morrill said her lifelong focus has been in the realm of realization and transformation, and Hillesum’s journey was all about this process in real time with Spier, as well as during one of the most meticulously planned and orchestrated genocides in history.

“While in other articles and book chapters I spoke about her spiritual transformations, it was in 2017 — because of the consequential presidential elections in my life experience — I was inspired to write about her times and how her voice can help us in our times.”

Morrill said Hillesum’s writings can help guide us even today as we stand against the threat of losing democracy.

“Etty Hillesum’s writing, in its immediacy on the page, transmits an awareness beyond the time and space she is in, possibly because she can ‘see through’ what is happening given her study of history and the patterns or archetypes of humans in history for thousands of years,” Dr. Morrill notes. “She still felt her experience was meaningful, as there would always be an Ivan the Terrible or a Hitler, and [she] resisted the Nazi’s taking away the soul or presence of people while they were still alive.”

Dr. Morrill explains that Hillesum, as Jung did, wrote about the “shadow” of humans, that part which is not illuminated, and pleaded with people to stop hating others and “do your own shadow work instead of projecting it upon others with conspiracy theories and fear of the “other.”  

“She advocated for holding the opposites and trying to understand even when diametrically opposed — she lived from the truth and resided in the deepest in her, which she called God.”

It was in her journey with Dr. Spier as her analyst that Hillesum began to develop a deepening faith in God. 

“Spier was the beginning, but Etty’s nature was deeply spiritual. Her ‘givenness’ or essence was Jewish, yet she was open to Christianity and Buddhism, and the Spier group read and practiced from aspects of several traditions”

Dr. Morrill described Hillesum’s love of the Psalms and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, which sustained her during her short life.

“She loved beauty and all these areas led to her deepening with the ineffable. And she loved her tribe; as an assimilated Jew, she chose not to go into hiding [but] instead [to] the Jewish Council at Camp Westerbork, a transit camp before Auschwitz and other death camps, as she would not feel okay to not share this with her people. She felt she could not become a chronicler of this time unless she experienced it along with them.”

Dr. Morrill was especially inspired by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt who first published Hillesum’s diary, as An Interrupted Life, some years ago when he wrote the following about Hillesum:.

“Her mysticism led her not into solitary contemplation, but squarely back into the world of action. Her vision had nothing to do with escape or self-deception, and everything to do with a hard-won, steady, and whole perception of reality. Her God resided in her own capacity to see the truth, bear it and to find consolation in it.”

Dr. Morrill concludes with an inspiring poem from Hillesum herself, which she believes 
encapsulates Etty’s journey through her short life.

“The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on a 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.” 

 

Related Academic Programs

M.A. in Counseling Psychology, Integral Counseling Psychology