Etty Hillesum on Love and War

I'm reading "Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork". It is said that Etty was the adult contemporary to Anne Frank. Her diary left to us reveals a 27-29 year old woman who articulates her own inner life with mastery. She died in Auschwitz in 1943.

I'm struck by the room she has within her for others, her ability to put words to a deep inner-life, her compassionate hope and her insight into human responsibility. As her situation is worsening and the signs of eventual encampment are only a matter of time she writes this about the war she's experiencing:

"All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbor. Because I and my neighbor and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live. And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called wickedness, that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves." (95)

Etty has an imagined word on the beauty of life in spite of sorrow for a mother who has lost her child:

"Yes, life is beautiful, and I value it anew at the end of every day, even though I know that the sons of mothers, and you are one such mother, are being murdered in concentration camps. And you must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself, part of your body and your soul, you mustn't run away from it, but bear it like an adult. Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek to be avenged on all German mothers, for they, too, sorrow at this very moment for their slain and murdered sons. Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge--from which new sorrows will be born for others--then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in God." (97)