Um coração iluminado no campo de concentração nazista

Levou-me mais de dois anos para terminar de ler Etty Hillesum - An interrupted life and letters from Westerbork". A obra é conhecida como uma versão adulta dos diários de Anne Frank. Tal como esta, Etty era judia, vivia na Holanda, e sofreu de perto os horrores do genocídio nazista. Foi morta em Auschwitz em 1943, aos 29 anos. O que impressiona em seus diários, no entanto, é a sua resistência interna para encarar a experiência com mais abertura e menos sofrimento, além de sua generosidade para ajudar outras vítimas desta saga tenebrosa.

Inspiração à parte, tive dificuldades de avançar na leitura porque esse "episódio" da história da humanidade é árido, inconcebível, extremamente injusto e cruel. Sinto que nenhum adjetivo será suficiente para descrevê-lo.

Compartilho alguns trechos...

“A good lunch, which used to be something we took for granted, is now a special treat. As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more the good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude. At least, that´s how I feel, and he as well, and we can tell each other from time to time how strange it is that we feel no hatred or indignation or bitterness, but we can´t say that openly in company, for no one would understand.”

(...)
“Sunday night. Verbalize, vocalize, visualize.

Many people are still hieroglyphs to me, but gradually I am learning to decipher them. It is the best I can do: to read life from people. In Westerbork it was as if I stood before the bare palisade of life. Life´s innermost framework, stripped of all outer trappings. ‘Thank You, God, for teaching me to read better and better’.

I talk a great deal to people, more than ever of late. I still speak much more expressively and clearly than I can write. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn´t dissipate my strength on the spoken word, that I should withdraw and go my own quiet, searching way on paper. A part of me wants to do just that. But another part wavers and loses itself in words among people. (...)

My heart is a floodgate for a never-ending tide of misery.”

“(...) 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 shinning on my face - and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension.

Love
Etty”


(Thanks very much indeed for the gift, my dear friend Michele!)