Session Eleven
(pages 324 to the end, Westerbork)
Supplies are running low in the camp. Etty’s father is suffering from lack of nourishment. Etty writes to a friend for sugar.
“There is good and bad everywhere.”
A stray cat comes into the camp and they give it a hatbox to sleep in. The cat has kittens in the hatbox. The camp is increasingly crowded. Etty writes, “Sometimes I feel like a stray cat without a hatbox.”
P. 330 - Etty writes about a secret, inexplicable inner happiness that is not dependent upon exterior circumstances.
Etty’s life has become a living, ceaseless prayer. She prays in an unceasing dialogue with God. Her inner richness increases. There is only God.
S’s presence comes to her on the heath as a source of comfort and further teaching
Life is full of miracles. Etty sees the majesty of life all around her as she draws near to the end.
Etty feels certain we are called to love everyone who crosses our path AND she is terrified of the “squad of armed, green uniformed guards.”
Etty describes in great detail a long scene at the camp in which people get ready to be loaded on the train to depart for Poland. It is a visceral, piercing scene and at the end of it she is exhausted.
Even here so very near the end Etty writes, “Yet life in its unfathomable depths is so wonderfully good.”
Her humility is intact and even peaking at the end (like Teresa of Avila!), “I myself fail to measure up in every way.”
Her final postcard. Etty on the train writes, “I opened the bible at random, “The Lord is my high tower.” “We left the camp singing.”
The family left together with the exception of Jaap.
Etty died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943.