Tomorrow we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. His actual birthday was January 15, 1929. Fifteen years earlier, by coincidence on the same day, January 15, Etty Hillesum was born in Holland. Today we’re going to talk about Hillesum, and toward the end I will connect her work with that of Dr. King.
Etty Hillesum was a secular Jew. In her twenties she lived in Amsterdam, where she tutored Russian. She started seeing a therapist, who encouraged her to explore her spirituality. She studied the Torah, the Qur’an, and the Bible. She began meditating for a half hour every morning before work, and she kept a diary in which she explored both her spiritual journey and the chaos of World War II unfolding in Holland. As part of our sermon series on John Philip Newell’s book The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home, we can see what Etty Hillesum has to teach us about finding God deep within ourselves and also deep within everyone we meet—even those who would harm us.
Hillesum considered her diary part of a dialogue “with what is deepest inside me, which for the sake of convenience I call God.” Even as German soldiers flowed into Holland and Jews experienced more and more restrictions, she wrestled against the temptation to hate all Germans. “If there were only one decent German, then he should be cherished despite that whole barbaric gang, and because of that one decent German it is wrong to pour hatred over an entire people.” (If only the Germans had shown the same grace to the Jews!) Hillesum prayed, “God, do not let me dissipate my strength, not the least little bit of strength, on useless hatred against these soldiers.” Rather, she sought to fight the war “by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.” [Newell, p. 149.] She wanted to fight war and hatred and antisemitism with love.
Which she did.
Even as she became surrounded by suffering, she was intentional about savoring the beauty of creation. A scented jasmine bloomed on her balcony, and she lingered to soak in its beauty and fragrance. Even after the blooms faded, she wrote, “But somewhere inside me, the jasmine continues to blossom undisturbed, just as profusely and delicately as ever it did. And it spreads its scent round the House in which You dwell, O God. . . . I bring You not only my tears and my forebodings on this stormy, grey Sunday morning. I even bring You scented jasmine.” [Newell, p. 152.]
In July 1942, deportation of Jews from the Amsterdam Ghetto began. They were sent to Westerbork, a camp in the northeast of the Netherlands, and from there to Auschwitz. Hillesum was given a special permit to accompany these transports to Westerbork, which she did for nearly a year. She stayed with these Jews, sat with them in their fear and despair, loved them. And she savored sunsets over the lupines on the other side of the barbed wire. She held the suffering and the beauty, and in the midst of it all, she found life beautiful.
In June 1943, her travel permit was revoked, and she became just another Jew at Westerbork, awaiting the train to Auschwitz. And then one day, as she met a trainload of Jews coming from Amsterdam, she picked out the faces of her own parents and brother. This was hardest of all.
John Philip Newell writes about her at this time:
The only attitude that allows one to carry on at Westerbork, she writes, is derived from St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matt. 6:34). We must not respond to the evil of today with fear for tomorrow and hatred of those who wrong us. Our only duty is “to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.” That, she say, is “the only solution.” And that, rather than the so-called Final Solution, is the only way forward for humanity.
On September 7, 1943, Etty Hillesum, her parents, her brother Mischa, and about a thousand other Jews were packed onto a train headed for Auschwitz. She wrote a final postcard to a friend and flung it off the train into a field, where Dutch farmers later found it and mailed it. It said,
“Opening the Bible at random I find this, ‘The Lord is my high tower.’ I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning. On sudden special orders from The Hague. We left the camp singing.”
We left the camp singing. Not dehumanized, despite the Germans’ best efforts. A friend of Hillesum who was also at Westerbork wrote to Etty’s friends in Amsterdam about that day:
She stepped onto the platform . . . talking gaily, smiling, a kind word for everyone she met on the way, full of sparkling humour, perhaps just a touch of sadness, but every inch the Etty you all know so well. . . . I only wish I could describe for you exactly how it happened and with what grace she and her family left! . . . Mischa waved through a crack in wagon no. 1, [then there was] a cheerful “bye” from Etty in no. 12, and they were gone. She is gone. We stand bereft, but not with empty hands. [Newell, p. 160.]
Etty Hillesum was murdered at Auschwitz on November 30, 1943.
Newell writes,
The most repeated refrain in her diary, both from the Amsterdam years and from Westerbork, was “life is beautiful and meaningful.” And this is what she invites us into, in our living and our dying, and in times of joy as well as sorrow, to know that life is an unspeakably beautiful gift, forever graced with meaning when we live and breathe from our true depths and listen for the divine at the heart of our being. [Newell, p. 161.]
Etty Hillesum did that, and she also learned to listen for the divine at the heart of every being. When we are able to do that, we can no longer hate all Germans—in her case—or all immigrants, or all police, or all Black people, or all Jews, or all Palestinians, or all anybody.
Two women have taken Etty Hillesum’s message to heart and created Etty Hillesum cards with her photo on one side and a quote from her diaries on the other, in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. [EttyHillesumCards.com.] One of the women, Emma Sham-Ba Ayalon, is a rabbi born and raised in Israel. The other, Dina Awwad-Srour, is a Palestinian. Let that one sink in for a minute.
Rabbi Ayalon says,
As a Jewish woman who grew up in Israel, I know that we carry a trauma that influences us as individuals and as a nation. The trauma that we carry from the Holocaust plays a big role in our behaviour as a nation and especially in the way we treat Palestinians. As a peace worker I know that we cannot go forward toward a vision of peace if we don’t heal the wounds from the past.
Etty wanted to be a remedy of healing. I believe that her spiritual path that allowed her to never hate and to find inner peace even in the very dark times of the Holocaust, can serve as a healing force and as a role model for what is possible for us as Jews and as humans. Her writings deeply healed my heart and helped me step out of a victim’s perspective and to find the power from within myself to contribute to the creation of a better world.
Dina Awwad-Srour writes this:
As a Palestinian, I find Etty very inspiring as she helped me learn to look at the Palestinian/Israeli conflict from a wider angel beyond a black & white or a good & evil perspective. I learned to ask questions and look for the answers within myself. I learned from her to see the human inside every Israeli soldier. I gained a deeper understanding of how war is a system that misuses young men.
Imagine if our police officers—well, our society in general—learned to see the human inside every young Black man instead of just seeing “Black male” and assuming trouble. Imagine if our nation’s ICE officers got to know some of the immigrants they were dragging out of cars and kidnaping in front of schools—really became able to see the God in each person they were hunting down. We may not be in the midst of a holocaust in this nation, the way Etty Hillesum was, but there is a whole lot of “othering” going on, where our nation is trying to get us to reject the immigrants, the trans athletes, those experiencing homelessness, and on and on. So on this Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend, we remind ourselves that we stand for justice, for love, and for peace.
In Friday’s weekend section of the Seattle Times, there was a cover photo from last year’s MLK march, which you may recall coincided with inauguration day. And on that day, between 5,000 and 7,000 people marched from Garfield High School to downtown Seattle. They were Black, they were white, they were tall, short, young, old, all genders. They carried signs about King. They carried signs about nuclear weapons, Palestinian prisoners, US aid to Israel, Project 2025, bodily autonomy, working class solidarity, fighting deportations—name a justice issue, and somebody had a sign for it. They may not all have agreed with each other on every issue, but they marched together.
According to the article in the Times,
The theme for 2026 is “Where Do We Go from Here?” inspired by King’s 1967 book “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” In the book, he warned that America was facing deep racism, poverty, militarism and division—and challenged the community to decide if it will move further into chaos or a future built on love and social justice.
Etty Hillesum chose to create community, healing, and a love of beauty and life even in the midst of horrific chaos. She refused to be robbed of her humanity, and her diaries live on as a testament to the best we can become when we center our lives on the God at the depth of our being, when the God in me greets and draws forth the God in you.
Shaude’ Moore, chair of the Seattle MLK Jr. Organizing Coalition, says, “Dr. King had challenged the community—the world, really—to think more about the building of community and building on the foundation of justice, democracy and love within the chaos itself. . . . In the midst of this divisiveness, there is this unity. There is this hunger, this urge for change.” [“Where to participate in MLK Day events in the Seattle area,” Seattle Times, January 16, 2026, “Weekend Plus” section (D), p. 2.]
The change starts with us. Don’t wait for our elected officials to do it for us. We may not agree with where they’re going. Tomorrow is a good day to start, as we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, which also happens to be Etty Hillesum’s birthday. Tomorrow is a good day—and today is even better. May the God in you greet the God in everyone you meet: today, tomorrow, and always. Amen.