Introduction

In 1941 and 1942, Etty Hillesum filled notebooks with diary entries. In these diaries, the image appears of a young woman who was seeking and struggling in life, and who went through an important transformation. Julius Spier played an important role in that process; it was he who recommended that she start keeping a diary. As she wrote, Hillesum transformed from a person with many physical and psychological ailments to become a powerful, self-assured woman with a deep confidence in life.

A particular aspect of this transformation was that she gradually discovered that she could come into contact with her deepest self through the gesture of kneeling. In October 1942, in the last section of the extan diaries, she wrote that she remembered with tremendous gratitude Julius Spier, who had died in September 1942. She described how she learned to kneel thanks to him.

The fact that Etty Hillesum herself remarked on the connection between Spier and kneeling fuels the assumption that it was Spier who taught her this gesture. It was striking that she – a Jewish woman – learned to kneel, for it is not a Jewish manner of prayer, but rather a Christian one.