Etty Hillesum (Middelburg, 1914 – Auschwitz, 1943)
Etty Hillesum was a 26-year-old woman from a middle-class Dutch family on her father’s side and of Russian descent on her mother’s. Her father sought to rise above his modest social background through study and hard work. Initially destined for a rabbinical career, he chose instead to study ancient languages, Latin and Greek, which he later taught before becoming the headmaster of a secondary school. Etty Hillesum’s mother had fled the Russian pogroms, eventually reaching the Netherlands on foot.Her two brothers suffered from severe psychological disorders, whose origins may have been linked to members of the paternal branch of the family: Jaap became a doctor, while Misha was a gifted pianist. Etty Hillesum studied law and Slavic languages and developed a passion for Russian, literature and Rilke. Politically left-leaning, she was not an activist; her Judaism was discreet but sincere. She led an unconventional and sexually liberated life, often moving in artistic circles.
Her decisive encounter with the therapist Julius Spier led her towards Jungian psychoanalysis and spirituality. The analysis she undertook with him offered her a new way of reading the Bible and introduced her to the depths of the human soul through the discipline of chirology. Etty Hillesum then began to keep a diary as a way of overcoming the inner obstacles that hindered both her life as a woman and her artistic aspirations. Conscious of her talent and intellectual abilities, she imagined a future for herself as a writer.Etty Hillesum was employed by the Jewish Council as a social worker at the time she received her summons for deportation. She later volunteered to go to the Westerbork transit camp, where she tried to support those awaiting deportation, offering them a final gesture of humanity. No member of the Hillesum family returned from the extermination camps.
Etty Hillesum entrusted her diary to a friend, asking her to pass it on to one of her former lovers, the writer Klaas Smelik, in the hope that it would one day be published. It was not until the next generation that Klaas Smelik’s son fulfilled both his father’s wish and Etty Hillesum’s.Today translated into languages around the world, Etty Hillesum’s diary has inspired stage productions, a television series ("Etty", Hagai Levi, 2026), countless academic studies, and a research centre in the Netherlands. Her writings transcend time, borders and divisions. Etty Hillesum’s spirituality continues to resonate across faiths and with audiences of all backgrounds.
Charlotte Salomon (Berlin, 1917 – Auschwitz, 1943)
Charlotte Salomon was a 23-year-old woman born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Berlin. Her father was a surgeon and the author of a study on the diagnosis of breast cancer through imaging, which contributed to the development of mammography. Her mother, Franziska, was a musician. Coming from a family marked by a history of mental illness and suicide, she took her own life when Charlotte was nine years old. To protect the child, the true cause of her mother’s death was kept from her, and Charlotte was taken on a journey as a distraction.
From an early age, Charlotte Salomon developed a deep sensitivity to art, including music, literature, drawing, cinema and photography. Four years later, when her father married the celebrated opera singer Paula Lindberg, Charlotte was introduced to a highly sophisticated cultural world, particularly that of music. Encouraged by the singing teacher Alfred Wolfsohn, she also became aware of her own talent as a painter.
At the time, she was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts despite the restrictions imposed by anti-Jewish measures. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht in November 1938, however, Charlotte Salomon was forced to join her maternal grandparents in the south of France. Unable to bear the prospect of the imminent German occupation, her grandmother took her own life in 1940. Charlotte then learned the truth about her mother’s suicide when she had been a child and found herself facing an existential dilemma: whether to succumb in turn to depression and suicide, or to be reborn through painting.
Life? or Theatre? emerged from Charlotte Salomon’s brush in the form of a Singspiel, a kind of “operetta” combining more than 1,200 paintings and drawings with text and music. It is an incandescent work that can be viewed, read and listened to, crystallising both her talent and her unique artistic personality. Through it, Charlotte Salomon embarked on an extraordinarily profound and ultimately life-affirming process of introspection.
She entrusted her work to Dr Moridis just days before being deported with her husband, Alexander Nagler. She was 26 years old and five months pregnant.
Life? or Theatre? is preserved at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The personality and talent of its creator have inspired filmmakers such as Frans Weisz; documentary filmmakers including Delphine and Muriel Coulin with Charlotte Salomon, la jeune fille et la vie (2025); animated films such as Charlotte by Tahir Rana and Eric Warin (2022); short films such as Yael Lotem’s Death and the Maiden (DocAviv, 2014); writers including David Foenkinos, whose novel Charlotte won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2014; and museum curators in France and around the world, with exhibitions at the MAHJ, the museum in Nice, the Bobigny Memorial and other institutions.
Hélène Berr (Paris 1921 – Bergen-Belsen 1944)
Hélène Berr was a 21-year-old woman born into an upper-middle-class French Jewish family whose values she fully shared: secular, republican, patriotic and philanthropic, with a heartfelt, sincere yet discreet attachment to Judaism.
A graduate in English Language and Literature from the Sorbonne, she was also a musician. During both the happiest and darkest moments of her short life, her violin became an expression of her soul. Hélène Berr had submitted a doctoral research proposal on the English poet John Keats when anti-Jewish laws definitively barred her from pursuing her studies at university.
The range of her reading during the years covered by her diary alone, from 1942 to 1944, is remarkable in both its diversity and scope: classics and contemporary works, novelists and poets, French and foreign authors, no fewer than forty titles. Recognised from an early age for her gift for writing, her talent was fully confirmed by her outstanding academic achievements, her correspondence with her friend Odile Neuburger, recently published, and, above all, her diary.
A woman of immense and refined culture, with a romantic and graceful temperament, Hélène Berr was also a model of moral integrity and courage. Her diary itself constitutes an act of resistance, a testimony driven by an absolute sense of urgency in the face of the Nazi policy of extermination of the Jews of Europe: the world must know.
Her convictions were immediately translated into action. Hélène Berr became involved with L’Entraide Temporaire and the UGIF (Union Générale Israélite de France), and took responsibility for activities for children at the Neuilly orphanage. She worked tirelessly to help the most vulnerable.
At a time when escape or going into hiding was still possible, Hélène Berr and her parents chose to remain in Paris and confront this suffering in an attempt to alleviate it. All three were deported and murdered. Her two elder sisters, Yvonne and Denise, and her younger brother Jacques survived.
Hélène Berr was 24 years old. At her request, her diary was given to her fiancé, Jean Morawiecki, after the war. Published in 2008 thanks to her niece Mariette Job, with a foreword by Patrick Modiano, it is now available in 27 countries and has inspired numerous cultural initiatives: musical readings; theatre productions, including Pour l’éternité, Hélène Berr et Odile Neuburger by Virginie Bienaimé (Festival Off d’Avignon, 2026); teaching projects in primary and secondary schools; exhibitions at the Mémorial de la Shoah; conferences in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris; the documentary Hélène Berr, une jeune fille dans Paris occupé by Jérôme Prieur (2013); an opera by Bernard Foccroulle; and publications including Mariette Job’s Dans les pas d’Hélène Berr and Se souvenir d’Hélène Berr, edited by Mariette Job and Karine Baranès-Bénichou (Fayard, 2021).
