Uncolonized

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21 (NRSV) 

Etty Hillesum was a young Dutch Jewish woman living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. 

The Nazis determined every outward aspect of her life including whether she would live. They could not determine the quality of her inner being. 

Her diaries show a woman guarding that last free region available. Many around her hated their persecutors for good reason. Hillesum feared hatred’s power to make the world less habitable, beginning with the person who hosted it. 

“Every atom of hate we add to this world makes it more inhospitable,” she wrote. Under intense persecution, the temptation to add hate is very seductive. “The Germans,” “the enemy,” “the people who did this.” Hillesum resisted those reductions. 

She saw her task as reclaiming “large areas of peace in ourselves” and keeping beauty in view amid horror. She wrote of a sky full of birds, purple lupins standing regally, two little old women chatting, the sun shining on her face, “and right before our eyes, mass murder.” Later her diaries were published as An Interrupted Life. 

Friends offered to hide her, yet she chose to share the fate of her people. In September 1943, the Nazis deported her to Auschwitz. From the train leaving Westerbork transit camp, she tossed out a postcard to a friend: “We left the camp singing.” Two months later, they murdered her at Auschwitz at age twenty-nine. 

Hillesum’s writings pose challenging questions for us today. Which guests will I welcome into my heart? How will I stay uncolonized by hatred even when it threatens my very existence? Which threat looms larger, the hostility around me or the bitterness I allow within? 

Prayer
God of peace, help me guard the territory of my heart.

About the Author
Matt Laney is Co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA. If you enjoy Matt’s writing, check out his new book, The Second Arrow from MacMillan.