Etty, Cissy and Kitty!

Well, it was quite rhyming, so! But wait…! there’s quite a reason for that too!

Guess what! Initially, Frank wanted her diary to be an entirely private work. She looked upon her diary as a friend, and hence she named it Kitty after a character in a popular series of children’s books by the Dutch author Cissy van Marxveldt.

Etty Hillesum, is often called the “adult counterpart” to Anne Frank.

Born fifteen years before Anne, Hillesum also lived in Amsterdam during the Holocaust, keeping a journal and writing letters that would be published posthumously in 1981 as An Interrupted Life & Letters from Westerbork.

But, sadly, very few have read Etty’s work or even know her, beyond Holocaust scholars and some literary connoisseurs!

Hence, she’s a lovely read for a full-time research!

Well, Hillesum uses her Journal not only to discuss her daily life in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, but also to explore religion and spirituality, ideal love versus sexual attraction, mental and physical illness, even existence itself!

The soul has a different age from that recorded in the register of births and deaths. At your birth, the soul already has an age that never changes, she wrote in 1942.

Another reason for Etty Hillesum's obscurity is that she lived much of her life outside of the mainstream!

Etty Hillesum remains largely uncelebrated because her journal is a weighty, serious work, with deep philosophical and psychological penetration on every page, unlike Anne’s, which is childishly simple and hence endearing to all and sundry!

To sum it up, Etty is as phenomenal as Kitty, and how!

Thanks to lovable inputs from Elias Keller