The Poetry, Diaries and Novels section. Family films and literature offers an annual meeting with a writer who explores the intertwining of personal stories and collective history. This year’s guest is Judith Koelemeijer, a Dutch journalist and writer.
On March 9, 1941, on the advice of her therapist Julius Spier, Esther Hillesum began to entrust the painful turmoil of her thoughts to a notebook. In 1943, Etty boarded a train bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau with her parents and brother Mischa, and all trace of her was lost. The striking diary of those two years, 1941-1942, seems to encompass her entire existence. There is no before and no after. Yet in 1941, Etty was twenty-seven years old. Who was she really? Or, rather, who was she before she met Spier? By tirelessly examining countless documents, testimonies, correspondence, family trees, and family albums, Judith Koelemeijer has managed to fill in the gaps surrounding the Diary and give it a background: shedding light on Etty’s family, her university studies in law and her passion for Russian literature, her vast network of friends, her many uninhibited romantic relationships, and her painful decision to work for the Jewish Council in the Westerbork camp.
With the support of the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Department of the Municipality of Bologna as part of the Bologna Reading Pact and the support of the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and ‘La Scoperta dell’Olanda’ (Discovering Holland).
In collaboration with Adelphi.