Great St Mary's Church: a moving setting for the performanceFlickr: Zruda

This one-off performance of Etty Hillesum’s letters and diaries was unusual. It was performed in the Great St Mary’s Church, an interesting choice given the nature of the play: a dramatization of the writings of a young woman living in Holland during the Holocaust. Susan Stein, who recited extracts of the diaries in an incredible 50-minute monologue, said that she had done the performance in more churches than she had synagogues – although never a church as grand as St Mary’s. The reading of the diaries in such a majestic church setting had great significance in light of the history of the trauma and as a symbol of the restoration in Judeo-Christian relations. "Etty would have been happy to be here," Stein said. The play has been performed in a several other unusual and exciting locations, from high security prisons, to schools, to theatres the world over. This year it will be performed for the first time in a Native American reservation. Etty’s words continue to open a fascinating dialogue to a range of diverse and unique audiences.

The mission of the play is to use the diaries to promote social justice and challenge prejudice by examining the consequences of genocide.  Afterwards there was a panel discussion with Rowan Williams, playwright Mike Levy and Edward Kessler, founder of the Woolf Insitute. Williams pointed out that "Etty hasn’t always been embraced by the Jewish community." While by Nazi standards she was Jewish, whether she actually considered herself to be Jewish is, as with so many victims of the Holocaust, another question entirely. She was not brought up in a Jewish society, and lived in stark contrast to the traditional ‘Jewish’ way of life. That said, one of the most striking aspects of the diaries was Etty’s devotion to the Jewish people, and her deep-felt need to assist them."

Something that is rarely discussed is the difficult subject of the Jewish Councils that were present in all the occupied countries of Nazi Europe. Etty was involved in these councils, and the turmoil and inner contradictions she felt as a result was one of the more striking aspects of the diary. A relationship develops in her narrative in which she is able to talk to God without embarrassment. The continual presence of God amidst all the darkness is an incredibly powerful and thought-provoking aspect of the diaries.

Often when one attends an exhibit of any kind about the Holocaust, we steel ourselves for frank and explicit descriptions of the horrors. Yet the horrors Etty writes of are not coloured in the way have come to expect: a guard picking flowers, the endless trundle of the trains, and the guilt that accompanies being one of the lucky few not to be borne away. Her unusual imagery is powerful; to look at the Holocaust from new angles is ever important as time goes on and fewer survivors live amongst us. There is a tendency to stick with a singular account of the genocide, and in doing so we perhaps become numbed by it. Etty’s diaries allow us to look at history from a different viewpoint.

Etty refuses, in her writing, to be defined by her circumstance. She refuses to be a victim. In this performance of her diaries, the victims of the holocaust are not defined by their deaths, but rather by their lives. It was a beautiful portrayal of one voice in six million, relating a version of a truth rarely spoken of.