from my journal for October 24 2021<\/p>\n
Checking email, I saw something about how corporate interests are acting against the freedom of the internet.\u00a0 <\/span>I could feel the \u201cbad guys\u201d closing in, and it reminded me of Etty Hillesum as yet another Nazi restriction of Jews closes them in more.\u00a0 <\/span>So I went & got her book<\/a> out & started reading again.\u00a0 <\/span>A good companion for these times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Etty Hillesum<\/a> is a Dutch Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1943. \u00a0She started a journal in February 1941, when she began working with Julius Spier. \u00a0He was a fascinating man, a teacher and therapist who worked with reading the palm of the hand. \u00a0Working with him made possible a huge transformation of her life.<\/p>\n
from my journal for Sunday, December 19<\/p>\n
Just spent the 10:00-11:00 time, when I should have been at Quaker Meeting, reading Etty Hillesum\u2019s letters.\u00a0 <\/span>At first most are to friends in Westerbork from Etty in Amsterdam.\u00a0 <\/span>She had already spent several summer months in Westerbork, gone back to Amsterdam on leave.\u00a0 <\/span>While she was in Amsterdam, Spier died, and her health collapsed.\u00a0 <\/span>She kept trying to get back to Westerbork, managed in November \u2014 when she wrote a long letter describing what things were like in Westerbork.\u00a0 <\/span>That letter was published.\u00a0 <\/span>Then suddenly, in December, she\u2019s back in Amsterdam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Westerbork was a transit camp. \u00a0Jews were rounded up and kept there until they were sent on transport to Auschwitz. At first it was supposed that they were going to a work camp. but gradually it became apparent, when old people and sick people were sent, that it was a death camp.<\/p>\n
I think because I woke this morning in such a cold empty space, I feel more at home in Westerbork than anywhere else.\u00a0 <\/span>The cold, the snow, and the blue sky and bright sun remind me of that first winter in Portland<\/a>, when I had returned after a breakdown<\/a> in California.\u00a0 <\/span>I wonder if I\u2019m being triggered back into that time by the weather and the social distancing<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>I have met only one person, while walking Mocha, since I got up, otherwise I\u2019ve been alone here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from my journal for October 24 2021 Checking email, I saw something about how corporate interests are acting against the freedom of the internet.\u00a0 I could feel the \u201cbad guys\u201d closing in, and it reminded me of Etty Hillesum as … Continue reading