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On 9 March 1941 a 27-year-old Jewish woman in Amsterdam opened an exercise book and began a diary. Etty Hillesum kept writing until late 1942, then wrote letters from Westerbork, the transit camp in the north-east of the Netherlands. On 7 September 1943 she was deported to Auschwitz with her parents and her brother Mischa, and on the way she threw a postcard from the train that Dutch farmers found and posted. She died at Auschwitz on 30 November 1943, aged 29. Two of her letters were printed by the resistance in 1943, but the diaries waited almost forty years for a publisher. Since 1981 they have appeared in abridged, complete and annotated editions in Dutch and English. This guide covers her 11 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 11 key books · 1943–2014 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Etty Hillesum published no book in her lifetime. Her writing appeared after her death: the abridged diary Het verstoorde leven (1981), in English An Interrupted Life (1983); the letters Het denkende hart van de barak (1982), in English Letters from Westerbork (1986); and the complete edition De nagelaten geschriften (1986), in English Etty: The Letters and Diaries (2002). Start with An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (1996), which puts the diary and the letters in one volume, then move to the complete text.
Where to Start with Etty Hillesum
If you want diary and letters in one volume
→ An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (1996) — the 1996 English edition most readers find first.
If you want the book that made her known
→ Het verstoorde leven (1981) — the 1981 Dutch selection, Het verstoorde leven.
If you want every surviving word
→ Etty (2002) — the complete English edition, with notes.
If you want only the camp
→ Letters from Westerbork (1986) — her letters from Westerbork, 1942–1943.
11 Etty Hillesum Books, in Order
Drie brieven van den kunstschilder Johannes Baptiste van der Pluym
Her two long letters describing conditions in Westerbork, printed clandestinely in the autumn of 1943 by the resistance in Haarlem, edited by David Koning and Petra Eldering. The cover carried the title of an unrelated 1917 book about a painter, as camouflage.
Het verstoorde leven
The book that made her known. Before leaving for Westerbork she gave her notebooks to her friend Maria Tuinzing, asking that they go to the writer Klaas Smelik. Publishers turned them down for decades until, in 1979, Smelik’s son approached J. G. Gaarlandt, who edited this selection for De Haan in Haarlem. It follows her therapy and love affair with the psychochirologist Julius Spier, her reading of Rilke, Augustine and the Bible, and her growing calm as the deportations begin.
Het denkende hart van de barak
Her letters, edited by Gaarlandt and published by De Haan a year after the diary. Most were written from Westerbork, where she worked from 1942 for the Jewish Council’s department for social welfare for people in transit. The title, “the thinking heart of the barracks”, is her own phrase.
An Interrupted Life
The first English edition of Het verstoorde leven, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans with an introduction by Gaarlandt. It appeared in 1983 in New York (Pantheon) as An Interrupted Life and in London (Jonathan Cape) as Etty: A Diary 1941–1943. The diary ends with the line “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
In duizend zoete armen
A third Dutch volume, edited by Gaarlandt for De Haan, with diary passages left out of Het verstoorde leven. Its material was absorbed into the complete edition two years later.
Letters from Westerbork
Pomerans’s English translation of the letters, published by Pantheon in New York in 1986 and by Jonathan Cape in London in 1987. They describe the barracks, the weekly transport trains to the east and the people she cared for.
Etty
The first complete edition of everything she left: all surviving diary notebooks and letters, unabridged and annotated, edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik with Gideon Lodders and Rob Tempelaars for Balans in Amsterdam. It went through several revised editions; the fifth appeared in 2008.
An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork
The abridged diary and the Westerbork letters in a single volume, in Pomerans’s translation, published by Henry Holt in New York with a foreword by Eva Hoffman. Persephone Books in London issued its own edition with Hoffman’s foreword in 1999.
Etty
The complete English edition, based on Smelik’s Dutch text and translated by Pomerans, published by Novalis in Ottawa and Eerdmans in Grand Rapids. It restores everything the 1981 selection left out, with notes on the people she mentions.
Het werk
A new edition of the complete Dutch text under a new title, again edited by Smelik, Lodders and Tempelaars and published by Balans in Amsterdam.
Etty Hillesum: The Complete Works 1941–1943
A two-volume bilingual edition, with the Dutch original and English translation side by side, annotated and unabridged. It was edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik and Meins G. S. Coetsier for the Etty Hillesum Research Centre at Ghent University and published by Shaker Verlag in Maastricht.
In What Order to Read Etty Hillesum
There is only one text: the diary from March 1941 to late 1942 and the letters up to September 1943. The editions differ in how much of it they include. The 1981 selection and its English translations are shorter and easier to start with; the complete editions add the passages Gaarlandt left out, including more of her relationship with Spier and the everyday details of her life in Amsterdam.
Read the diary first and the letters second, because the letters only make full sense once you have followed her to the point of leaving for Westerbork. If the abridged edition holds you, move to the complete edition rather than In duizend zoete armen, whose passages it includes.
A reading path
1. An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (1996)
2. Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum (2002)
3. Etty Hillesum: The Complete Works 1941–1943 (2014)
Other Editions of Etty Hillesum
Beyond the 11 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other editions and selections
3
3 books · 1962–2009
- 1962Twee brieven uit Westerborkthe two Westerbork letters, edited by David Koning (Bert Bakker / Daamen)
- 1999An Interrupted LifePersephone Books, London, with a foreword by Eva Hoffman
- 2009Etty Hillesum: Essential Writingsa selection edited by Annemarie S. Kidder (Orbis Books)
The years · 1914–2025
Quick facts about Etty Hillesum
- Known for
- A young Jewish woman in occupied Amsterdam whose diary and letters, published almost forty years after she was killed at Auschwitz, record an inner life that grew calmer and more generous as the persecution closed in.
- 1914
- Born in Middelburg
- 1943
- Deported from Westerbork; dies at Auschwitz
- 1986
- Complete Dutch edition
- 2025
- Series Etty premieres in Venice
- Born
- 15 January 1914, Middelburg, the Netherlands; the eldest of three children of Levie Hillesum and Riva Bernstein
- Studied
- Law and Slavic languages in Amsterdam, from 1932
- Diary
- Begun on 9 March 1941, after she started seeing the psychochirologist Julius Spier
- Worked
- For the Jewish Council from July 1942, then in Westerbork transit camp
- Died
- 30 November 1943, Auschwitz, aged 29
- Legacy
- Etty Hillesum Research Centre at Ghent University (opened 2006); the Etty Hillesum Centre in Deventer
The red mark is 1981: Het verstoorde leven, the first edition of her diary, published 38 years after her death.
How Etty Hillesum Writes: A Diary as an Inner Workshop
The diary began as part of her therapy with Julius Spier, and it reads like a working notebook: she records moods, quarrels with herself, notes from Rilke, Augustine and the Bible, and then tests what she has read against her own day. Much of it is addressed inward, and later directly to God, in the form of short prayers.
The outside world arrives in concrete detail: the new rules for Jews in Amsterdam, friends being arrested, the move to Westerbork. What makes the writing unusual is that she keeps both in view at once. In the diary she writes that she has already died a thousand deaths in a thousand concentration camps, and yet finds life beautiful and meaningful.
The Westerbork letters are different in kind: written for friends in Amsterdam, they describe the camp as a reporter would, the barracks, the transport nights, the faces of the people leaving. Two of them were printed by the resistance in 1943 precisely because they worked as testimony.
Frequently asked questions about Etty Hillesum’s books
How many books has Etty Hillesum written?
None in her lifetime. Everything published comes from the diary she kept from 1941 to 1942 and the letters she wrote until 1943. This page lists 11 key editions, from the underground edition of her Westerbork letters (1943) to The Complete Works (2014), and three further editions and selections.
What are Etty Hillesum’s books in order?
The underground Westerbork letters (1943), Het verstoorde leven (1981), Het denkende hart van de barak (1982), An Interrupted Life (1983), In duizend zoete armen (1984), Letters from Westerbork (1986), De nagelaten geschriften (1986), An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (1996), Etty: The Letters and Diaries (2002), Het werk (2012) and The Complete Works 1941–1943 (2014).
Where should I start with Etty Hillesum?
With An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork (1996), which puts the abridged diary and the letters in one volume. If it holds you, move on to the complete edition, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum (2002).
What is Etty Hillesum’s most famous book?
Her diary, first published in Dutch as Het verstoorde leven (1981) and in English as An Interrupted Life (1983).
What is the difference between An Interrupted Life and the complete edition?
An Interrupted Life is a selection from the diary, edited by J. G. Gaarlandt in 1981. The complete edition, edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik (Dutch 1986, English 2002), includes all surviving notebooks and letters, unabridged and annotated.
Who was Julius Spier?
A psychochirologist, a therapist who read hands, whom she began seeing in early 1941. She became his patient, secretary, friend and lover. He introduced her to the Bible and Augustine, and she probably began her diary at his suggestion.
How did Etty Hillesum die?
She was deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 7 September 1943 with her parents and her brother Mischa. The Red Cross gives her date of death as 30 November 1943. Her parents died in transit or on arrival, and both her brothers also died in the war.
Why did Etty Hillesum not go into hiding?
She had chances to hide but refused, saying she wanted to share the fate of the people being deported. The choice was admired by many and criticised by some, including friends who had urged her to hide.
Is there a film or series about Etty Hillesum?
Yes. Etty, a six-episode series by the Israeli creator Hagai Levi based on her life and writing, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2025.
Was Etty Hillesum friends with Anne Frank?
There is no evidence they met. Both were Jewish diarists in Amsterdam and both passed through Westerbork, but at different times: Hillesum was deported in September 1943, Anne Frank in September 1944.
Footnotes
- Etty Hillesum — Wikipedia
- Etty Hillesum Bibliography, Part I — Cahiers Etty Hillesum
- Reading Etty Hillesum in Context: Introduction — Cambridge Core / Amsterdam University Press
- An Interrupted Life by Etty Hillesum — EBSCO Research Starters
- Etty Hillesum and her time in Westerbork camp — Europe Remembers
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.”
— Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life (1983), the last line of the diary, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans
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