Etty Hillesum and Anne Frank

In this lesson from The Etty Project, learners compare the lives and writing of two female diarists during WWII: Anne Frank and the lesser-known Etty Hillesum, a Dutch author of confessional letters and diaries which describe both her religious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam during the German occupation. In 1943, she was deported and murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Through comparison, learners get to know the realities of the Holocaust through these personal stories, and explore the power writing can have in forming one's experience.