Mutual Witnessing Between a Writer and Her Readers in Etty Hillesum's Diaries, 1941-1943

Etty (Esther) Hillesum was a young Jewish Dutch woman who kept a diary throughout the entire period of the Holocaust, until she met her own death in Auschwitz. The diary, written in the hellish environment of the Nazi occupation of Holland, provides us with an opportunity to explore the transformational power manifested in the mutual witnessing that takes place between the writer and the reader. The author reviews three aspects of the writer's testimony, each one of which embodies a unique reparative function: testifying about the events, testifying as evidence, and testifying to the reader.