High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Esther "Etty" Hillesum (15 January 1914 in Middelburg, Netherlands – 30 November 1943 in Auschwitz, Poland) was a young Jewish woman whose letters and diaries, kept between 1941 and 1943 describe life in Amsterdam during the German occupation. They were published posthumously in 1981, before being translated into English in 1983.