File:1997 Brenner.jpg

{en} Rachel Feldhay Brenner. Writing as resistance: Four women confronting the Holocaust: Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Abstract

"In this account of the life, work, and ethics of four Jewish women intellectuals in the world of the Holocaust, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores the ways in which these women sought to maintain their faith in humanity while aware of intensifying destruction. She argues that through their written responses of autobiographical self-assertion Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum resisted the Nazi terror in ways that defy its horrifying dehumanization. Personal identity crises engendered the intellectual-spiritual acts of autobiographical self-searching for each of these women. About to become a nun in 1933, Edith Stein embarked on her autobiography as a daughter of a Jewish family. Fleeing France and deportation in 1942, Simone Weil examined her inner struggle with faith and the Church in her "Spiritual Autobiography." Hiding for more than two years in the attic, Anne Frank confided in her diary about her efforts to become a better person. Having volunteered as a social worker in Westerbork, Etty Hillesum searched her soul for love in the reality of terror. In each case, autobiographical writing becomes an act of defiance that asserts humanity in a dehumanized/dehumanizing world."--

Contents

Introduction: Meanings of Resistance -- The Dis/Continued Dialogue with the Enlightenment -- The Ongoing Edification of the Self -- The Transcending Consciousness of the Other -- Between Ecumenism and Anti-Judaism -- Stein and Weil: Diverging Responses to Jewish and Christian Traditions -- Stein and Weil: Between Self-Affirmation and Self-Reunification -- Frank and Hillesum: Identity and the Search for God -- Where Art and Self Meet -- Stein and Weil: Displaced Autobiographical Selves -- Frank and Hillesum: The Diarists as Growing Artists -- Gender Consciousness in the Rule of Terror -- Stein and Weil: Women's Nature and Destiny -- Toward Intellectual and Emotional Maturity.