Packing sandals

July 1942: I catch myself making all sorts of minor but telling adjustments in anticipation of life in a labour camp. Last night when I was walking along the quay beside him in a pair of comfortable sandals, I suddenly thought, ‘I shall take these sandals along as well, I can wear them instead of the heavier shoes from time to time.’ What goes on in my head at moments like that?… Later, when I have survived it all, I shall write stories about these times… I shall wield this slender fountain pen as if it were a hammer, and my words will have to be so many hammer strokes with which to beat out the story of our fate and of a piece of history as it is and never was before… a few people must survive, if only to be the chroniclers of this age. I would very much like to become one of their number.

—Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43, (London: Persephone Books Ltd, 1999), inside jacket.