The Girl Who Learned How to Kneel: The story of Etty Hillesum

In one of his last public audiences as Pope, on Ash Wednesday of 2013, Benedict XVI spoke of the desert of life and of the many temptations which assail most individuals at one time or another along the way as well as the means some have taken to overcome them. In the course of his discourse he said, "I think of the figure of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch woman of Jewish origin who died in Auschwitz. Initially far from God, she found Him looking deep inside herself and wrote: 'There is a well very deep inside of me. And God is in the well. Sometimes I can reach Him; more often He is covered by stone and sand: then God is buried. We must dig Him up again.' In her scattered and restless life, she finds God in the middle of the great tragedy of the twentieth century, the Shoah. This young fragile and dissatisfied woman, transfigured by faith, becomes a woman full of love and inner peace, able to say: 'I live in constant intimacy with God'." This book recounts the moving story of the conversion, faith, and ultimate martyrdom of Etty Hillesum.

About the Author: Sister Patricia McCarthy, CND, is the author of three other titles, all published by Liturgical Press: Of Passion and Folly: A Scriptural Foundation for Peace; The Scent of Jasmine: Reflections on Peace for Everyday Life; andThe Word of God - The Word of Peace. She currently serves her community as Provincial Superior of the Blessed Sacrament Province of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Wilton, Connecticut.