ABSTRACT
During the occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War, a Jewish girl in her teens and a young Jewish woman in her twenties recorded their experiences and used the act of writing to discover themselves and search for spiritual wellbeing. By the end of the Second World War, more than six million Jews had been murdered by the German Nazi regime, but as early as 1942, both diarists, Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, were well aware of the large-scale threat to Jews. Writing was extremely important to them as it offered an unconfined 'space' in which to express their ideas. This chapter considers the writings as a response to the double confinement as Jews whose freedoms were being eroded by increasingly restrictive measures and who had to learn to live with the knowledge of what was already happening to Jews in Germany and as females in a male-dominated society.
