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Hagai Levi said he wants Etty Hillesum’s diaries used as school reading, and he said Etty will stream on Arte from 21 May 2026. The Israeli filmmaker tied the release to a broader aim: giving younger readers a direct way into Hillesum’s writing and the period that shaped it.
Levi said, “Ich denke, sie sprechen junge Menschen wirklich an, sie können sich in Etty hineinversetzen - und verstehen, was damals passiert ist,” and called the diaries “ein großartiger Zugang zu jener Zeit.” He also said young people could recognize “dass so etwas wieder passieren könnte.”
Hagai Levi on Etty Hillesum
Levi said the series is not about the Holocaust, but about how one can live life in difficult times. “Es geht um die Frage, wie man sein Leben in schwierigen Zeiten führen kann,” he said, adding that he wanted to capture universal ideas rather than only historical detail.
He also said, “Wenn wir in dieser Hinsicht etwas von Etty lernen können, dann ist es der Versuch, sich weniger von außen beeinflussen zu lassen und sich stärker auf sich selbst zu besinnen.” In the same remarks, he said modern people, whether young or adult, rely completely on outside feedback.
Arte and 21 May 2026
Etty will be available on Arte from 21 May 2026. Levi linked Hillesum’s story to the situation in Israel and to fascist tendencies, saying, “Die Gefahr durch rechtsextreme Bewegungen ist omnipräsent.”
Hillesum’s diaries sit at the center of that release. Born in 1914 in Middelburg in the Netherlands, she grew up in a Jewish family, met psychoanalyst Julius Spier in spring 1941, and later entered Westerbork’s “Soziale Versorgung der Aussiedler” in 1942.
Westerbork and Auschwitz
By 1943, Hillesum had to remain in Westerbork permanently. She was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. Those dates give Levi’s school-reading argument its sharpest edge: he is asking viewers to approach the diaries as a route into history, not as a closed memorial text.
For readers, the practical takeaway is simple. The series arrives on Arte on 21 May 2026, and Levi is positioning Hillesum’s diaries as material that can be read by students and discussed around questions of resilience, self-reliance, and political danger.
