On this day in ...... 1943 (65 years ago today), Etty Hillesum perished at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Given the name Esther when born 29 years earlier in Middleburg, the Netherlands, Hillesum (right) earned a law degree at the University of Amsterdam and then began studying Slavic languages. In 1941 she began to keep a diary of life in Nazi-occuped Netherlands; a year later, expecting to be sent to Camp Westerbork, she asked to be sent there to do social work as a representative of the Jewish Council. She and her family were ordered transferred to Auschwitz in 
September 1943.
September 1943.... 1962, the U.N. General Assembly unanimously elected Burmese diplomat U Thant (left) to become the 3d Secretary-General of the United Nations. He had been acting in that position since his predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in a plane crash in September 1961, and would go on to serve until December 1971.
