Letters from Westerbork

"Etty Hillesum's diary, An Interrupted Life (published forty years after her death), gave back to the world an extraordinary figure—the adult counterpart to Anne Frank—a startingly modern young woman who lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation... Now Etty Hillesum's letters complete the portrait of this astonishing personality, as they reveal the final year of her life in the transit camp Westerbork, the last stop before Auschwitz. Etty vividly describes the crowded wooden barracks, the muddy heath, the labyrinths of barbed wire, and the field of wildflowers at the edge of the camp. She captures the human atmosphere of Westerbork, from the poignant reunions with friends and family to the wrenching departures on the weekly transport to a mysterious destination in Poland. Keenly aware of the horrors around her, Etty remains a celebrant of life whose intelligence, sympathy, and rare gallantry are in themselves forms of resistance. On September 7, 1943, she walked up the ramp where the train to Poland stood waiting. Later, farmers found a postcard she had thrown from the train. It read: 'We left the camp singing.' Etty Hillesum's letters from Westerbork are as important a discovery as her diary... Now published in their entirety, with rare photographs of Etty and her friends, these letters are a final chapter in the life of a woman so many have come to know and love." —Book jacket