Letters from Westerbork

Etty Hillesum

1943

Finding something to say about Westerbork is also difficult because of its ambiguous character. On the one hand it is a stable community in the making, a forced one to be sure, yet with all the characteristics of a human society. And on the other hand, it is a camp for a people in transit, great waves of human beings constantly washed in from the…

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Creator Bio

Etty Hillesum

1914–1943

Esther “Etty” Hillesum was born in Middelburg, the Netherlands. At age eighteen, Hillesum enrolled in university in Amsterdam, earning her degree in law before moving on to study Russian. Her letters and diaries, which she began writing in 1941, detail life in Amsterdam and at the Westerbork transit camp during the German occupation. In 1943, Hillesum, her parents, and her brother were sent from Westerbork to Auschwitz and murdered.

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