Letters from Westerbork - Hardcover

Hillesum, Etty (1914-1943)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224024531 ISBN 13: 9780224024532

Publisher: London : Cape, 1987

Synopsis

In het holst van de nacht formuleerde Etty Hillesum haar gedachten en gevoelens op een zo unieke en intense wijze dat dit niemand onberoerd kan laten.Vanuit Amsterdam stuurt zij brieven naar een vriend in het doorgangskamp Westerbork. Als zij in juli 1942 zelf in het kamp terechtkomt, schrijft zij regelmatig aan haar vrienden in Amsterdam.Het zijn zeldzame beschrijvingen van de verschrikking en terreur, van het dagelijkse leven en van de innerlijke moed die zij bij zichzelf en anderen ontdekt.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English, Dutch (translation)

From Publishers Weekly

After the publication of Hillesum's diaries, An Interrupted Life (in 1981, almost 40 years after her death in 1943 at the age of 29), a number of letters written to friends during her last year came to light. This life-affirming correspondence concerns her internment at Westerbork, a transit camp that the Hillesum family and more than 100,000 other Dutch Jews passed through en route to Auschwitz. Hillesum keenly details the diversity of the inmates, the camp's squalor, the hellish transports and the incomprehensibility of their situation: "The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down for a chat, the sun is shining on my face, and right before our eyes, mass murder." Readers won't fail to marvel at her fortitude, her refusal to bow to hatred or despair and her capacity for selfless humaneness: "Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness," and, written on a postcard she threw from the train that took her to Auschwitz, "We left the camp singing." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: London : Cape
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224024531
• ISBN 13: 9780224024532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176