Leading lights from cultural and political circles in the big cities have also been stranded on this barren stretch of heath five hundred by six hundred metres. With one mighty convulsion all their scenery has collapsed about them, and now they stand around a little hesitantly and awkwardly on this drafty, open stage called Westerbork. These figures wrenched from their context still carry with them the restless atmosphere of a society more complicated than the one we have here. They walk along the thin barbed-wire fence. Their silhouettes move, life-size and exposed, across the great stretch of sky. You cannot imagine it … Their armour of position, esteem, and property has collapsed, and now they stand in the last shreds of their humanity. They exist in an empty space, bounded by earth and sky, which they must fill with whatever they can find within them – there is nothing else.
– Etty Hillesum, Letters From Westerbork, p. 255
