In a remarkably short period of time, from March 1941 until her death in 1943 she writes in her extensive diaries about this transformation. Towards the end of her short life she chooses to help Jewish people in transit at the Westerbork Camp on their way to the concentration camps, rather than escape, as was offered to her.
She finally becomes an internee herself, along with most of her family and she continued to serve selflessly until her own death. She writes "Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learnt to love Westerbork". No where does she deny the horrors of the camps but rather shows a remarkable love for the “indestructible beauty of the world.”
As her own death approaches she seems to grow in love, and her life becomes more meaningful and expansive. “By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.”
There is so much to learn from her short life and its 'downward' trajectory.