Dateline: January 6, 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was about to give his State of the Union Address to Congress. It was his 9th State of the Union Address, the first since his unprecedented election to a third term. The world was a mess. German forces had subjugated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and (once …
Once again it is time to give a shout-out to everyone who helped this year to support my mission: spreading awareness of Odd Nansen and his inspiring diary. Whether by responding to my blogs, providing referrals, writing reviews, or simply providing encouragement, as Nansen once said, “It would take too long to mention all who …
Who penned these lines: “Mankind was my business, the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the ocean of my business.” and “The worst crime you can commit against yourself and society, is to forget what happened and …
Alfred Nobel One hundred and twenty-nine years ago today Alfred Nobel died. A brilliant chemist, he followed in the steps of his father, who had run a factory in St. Petersburg building explosive mines. After the end of the Crimean War (1856) young Alfred returned to his native Sweden and opened his own laboratory, experimenting …
“The day before yesterday eight thousand fresh prisoners arrived in camp. On that account we’ve had to move still closer together. It’s impossible for more than half, at the highest estimate, to sit down to meals, and I daren’t even think how much air we have at our disposal per head. I’ll work it out …
On this date in 1942, Chief of the OKW [High Command of the German Armed Forces] General Wilhelm Keitel, at Hitler’s insistence, issues the top-secret Commando Order. In essence, the Order directed that any enemy soldier involved in sabotage or commando-type activities was to be summarily executed without trial—even if the soldier was in proper …
“Warsaw will be falling this week, one should imagine, and then it isn’t far to the German frontier!” —–Odd Nansen’s diary, Sunday, July 30, 1944 Would that it were so. Warsaw was not liberated in the week following Nansen’s post. In fact, it was not liberated, by elements of the Red Army and First Polish …
—Thomas Jefferson Happy National Read a Book Day! There was no National Read a Book Day in Jefferson’s time (the event seems to have been started sometime in the early 2000s in America—probably by a librarian) but had there been one in 1776, he would undoubtedly have endorsed it. Jefferson was both an inveterate reader …
Eighty-six years ago today, the lights were switched on for the first time in Great Britain’s so-called Cabinet War Rooms, now more familiarly referred to as Churchill’s War Rooms. They would not be switched off for another six years. In the lead-up to World War II, it became increasingly apparent to the British Government that, …
Welcome to my new and improved website! After almost ten years in the business the underlying software and systems of my site were getting increasingly creaky and difficult to patch—the software industries’ version of planned obsolescence (e.g. iPhones). This overhaul offered a chance to revisit the site and give it a new and improved look …
“I want to thank Tim Boyce for this . . . . It would be lost to history if people like Tim Boyce did not devote the effort and time and expense–a good part of his life–to preserve the Odd Nansen story. It is a moving and gripping story. . . .”
–U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal
Hailed by The New Yorker as “among the most compelling documents to come out of the war,” From Day to Day is a World War II concentration camp diary—one of only a handful ever translated into English—secretly written by Odd Nansen, a Norwegian political prisoner. Arrested in January 1942, Nansen, son of polar explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen (Nobel Peace Prize 1922) was held captive for the duration of the war in various Nazi camps in Norway and Germany.
Nansen’s diary entries detail his palpable longing for his wife and family, his constantly frustrated hopes for release, the quiet strength and sometimes ugly prejudices of his fellow prisoners, and his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for the Jews. The diary brilliantly illuminates Nansen’s daily struggle, not only to survive, but to preserve his sanity and maintain his humanity in a world engulfed by fear and hate.
First published in English in 1949, From Day to Day had been out of print for almost seventy years. The new edition contains entries and sketches never previously available in English. It also features a new introduction and extensive annotations by Timothy Boyce and a preface by Thomas Buergenthal, whose life (as a ten year-old) Nansen saved while in Sachsenhausen, later recounted in his own memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy.
