Choice, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, gives From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps a “highly recommended” in its November issue, highlighting Nansen’s depiction “in well-chosen words and accurate drawings” of “the daily lives of persons who inflicted and those who endured insane levels of cruelty and …
Anyone familiar with Anne Frank’s story knows that the eight Jews hidden in the annex at Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam, were helped by various employees at Otto Frank’s firm, among them Miep Gies. Miep was hired in 1933 to run Otto Frank’s complaint department and over time handled an increasing number of tasks within the office. …
“The news is excellent. . . . There has been sabotage in Vemork. The heavy-water works are destroyed. Four Norwegian-speaking men in English uniforms got away.” So writes Odd Nansen in his diary entry of March 6, 1943, describing an event that occurred a week earlier: the daring raid on the Vemork hydroelectric plant …
Odd Nansen died forty-three years ago today. Having read his diary multiple times, and having frequently discussed Nansen with his eldest child, daughter Marit (Nansen) Greve, the best way I can sum up his character is to borrow the words Primo Levi used to describe his best friend in Auschwitz, Alberto Dalla Volta (Dalla Volta …
Today is Anne Frank’s birthday. Had she lived, she would be 87 years old. The exact date and cause of her death are unknown, although it is now believed that she succumbed in late February, 1945, probably to a disease such as typhus. Anne, her family, and the other inhabitants of the secret annex in …
A recent (five-star) Amazon review of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps notes: “wish [the book] wasn’t so expensive.” I agree. I worked extensively with Vanderbilt University Press to keep costs to a minimum. At the same time we were both committed to producing the highest quality product …
I had the privilege of being interviewed on Friday, April 22 by Jane Foy of WINA News Radio, part of the Charlottesville Radio Group, in Charlottesville, VA. It was particularly fitting that we spoke on April 22, as that date was the 71st anniversary of the liberation (by Russian and Polish forces) of Sachsenhausen Concentration …
Rochel Sylvetsky has reviewed From Day to Day for Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News: “The book is undeniably a masterpiece. . . . “ “It is written in real time, as diaries are by definition, and all the more shocking for that, because what could be a repetitious day by day account is a riveting, …
Amy Scheibe reviewed From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps for Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2016. “More than anything, though, it is his moral outrage at anyone who dares to turn an eye away from the suffering of others—especially when that eye is his own—that makes this a timely reissue. …
One of the advantages of annotating someone else’s work well after the fact is that I have the benefit of hindsight—lots of hindsight—something the writer (in my case, the diarist Odd Nansen), did not. Like an omniscient god, I know, seventy years after From Day to Day was first written, what happened to many of …
“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.
