Odd Nansen, visiting a sick Norwegian friend in Revier [infirmary] III, Sachsenhausen, happened upon a young Jewish boy recovering from an operation. Nansen’s description of the meeting was terse, only one paragraph long: He comes from Auschwitz. His legs were frostbitten and several toes have been amputated. At Auschwitz he was …
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is appropriate for each of us to remember the millions of innocent men, women and children slaughtered in pursuit of a crackpot racial idea. The Nazi’s murderous scheme did not originate full blown from Adolf Hitler’s fevered imagination. The history of anti-Semitism is long and tortuous, nor was …
Yesterday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I had the pleasure of speaking about Odd Nansen and his secret World War II diary to a crowd of 300 at the Life Long Learning program at Sun City Carolina Lakes .
I pointed out that it was quite fitting that I should be speaking about Nansen on a day dedicated to MLK, Jr. Not only were their ideals and their humanity very similar, but the Nobel Peace Prize figured prominently in each of their lives.
Seventy-four years ago tonight Odd Nansen, on holiday with his wife and three children in the mountains outside Lillehammer, was visited by three Nazis. He was not arrested, merely asked to come to Oslo to answer some questions. Nansen was in fact never charged with any crime, but was held as a hostage for the …
The cover of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps has been finalized. The sketch is by Nansen, depicting a prisoner transport.
Remembering Odd Nansen on his 114th birthday (December 6, 1901). Nansen can be described in many ways—man of character, humanitarian, architect, writer. In my Introduction to the forthcoming edition of “From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps” I use the words Primo Levi wrote to describe his friend Alberto …
(Click on any image to start slideshow. Photos courtesy of Anne Ellingsen.)
On October 1, 2015, I had the pleasure of participating in a seminar on the life of Odd Nansen, organized in conjunction with the recent publication of the first biography of Nansen, Odd Nansen: Arvtageren [Odd Nansen: The Inheritor] by Anne Ellingsen.
I had known that the venue was to be the Norwegian Nobel Institute in downtown Oslo. What I had failed to even imagine was that we would be speaking in the same room, and from the same podium, that Odd Nansen’s father Fridtjof used when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922. Talk about inspiration!
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
—-Joseph Stalin
Welcome to my first blog!
Several years ago I set out to republish Odd Nansen’s World War II concentration camp diary, From Day to Day. The effort, though not without its share of ups and downs, has been one of the most interesting and satisfying endeavors I have ever embarked on.
Nansen’s diary is many things:
After five years of intensive study in only one small aspect of the concentration camp experience, I’m still not sure I comprehend either the Holocaust in particular, or the Nazi’s treatment of countless camp prisoners in general; perhaps, as some say, it is simply incomprehensible.
“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.
