From the November 2018 issue of Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/astonishing-holocaust-diary-hidden-world-70-years-resurfaced-america-180970534/?fbclid=IwAR0dSgjl9xk0oeJLVivob9K4hP1azB9iJeJ8psQg5ORxeoOwsvyR_ugWR94
On October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers killed 11 Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, including a 97 year-old woman, and wounded 6 others, in what the Anti-Defamation League calls the deadliest attack targeting Jews in U.S. history. On October 29, 1942, almost exactly 76 years earlier, a public meeting was …
Joachim Ronneberg, the last surviving member of Operation Gunnerside, the daring raid to destroy the heavy water facility at Vemork, Norway, died on Sunday, October 21. Ronneberg was 99. Obituaries from the New York Times and the BBC, respectively, are here and here. In 2016 I was asked by The Norwegian American to review The …
Today is Fridtjof Nansen’s 157th birthday. I recently revisited the incredible account of his quest for the North Pole, Farthest North, in anticipation of a lecture I gave on the same subject. The last time I had read it was back in 2010, soon after I first discovered Odd Nansen’s diary and decided to get …
Back in June I was honored to give a presentation to the Nordic Museum in Seattle, WA (which I have written about here). Following my talk, one of the first audience members I met were Shlomo Goldberg and his wife Karen Treiger. Shlomo explained that his father had escaped from Treblinka–from Treblinka!–one of the deadliest …
I’ve just returned from a Scandinavian festival in Minot, ND—Norsk Høstfest. I was really looking forward to the trip. I had gone last year and thoroughly enjoyed myself. What is a bit unusual about my fond memories is that last year I caught a bad cold at the event (the convention center was like a …
Sparked by strong sales in the first half of 2018, Vanderbilt University Press has ordered a third printing of Odd Nansen’s From Day to Day. As mentioned previously, Vanderbilt’s first printing was expected to last for approximately three years (i.e., until May 2019). The second printing was ordered less than two years later, and this …
Seventy-seven years ago last Thursday (August 23, 1941), Per Birkevold, Hjalmar Svae and Bjorn Fraser began their ill-fated quest to steal a German boat and escape from Norway to England. I have written about this episode in prior blogs (here and here). I also wrote about the amazing coincidence of meeting Hjalmar Svae’s niece, Siri …
On June 14 I had the opportunity to address the residents of Sun City Lincoln Hills, in Lincoln, CA. The 150-seat auditorium soon filled up, and chairs were brought in, and finally, when no more chairs could be accommodated, some resorted to sitting in the aisles. I was honored by the presence of a Holocaust …
The month of August is full of anniversaries related to World War II: the bombing of Hiroshima (8/6/45); the surrender of Japan (8/16/45); the Warsaw Uprising (8/1/44); the liberation of Paris (8/25/44); the capture of Sicily (8/17/43); and the Treblinka Uprising (8/2/43), which I recently wrote about here. Here’s an anniversary you may not be …
“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.
