Those of you who have read From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps know that on page 433 is an illustration drawn by Odd Nansen, a birthday card for his close friend, Erik Magelssen. As Nansen explained in the diary, in order to stay in the same work squad …
Today, one day following International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Washington Post published a news story about the Polish government’s passage of a law “making it a criminal offense to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.” According to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the law is intended, not to “whitewash history, but to safeguard …
On this day in 1965, Winston Churchill died, age 90. So perhaps it is only fitting that yesterday the 90th Oscar nominations were announced, and among the leading contenders was “Darkest Hour,” a film that could easily have been titled “Churchill’s Darkest Hour.” The film received a total of six nominations, ranging from obscure categories …
On this day in 1942, three officials—two German, one Norwegian—approached a small cabin in snowy East Gausdal, Norway, and informed Odd Nansen that he was wanted for questioning in Oslo. In fact, he was part of a round-up ordered by the German overseer of Norway, Reichskommissar Josef Terboven. That very night Nansen began his prison diary. …
So the Bomb Cyclone has come and gone, leaving a Polar Vortex in its wake. Did you survive it? Unborn generations will be asking us in future years how we coped. At the very least, the storm stranded thousands of passengers, shut down government services along the East Coast, provided a few days off from …
The New York Times ran a fascinating article yesterday about a palm-sized diary, written in the Soviet Gulag, which “slumbered in obscurity” for “nearly 70 years.” Here’s the link. Written by Olga M. Ranitskaya, who was arrested in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge, the 115-page diary uses a stick figure, “Little Weather Devil,” as an …
As explained in previous posts (here and here), I determined at the outset of my journey with From Day to Day that any royalties derived from the sale of Nansen’s diary would go to a charity or charities that Odd Nansen would have approved of were he still alive. After discussing the matter with Nansen’s …
Seventy-one years ago today, probably my favorite movie of all time premiered: It’s a Wonderful Life, starring the incomparable Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, and the luminous Donna Read as Mary Hatch Bailey (with strong performances by Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Potter, Henry Travers as Clarence, Gloria Grahame as Violet, and Karolyn Grimes as Zuzu). …
Today marks the 116th anniversary of Odd Nansen’s birth, in 1901. Sometimes I ask myself why I have become so enamored of a person I never met; why do I spend so much time devoted to a diary he wrote, before I was even born, and which I still have difficulty appreciating—the description is so …
Those who have heard my presentation about Odd Nansen know that what first captured my attention about his diary was his sheer eloquence. I appreciate good writing, especially writing employed in the service of noble thoughts. So on the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death, I wanted to share some particularly eloquent remarks Kennedy made almost …
“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.
