On this date seventy-three years ago, Anne Frank, her family, the van Pels family (known as the van Daans in her diary) and Fritz Pfeffer (known as Albert Dussel) were arrested by the Gestapo, having lived in hiding for two years, four weeks and one day. No one is sure to this day who provided …
The very first blog I ever posted to this website (here) described the difficulty of grasping the magnitude of suffering encompassed by World War II. As historian Max Hastings, in the concluding paragraph of his vast history of the war, Inferno, observes, “Among citizens of modern democracies to whom serious hardship and collective peril …
From Odd Nansen’s diary, November 21, 1944: Just now a singular patrol is marching round and round the parade ground interminably. All are fully equipped and fitted out and sing and whistle as they walk. That’s the “pill patrol.” They’re being used to test out a new energy pill. How long can they keep going …
On June 2-4, 2017, I returned to the campus of Georgetown University (my alma mater) for reunion weekend. [This year marked an astounding 42 years since I had graduated!] It was fun to share some of the excitement with the classes of 2012, 2007, 2002, etc., as well as some spectacularly fine weather (something of …
Odd Nansen died 44 years ago yesterday, on June 27, 1973, age 71. In a fascinating, insightful and highly readable new book, Why: Explaining the Holocaust, author Peter Hayes concludes his inquiry with three “broad implications for all citizens.” Second among these is that “the Holocaust illustrates the fundamental importance and difficulty of individual courage …
On Memorial Day, we remember those who died while serving in our armed forces. Few people today can recall that the first U.S. serviceman to die in World War II was killed—in Norway. Robert M. Losey was born in Andrew, Iowa in 1908, graduated from West Point in 1929 and received his wings in …
On April 25 I had the honor of addressing students, faculty and other interested parties at Hege Library, Guilford College, Greensboro, NC. Founded in 1837 by the Society of Friends, Guilford College strives to “integrate personal, intellectual, physical and spiritual growth through participation in several rich traditions,” including Quakerism. According to the school’s Statement of …
This past week marks the first anniversary of the re-publication of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps (as well as the 72nd anniversary of the end of Odd Nansen’s captivity). So, here’s a quick summary of the year in numbers (I have to put my MBA to some use …
Refugee Blues By W.H. Auden Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us. Once we had a country and we thought it fair, Look in the atlas and you’ll find …
As noted in my first blog concerning Bullenhuser Damm, some, but not all the murderers were brought to justice soon after the war. The evil genius behind the medical experiments on the twenty young Jewish children at Neuengamme concentration camp, Kurt Heissmeyer, somehow managed to escape notice in postwar Germany, and ended up opening and operating …
“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.
