Professor Teresa Stephens of East Tennessee State University is using From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps in a PhD Nursing program focusing on the subject of resilience. Recently Teresa was interviewed on WJHL News Channel 11 (ABC-Tri-Cities) regarding her interest in Odd Nansen’s diary, her use of Nansen’s work in her …
Next week I will have the privilege of discussing Odd Nansen and his diary at East Tennessee State University, focusing on how Nansen’s example can help health care providers encourage and enhance resilience in their patients, particularly those suffering from trauma. For a description of the program, read here.
I have always admired the writing style of William L. Shirer, who died twenty-three years ago today (December 28, 1993), as well as his judgments, which I used frequently in my annotations of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps. Shirer and Odd Nansen were contemporaries of sorts—Shirer was born …
A good friend of mine lives and practices in L.A. Earlier this year I arranged to send him a copy of From Day to Day for his birthday. I was instructed to include an invoice with the book. Since it was his birthday I decided not to charge him, but made what I considered a clever request …
Recently I received an unexpected, but heartwarming, letter from a young woman. First, the backstory. Several months ago I gave an evening presentation about Odd Nansen and his diary. After the talk, reception and booksigning were over, this young woman, who worked at the venue, had the task of closing up the facility and ensuring …
Last week I had the pleasure of addressing students at Cheshire Academy, a college preparatory school located in Cheshire, CT, about Odd Nansen and his WWII diary. After the presentation the students asked many pertinent and probing questions, and I thoroughly enjoyed the encounter. Wendy Swift, Director of The Center for Writing at Cheshire, commented: …
Adolf Burger, age 99, the last surviving member of the “Operation Bernhard” counterfeiting operation, died December 8 in Prague, the New York Times reported (see the obituary here). Operation Bernhard was located for most of its existence in Sachsenhausen, and although the Jewish prisoners who were its members were never allowed out of their special …
An excerpt from From Day to Day has just appeared in online issue of The Utne Reader. The Utne Reader “offers provocative writing from diverse perspectives, insightful analysis of art and media, down-to-earth news and in-depth coverage of eye-opening issues that affect your life.” The full excerpt can be found here.
Hiltgunt Zassenhaus. Not a name that, once heard, you’re likely to forget. Yet Zassenhaus remains one of the more unheralded heroines of World War II. Born in 1916 into an educated Hamburg family, Zassenhaus made a fateful decision early in life: to study Scandinavian languages in college. This initially lead to a …
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 …
“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.
