Seventy-nine years ago today, Adolf Hitler, aware of the imminent defeat of Germany’s armed forces, and aware of the ignominious end to Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, on May 28th, died by suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin. He had just turned 56 on April 20. His body, along with that of …
“They’re bombing and bombing, more and more and oftener and oftener.” Odd Nansen’s Diary April 12, 1944 Sachsenhausen Odd Nansen wasn’t exaggerating when he wrote the above diary entry. The Allied bombing effort over Germany had gone from a trickle in the early years of the war to a deluge by 1944. The combined RAF …
On this date, 129 years ago (also a Sunday), Fridtjof Nansen (Odd Nansen’s father), along with Nansen’s companion, Hjalmar Johansen, reached a point, in Johansen’s words, “most northerly that any human foot had ever trod.” They had arrived at 86°14’ north latitude, besting the previous record, set 13 years earlier, by almost 200 miles. Nansen …
“[But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.] But love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a …
Three years ago today my dear friend Marit Greve, eldest child of Odd and Kari Nansen, and granddaughter of Fridtjof Nansen, died. She was 92 years old. Those of you who have heard my presentation on Odd Nansen’s diary know that Marit is only briefly mentioned; however, she played a key part …
8th Distribution Goes Out Recently I was able to send out to each of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and HL Senteret, the Norwegian Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities their 50% share of the royalties and speaking fees I earned this past year related to Odd Nansen’s diary. To date …
Boxing Day, December 26, also known as St. Stephens Day, originated in Great Britain, but is observed in many other European countries, including Norway. Boxing Day 1941 must have been a dispiriting day indeed. Germany had overrun practically all of Europe, and was all but poised to defeat the Soviet Union. The United States had …
Today marks the 122nd 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 difficultly fully appreciating—the description is …
“The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.” “How were the natives?” “Very friendly.” With these code words, Arthur Compton, head of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, notified James Conant, chair of the National Defense Research Committee (overseeing the Manhattan Project), that the world’s first successful, man-made, self-sustaining chain reaction had …
“This, then, is the climax! This is the moment you have been waiting for all these black, despairing years! To see Justice catch up with Evil. To see it overtake these barbaric little men who almost destroyed our world. This, really, is the end of the long night, of the hideous nightmare. And how the …
“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.
