Name: 1942 – Enrico Fermi creates first self-sustaining chain reaction in Chicago
Start: 2024-12-02T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2024-12-02T23:59:59-05:00

1942 – Norwegian Jews deported to Auschwitz; most sent immediately to gas chambers

November 26, 2024 1942 – Norwegian Jews deported to Auschwitz; most sent immediately to gas chambers

From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps

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“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.

On this day in history

November 2024

1938 – Kristallnacht in Germany: 267 synagogues destroyed, 30,000 Jews arrested

1919 – World War I ends. Armistice Day.

1944 – Tom Buergenthal’s father Mundek arrives in Buchenwald

1940 – The Warsaw Ghetto is walled off.

1945 – Nuremberg Trial of 24 high-ranking Nazis begins

2004 – Hiltgunt Zassenhaus dies, age 88.

1901 – Tom Buergenthal’s father Mundek is born.

1942 – Odd Nansen returns to Grini Camp from Veidal Camp

1942 – Norwegian Jews deported to Auschwitz; most sent immediately to gas chambers

1942 – The SS Donau carries Norwegian Jews to Auschwitz

1939 – Winter War begins; Soviet Union attacks Finland

December 2024

1942 – Enrico Fermi creates first self-sustaining chain reaction in Chicago

Events

November 2024

December 2024

From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps