Today marks the ninth anniversary of the republication of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps.
When From Day to Day first appeared in English in 1949 it garnered rave reviews, from the likes of William L. Shirer (New York Herald Tribune); Anne Goodman (New Republic); Alfred Werner (New York Times Book Review); Christopher Woodhouse (Times Literary Supplement): Orville Prescott (New York Times): Henry Kranz (Saturday Review of Literature) and many others. When republished in 2016, it again received accolades from such people as best-selling historian Andrew Roberts, Holocaust historian Nikolaus Wachsmann, Holocaust expert Debórah Dwork, and notices from afar a field as the Utne Reader and Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News.
But the review I cherish the most is a private appreciation written by someone who knew Nansen well, and lived part of the same concentration camp experience Nansen wrote about—Tom Buergenthal. Here is what Tom wrote me when From Day to Day was first re-issued:
“Dear Tim:
What a wonderful book, both as far as its contents and production are concerned.
To start with, you have done a truly magnificent editing job, but it is much more than just an editing job. You have revived a book and its author in a way I never thought, dreamed, or hoped it could be done, and you have transformed the book into an outstanding scholarly resource the original never was. Henceforth, the English edition of From Day to Day by Odd Nansen, edited by Timothy Boyce, will be listed among the major scholarly resource books on the Holocaust. Your edition has also preserved and enhanced Nansen’s stature as a leading diarist of the Holocaust and great humanitarian.
You have also made the book into an excellent scholarly resource because of the admirable editorial research with which you have surrounded Nansen’s text: your thorough introduction, your well-researched footnotes and your excellent index make your edition a very valuable addition to Holocaust literature in general. I must also admit, in that connection, that I never thought that your publisher would be willing and able to produce this volume without appearing to have tried to limit for economic reasons the scholarly accoutrements you rightly felt needed to be included in the text.
Congratulations on this truly magnificent piece of literary scholarship.
With admiration,
Tom
Thomas Buergenthal
Judge (Ret.), International Court of Justice
Lobingier Professor Emeritus of Comparative Law & Jurisprudence
George Washington University Law School”
