The book is undeniably a masterpiece. . . . It is written in real time, as diaries are by definition, and all the more shocking for that, because what could be a repetitious day by day account is a riveting, unfiltered story of the inhumanity of one kind of man juxtaposed with the unbroken free spirit of a different kind of man.
Rochel Sylvetsky
Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News
Read full review here.
More than anything, though, it is his moral outrage at anyone who dares to turn an eye away from the suffering of others—especially when that eye is his own—that makes this a timely reissue. By the end of the war, Nansen is poignantly aware of his entitled situation. The humanism he carries into the last camps finds expression mostly in words, as deeds would have ended in a most unfortunate way for both the man and this priceless chronicle.
From Day to Day breaks once again the heart of humanity—a “never forget” document that echoes with the ghostly voices of the murdered.
Amy Scheibe
Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2016
Read full review here.
With forty sketches of life in the camps by Nansen himself, and a must-read Introduction, along with extensive annotations by editor Timothy Boyce, From Day to Day is history at its best.
Foreword Reviews, May 2016
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Nansen’s “well-chosen words and accurate drawings” depict “the daily lives of persons who inflicted and those who endured insane levels of cruelty and deprivation. . . . Highly recommended.”
CHOICE Magazine, November 2016
Read full review here
Odd Nansen could not have hoped for a better and more committed editor than [Timothy Boyce], and he got the best by far. It is simply a magnificent piece of work
Thomas Buergenthal
Author of A Lucky Child
This extraordinary diary by a non-Jewish victim of the Nazi regime and its collaborators is a rich historical document. Nansen’s stunning illustrations provide a pictorial narrative into the concentration camp world he endured. . . . [H]is text renders his experience in clear, muscular prose. We see through his eyes and imagine what he describes. We follow him day by day, as his diary traverses three and a half years–an eternity at that time . . . . Timothy Boyce’s Introduction frames the diary beautifully, setting the diary years into the larger picture of Nansen’s life, . . . and his extensive editorial notes provide guideposts along the way.
Debórah Dwork
Rose Professor of Holocaust History, Clark University
Director, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
author of Flight from the Reich
[From Day to Day] is one of the most searing contemporaneous accounts of the Holocaust, but also one of the best written of the great documents of World War Two. . . . It should find a place on the bookshelf of every home, be taught in every school, made into a movie, and feted for what it says about Man’s capacity for humanity in the face of satanic loathsomeness. Mr. Nansen’s decency and courage in the most vicious of circumstances shines through on every page.
Andrew Roberts
award-winning author of The Storm of War, Masters and Commanders, and Napoleon, A Life
A long-forgotten masterpiece. In his secret diary, written inside the Nazi camps, the Norwegian prisoner Odd Nansen paints a deeply affecting picture of everyday terror, sketching the inmates’ lives and deaths with exceptional clarity and compassion. Rarely has the inhumanity of the camps been captured with such humanity. An invaluable document for anyone interested in the Nazi camps.
Nikolaus Wachsmann
author of KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
Timothy Boyce has done both scholars and general readers a great service by getting this extraordinary diary of a concentration camp experience back into print. His introduction provides a thorough context for the work and his unobtrusive glosses are very helpful to the non-expert reader.
Scott Denham
Charles A. Dana Professor of German Studies, Davidson College
This is a fabulous volume you put together on Odd Nansen: congratulations. It is a very great thing, a beautiful book–your efforts certainly paid off.
Peter Fritzsche
Professor of History, University of Illinois
author of An Iron Wind
From Day to Day is a fine, moving book, and I congratulate you on your role in its publication.
Samuel Hynes
Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature emeritus, Princeton University
author of The Soldier’s Tale, Flights of Passage and A War Imagined
Timothy Boyce has succeeded wonderfully in giving his readers Odd Nansen’s experience of concentration life under the Nazis. Rare amongst Holocaust autobiographies, Nansen’s diary is an important contribution, not only to the historical record, but also to the way in which camp victims found their own ways to survive Nazi atrocities. Boyce’s presentation of the elegant English translation from Nansen’s original Norwegian, along with his fine introductory materials, makes this a first class study for Holocaust scholars. Boyce’s work is an appreciable contribution to the field of first-person survivor narratives in the Nazi project. Altogether recommended.
Dennis McManus
Professor, Center for Jewish Civilization, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
In contrast to most Holocaust memoirs or diaries, From Day to Day is one of a few diary accounts from inside Nazi concentration camps providing descriptions of the regular tortuous and cruel existence of those sent to the Nazi KL.
Jack Fischel
Jewish Book Council
Read full review here.
Nansen’s Powerful WWII Diary is Republished.
Michael Kleiner
The Norwegian American, January 13, 2017
Read full review here
T]he real-time diary of a Norwegian architect [that] . . . describes the casual brutality and random terror that faced camp prisoners over the course of three and a half years.
Utne Reader, November 2016
Read excerpt here.
Reviews of the 1949 Edition
Reminds us in never-to-be-forgotten pages how noble and generous the human spirit can be in the face of terrible adversity.
William L. Shirer, New York Herald-Tribune Book Review
author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Profoundly moving
Alfred Werner (survivor of Dachau), New York Times Book Review
It will surely rank among the most compelling documents to come out of the [war].
The New Yorker
A masterpiece
Christopher Woodhouse, Times Literary Supplement
I am sure [it] will be a classic of its kind.
Emmett Dedmon, Chicago Sun-Times
One of the great documents to come out of the war. . . . An extraordinary piece of creative writing.
The Nation
A unique document of unsurpassed value. . . . often reads like great literature.
Franz Hoellering, Commentary
Nansen . . . emerges as a formidable figure . . . a magnificent observer, a skillful writer, an illustrator of considerable power.
Time Magazine
A great and revealing document . . . one that will stand as an enduring document.
Chicago Tribune
Unforgettable. . . . There is nothing in war literature quite like it.
New York Sun
His diaries add in many subtle ways to our understanding of Nazi psychology and of Hitler’s methods of terror.
Library Journal
An unforgettable book
Henry Kranz, Saturday Review of Literature
Extraordinary
Anne Goodman, New Republic
From Day to Day is unlike any other record of personal war experience which has yet appeared. There have been plenty of other accounts of imprisonment and concentration camps but none by a man like Mr. Nansen. . . . [H]e described each day’s adventures with stark simplicity and intimate authority. His book, although immensely long, is a continuously engrossing narrative. It is filled with vivid, concrete details, sharp character sketches, unspeakable horrors. A heroic book . . . vivid . . . magnificent
Orville Prescott, New York Times
A story that everyone should read
Los Angeles Times
