Eighty years ago today, elements of the British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. (I’ve written about the liberation of Sachsenhausen (here), Auschwitz (here) and Ohrdruf (here)). What those members beheld upon entering the camp not even Dante, in his wildest imaginings, could have conjured up. Over 10,000 unburied, rotting, corpses littered the camp. …
“[T]o become a journalist . . . that’s what I want! I know I can write. . . . [M]uch of my diary is vivid and alive. . . . I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my …
Eighty years ago today, the largest amphibious assault ever undertaken, Operation Overlord, began. In retrospect, events like D-Day increasingly to take on an aura of historical inevitability. It seems inevitable that the massive Allied landings would succeed, inevitable that the second front would be established, inevitable that Germany’s demise would ultimately follow. It had to …
Today is Anne Frank’s birthday. Had she lived, she would be 93 years old. The exact date and cause of her death are unknown, although it is now believed that she succumbed in late February, 1945, probably to a disease such as typhus. Anne, her family, and the other inhabitants of the secret annex in …
Millions of people worldwide have read the diary of Anne Frank. By now it has been translated into 70 languages, and regularly appears on many schools’ reading lists. Millions more, without having ever read the book, know many of the basic facts of her life story. How Anne received a diary on her 13th birthday, …
Seventy-seven years ago today Thomas Buergenthal, age 10, entered Auschwitz-Birkenau along with his parents. Originally the site of a Polish army barracks (inhabited briefly by Jan Karski), Auschwitz was developed by the Nazis into the largest and deadliest concentration/extermination camp ever. Approximately 1.1 million people—the population of Salt Lake City or Memphis—were murdered there. Of …
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or, more formally, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The date, set by UN Resolution, corresponds to the day that Auschwitz, the largest and deadliest concentration the Nazis ever built, was finally liberated. Approximately 1.1million prisoners, of which 1 million were Jews, …
Among the manifold tragedies of the Holocaust, one of the greatest was the destruction of Jewish families. Worried parents were often faced with agonizing choices regarding the fate of their children: keep the family intact and hope for the best, or send them away rather than risk their futures to an increasingly dark future. Sometimes …
Seventy-five years ago today, World War II ended with the surrender of Imperial Japan. The following day, the Japanese Emperor’s voice, heard by the country’s inhabitants for the first time, concluded that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” Therefore, “we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for …
As dates go, the first two days of August 1944 seem to me unusually fraught. Many things changed irrevocably—most for the worse, only a few for the better. ANNE On Tuesday, August 1, 1944, Anne Frank wrote in her diary to her imaginary friend Kitty. To Kitty, and only to Kitty, could Anne confide all …
“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.
