Hiltgunt Zassenhaus died 20 years ago today (November 20, 2004), age 88, in Baltimore, MD. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Zassenhaus was employed by the Nazi regime throughout World War II, including by the feared Department of Justice. Despite that, she is the only German ever to be awarded Norway’s Order of St. Olav, given as …
Today is Hiltgunt Zassenhaus’s birthday. Were she still alive, she would be 104. Never heard of Hiltgunt Zassenhaus? Then read on: In his diary entry for Saturday, April 7, 1945, Odd Nansen writes about how the Swedish Red Cross has been collecting all the Norwegian prisoners in Europe at Neuengamme, a concentration camp located near …
“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.
