Eighty years ago today German Armed Forces showed up in Norway—uninvited, unannounced, and unwelcome. Despite holding out for longer than most other European countries overrun by the Nazis, Norway finally capitulated on June 10, 1940. It would remain occupied for over five years—longer than any other European country, excepting only Czechoslovakia and Poland. Germans employed …
On this day, 75 years ago, the firebombing of Dresden began. Dresden was Germany’s seventh largest city, and until the raid, the largest city to escape any serious Allied bombing. All that changed in a series of raids which began on the evening of the 13th and lasted for two days. Over 1,000 British and …
The revised hardcover edition of From Day to Day was re-published exactly three years ago this week. I don’t think I ever realized the significance of this week in any of my previous reflections. Monday, April 22, represented the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Sachsenhausen, and with it, freedom after almost six years for …
I have the honor and privilege of being chosen to give the keynote address at the 23rd annual Raoul Wallenberg memorial dinner at the Nordic Museum of Seattle on June 7 at 5:30 pm. The Nordic Museum, which celebrated its grand opening in its new, $40 million facility this past weekend, is an internationally recognized …
Last week marked the second anniversary of the re-publication of the deluxe, fully edited and annotated World War II concentration camp diary of Odd Nansen, From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps. For those of you keeping tabs (and who isn’t), here’s a brief scorecard: 24,692 Miles traveled 5,448 …
Today, one day following International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Washington Post published a news story about the Polish government’s passage of a law “making it a criminal offense to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.” According to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the law is intended, not to “whitewash history, but to safeguard …
On this day in 1965, Winston Churchill died, age 90. So perhaps it is only fitting that yesterday the 90th Oscar nominations were announced, and among the leading contenders was “Darkest Hour,” a film that could easily have been titled “Churchill’s Darkest Hour.” The film received a total of six nominations, ranging from obscure categories …
The New York Times ran a fascinating article yesterday about a palm-sized diary, written in the Soviet Gulag, which “slumbered in obscurity” for “nearly 70 years.” Here’s the link. Written by Olga M. Ranitskaya, who was arrested in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge, the 115-page diary uses a stick figure, “Little Weather Devil,” as an …
“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.
