“I believe it will be hard for posterity, indeed for other people at all, to grasp the depth of suffering and horror of which Auschwitz has been the frame. Still less will it be possible to understand those who have survived it. That they can remain human beings, think and feel like human beings. One …
Well, the 2026 Winter Olympics are now history. We’ve all had our share of experiencing the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, as well as gravity-defying tricks, including 180s, 360s, and 540s, all performed forward, backward, and upside down. The U.S. performed well, earning a record-breaking 12 gold medals, including thrilling victories over …
In the past few weeks much of the nation has been beset by unusually cold and snowy weather. In fact, this January was the coldest such month in the contiguous United States since 1988. Nearly everyone has been discomfited in one way or another. Even here in western North Carolina, the so-called Isothermal Belt, where …
“The day before yesterday eight thousand fresh prisoners arrived in camp. On that account we’ve had to move still closer together. It’s impossible for more than half, at the highest estimate, to sit down to meals, and I daren’t even think how much air we have at our disposal per head. I’ll work it out …
“Warsaw will be falling this week, one should imagine, and then it isn’t far to the German frontier!” —–Odd Nansen’s diary, Sunday, July 30, 1944 Would that it were so. Warsaw was not liberated in the week following Nansen’s post. In fact, it was not liberated, by elements of the Red Army and First Polish …
Odd Nansen died 52 years ago yesterday. He was 71. Every year on the anniversary of his death I write about some aspect of his life and personality. As a prisoner, Nansen faced, and overcame, challenges that we, in our pampered, postwar lives, can scarcely imagine. But Nansen might not have been able to make …
I’m a big believer in serendipity (which I have previously written about here, here and here). After all, it was serendipity that brought Odd Nansen and Thomas Buergenthal together in Revier #3 in Sachsenhausen, where Tom was recovering from surgery and one of Nansen’s friends was also receiving treatment. Tom could just as easily have …
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 …
“Yesterday [was] . . . one of the heaviest raids we have ever witnessed. It was on Oranienburg, and camps and buildings in the immediate neighborhood of Sachsenhausen were leveled to the ground. From the moment the first bombs dropped, we realized that this was more our concern than usual. For in general we’ve gotten …
Today’s news headline: “Alerts for cold weather are in effect for nearly half the U.S. population, running from the northern Plains to the Gulf Coast and the Rockies to the Southwest.” As you’re reading this blog you are probably one of the many millions who qualify for the above weather alert. Even here in western …
“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.
