No sooner than I had just finished posting a new blog describing my recent article in the Scandinavian Review about Odd Nansen and his art world, featuring fellow Grini prisoner Per Krohg, among others, I learned yesterday about a new play called “The Bøyg,” written by A.J. Ditty. According to Ditty, the ostensible protagonist in …
Those of you who have read From Day to Day know full well Odd Nansen’s artistry. In 41 illustrations Nansen depicts in great detail the squalid, dangerous life of a concentration camp prisoner. Where did Nansen develop his artistic ideas and technique? Recently I was approached by the Scandinavian Review to write an article about …
…….was the word. Actually, many of them. About 300,000 to be accurate. While still in high school I adopted a practice I learned from the father of one of my school friends: writing on the front endpaper of one’s book one’s name and the date they started reading said book. I later began to add …
Forty-eight years ago today Odd Nansen died, age 71. Each year on the anniversary of his death, I try to find a fitting quote or example that typifies his life (see, for example, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016). I have now spent years studying Odd Nansen, years writing blogs about various aspects of his life …
[* If you haven’t yet seen Atlantic Crossing, please stop reading this, and watch it. Do not pass Go, and do not collect $200.] June 7 is an important date in Norway’s World War II history. On June 7, 1940, King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, and many Norwegian government officials, fled to Great Britain …
On May 22, 1939, Germany and Italy signed the Pact of Steel, or more formally, the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy, thereby converting the Rome-Berlin Axis into a military alliance. The Pact was executed by Foreign Ministers Galeazzo Ciano and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Both parties …
Happy Constitution Day, Norway! I’ve written about this day, known as Syttende Mai, before, focusing on Norway’s experiences in World War II (here and here). I’ve also written in the past about some of the heroes of World War II (here) and some of its tragic victims (here). Today I would like to focus on …
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the republication of From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps. What a fantastic five years it has been—and that’s even including the last 12 months! Little could I have imagined the many wonderful people I would meet along the way, each with …
It is with great sadness that I inform you of the death of my dear friend Marit Greve, eldest child of Odd and Kari Nansen, and granddaughter of Fridtjof Nansen, on Friday, March 26. Marit was 92 years old. Marit was born November 8, 1928, in Brooklyn, NY. (I would often kid her that, beneath …
Odd Nansen’s diary for Wednesday, November 1, 1944: “. . . I have actually been busy. I’ve begun drawings for our cottage on the scale of 1:50, after thinking and dreaming of it for years. I am dreaming myself so intensely into this cottage with all its details and rooms that I actually long to …
“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.
