“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 …
“None the less we bid it welcome, and once more fix our hopes, our burning wishes, and our ache of longing on the new year. The news is excellent, and all things considered there seems every reason to take a rather more cheerful view of things after all.” (From Day to Day, January 2, 1944) …
There are some people whose experiences during World War II are so fantastical, so filled with drama and danger, that one wonders how they managed to simply keep going. Jan Karski is one such man. Karski, described by British historian Michael Burleigh as “one of the bravest men of the war,” and whose life was …
So the Bomb Cyclone has come and gone, leaving a Polar Vortex in its wake. Did you survive it? Unborn generations will be asking us in future years how we coped. At the very least, the storm stranded thousands of passengers, shut down government services along the East Coast, provided a few days off from …
“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.
