Yom HaShoah

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19, 1943): Part III

“God, why do we have to suffer all this?” Diary of Mary Berg, June 15, 1943 I have previously written about the Warsaw Ghetto several times already—primarily as seen through the eyes of teenage diarist Mary Berg. Part I described the establishment of the Ghetto in September 1940; the lethal living conditions which consigned thousands …

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Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.  We vow never to forget, and never to let it happen again. Today also happens to be the 77th anniversary of the final entry in Odd Nansen’s diary, From Day to Day: “What on earth am I to write?  It’s as impossible today as on all the …

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May 2: Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)

Last week, while on a book tour through CT and NY, I was privileged to spend May 2—Yom HaShoah—at my high school alma mater, Notre Dame of West Haven, CT. In the morning I taught  23 Seniors in the school’s Holocaust class.  Notre Dame, a boys school run by the Brothers of the Holy Cross, …

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From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps

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.