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Adult School Lecture and Book Signing: The Secret Concentration Camp Diary of Odd Nansen
Join The Adult School on Monday, September 18 for a special lecture and presentation
First published in English in 1949, From Day to Day had been out of print for almost seventy years when guest speaker Timothy Boyce first discovered this World War II concentration camp diary. He quickly decided that the book should be back in print, and he embarked on a six-year odyssey that resulted in the re-publication of a deluxe, fully-annotated edition of Odd Nansen’s diary. Boyce will speak on Monday, September 18 at the Madison High School Auditorium, 170 Ridgedale Avenue, beginning at 7:00 pm. Tickets will be available at the door for $10 per person, free for middle school, high school and college students.
Hailed by The New Yorker as “among the most compelling documents to come out of the war,” From Day to Day is one of only a handful of World War II concentration camp diaries 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.
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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.
For more information, please contact The Adult School at 973-443-9222.
