THE RESISTER
On January 13, 1942, Odd Nansen, a 30-year-old Norwegian architect and humanitarian, was arrested by the Gestapo for his high-profile role in the country’s nascent anti-Nazi resistance movement. Nansen, the founder of the humanitarian organization Nansenhjelpen (Nansen Relief), which aided Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, was clearly following in the footsteps of his father, Fridtjof, an Arctic explorer and humanitarian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work on behalf of World War I refugees. (That year Fridtjof also created the “Nansen passport”—the first legal travel document for refugees.)
Little by little, Odd Nansen managed to smuggle out the pages of his diary.
Odd Nansen spent the next three and a half years in Nazi concentration camps: Grini in Oslo, Veidal above the Arctic Circle, and Sachsenhausen in Germany. Through it all he kept a secret diary, recording the mundane and horrific details of his existence and describing the casual brutality and random terror that was the way of life—and death—in the camps. Little by little, Nansen managed to smuggle out
