PATRIOT PRISONER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27291, 18 January 1950, Page 3

PATRIOT PRISONER

Literature

A NORWEGIAN DIARY Day After Day. By Odd Nansen. Putnam. 21s. When the Nazis invaded Norway they seized a number of prominent citizens and held them in prison as hostages for the good behaviour of the Norwegians. One of these citizens was Odd Nansen, son of the great explorer. For three years and a-half he was a prisoner of the Nazis, first in his own country and then in the notorious Sachenhausen Camp in Germany. During all that time he managed to keep a diary. This book. Day After Day, is the original text, with nothing added, corrected or rewritten. It has, however, been abridged, but there are COO pages of it left.

There are not many documents such as this. Most of those who have suffered imprisonment have written their stories afterwards. Others have managed to make notes during their incarceration and have expanded these for their narratives. But from day to day, almost from hour to hour, this man—a patriot, an artist, and a man profoundly happy in his domestic life —made his record and presents it to the world. The result is most impressive. Nansen never gave way to bitterness. His understanding was wide enough to comprehend his experience and his love for mankind was deep enough to include, in pity, those who were his gaolers. He saw, indeed, that very often they too were prisoners, caught up in a system from which there was no escape. The lot of these men, he knew, was more hopeless than his own.

Imprisonment at first was largely a restriction v of liberty. Life had its comedy still. But when the scene changes to Sachenhausen we are given a story which is terrible in its factual detachment. His reason is that the world should know exactly what it meant to be the prisoner of the Nazis and his conclusion is: The worst crime you qan commit today, against yourself and society, is to forget what happened and sink back into indifference. What happened was worse than you have any idea of—and it was the indifference of mankind that let it take place.