Somewhere Near Tryon

We're comfortably settled in at Cynthia's cousin's home in the hills near Tryon, North Carolina, enjoying the famed Southern hospitality.

We went to the Kiwanis weekly lunch meeting today, and heard a very interesting presentation by Tim Boyce, who has a self-imposed mission to reprint a book called From Day To Day (Day After Day in the UK).

The Norwegian author, Odd Nansen, kept a diary while imprisoned by the Nazis in WWII concentration camps in Norway and Germany. It was difficult enough to smuggle his pages out of the Norwegian camp, but he had to come up with a way to hide them while in the German camp. His simple, yet ingenious, hiding place was the small wooden plank given to each prisoner that served as a plate and breadboard. He was able to get another inmate who worked in the carpenter shop to hollow out the board for him.

Tim has found a publisher willing to reprint the book and he is adding footnotes and background material he's obtained from extensive research and interviews with surviving members of the author's family, and Thomas Buergenthal, who was a young child when he met Nansen in the German camp..

Buergenthal has written a book, A Lucky Child, about his experiences during that time. The ironic title was inspired by his mother's consultation with a fortune teller who predicted that her child would encounter difficult times, but would be a lucky child. He has had a distinguished legal career. In 2000 he was elected to the International Court of Justice, resigning in 2010, at the age of 76, but not retiring. He then took the position of Lobinger Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School.

A very interesting day, indeed!