Night and Fog

Arne Brun Lie's Night and Fog, 1990, constitute the memoirs of a Norwegian teenager who at 16, in 1944, after a few weeks of dabbling in the resistance, was arrested as an NN, avoided execution for reasons he never discovered, and spent the last year of the war in Natzweiler, Dautmergen, and Dachau. During my presentation to the Association for Jewish Studies Conference in LA on 12/22, I read a couple of pages of his recollection and response to his arrival at Natzweiler, pages 140-142. It brings the remembered voice of a disrespectful but already wise adolescent to the three dozen other memoirs of the camp, by other Nacht Und Nebel prisoners committed to the destruction of the Third Reich, for the enduring honor of mankind. Lie's candid teenage memories resurface during a transatlantic sailing adventure which forms the other half of the story. Both narratives blend surprisingly well into a gripping read, even for sailing novices. Very highly recommended, with Boris Pahor's Pilgrim Among the Shadows, to fill in some of the story of a little known concentration camp, Natzweiler-Struthof.