Common Sense

By Niels Henrik Jermiin Nielsen

In a small town in Kosovo, I was involved in preparing and directing Kosovo's first parliamentary elections. In the days around that, we had to house 65 international supervisors. I had heard in advance that there were 3 retired Bundeswehr colonels between them. Before the election, one of them came to our office. The guard said that he would like to talk to "the Dane". I found out that he had seen and experienced war. He had as a child for 4 years been refugee in Denmark and just wanted to say thank you.

The colonel said that he had been to the Oksbøl Camp. It was then Denmark's 5th largest "city”, and the principle was that they themselves should control almost everything, by choosing a council and a "mayor". That sounds humanitarian. As the Colonel said – “We got a lot more and better food than ordinary citizens everywhere else in Europe.” That is also true. But it is also true that if you visit the cemetery that camp left - then you can see on the tombstones that many children under one year died - because Danish doctors would not treat them – they claimed it was against the law. It is to me a black spot on the history of my country. The Colonel objected – “yes - but you helped much more and better than everyone else, including Sweden and Switzerland, which had not been occupied by ugly Nazis”. That is also true. But that was not our normal standard of humanity. In my opinion.

February - May 1945. With 4 million inhabitants, after 5 years of Nazi occupation, Denmark received 350,000 German refugees after almost 5 years of Nazi occupation. Not German - but Nazi. The nearly 100,000 were wounded soldiers - the rest were women with children. Denmark can and will again receive so many. Now we are 5.6 million to pay - and this time not as then out of a worn-out society.

I have worked in Mitrovica in Kosovo - I was a ceasefire monitor in Sri Lanka for a year, it was ugly. However, the worst was when the tsunami hit Christmas 2004, killing 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. In my personal patrol area, about 30,000 were killed in minutes. I was the first international to get out there - what I saw can only be compared to Hiroshima. Why am I now pulling this out?

Yes - because after seeing it - I could well see that my contract with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not foreseen this. We were all 60 monitors from the 5 Nordic countries under the leadership of a Norwegian general. He was fantastic in those moments. He called around to every single one of us and said, "The order is that you use your common sense - and act in the name of humanity." We did so. We improvised. And here's the point. To act on one's own without instructions. Why do I say that?

Yes, because that is what is happening right now in Denmark. "Wir Schaffen das"! We just thought.

From day 1 of the war, the prime minister and the opposition leader went on TV together, saying that 95% of seats in parliament would vote for a new coming law for these displaced people. Here are the principles - and then they informed on them about it. Then they said "We expect the law to apply in a few days - Until then, we expect all Danes to follow these principles, even if it is not legal yet.

And then it's easy for me to work in a brand new established asylum center, where we started 8 people who did not know each other - in an empty school - where an hour before 400 beds were set up. We had to improvise, and we did it successfully. Normally, a foreigner is not covered by health insurance - but they were - without the legislation - the Prime Minister said on TV - that this is how it should be – not like 1945. Normally, a foreigner cannot receive money from the local municipality when visiting friends and has not applied for asylum. But also, that was managed with an oral agreement between the Minister of the Interior and the municipalities - then the legislation for this must come into place later. This was also done in 1945 until the system of government was in place again – exempt from the doctors. Yes, history repeats itself - and we can learn from it. First response is about daring to take extended responsibility. Because humanity does not fit well into strict rules.

photo from N. Nielsen