As Americans watching migrant crisis, we cannot wait on Europe

When the option arose to spend a week in Hungary, my husband and I seized it. Boasting Secessionist architectural gems, a lively restaurant scene, excellent museums, walkability and the Danube, Budapest seemed the perfect place to launch our holiday.

However, when the news broke that the migrants headed for northern Europe had shifted their route, moving into Hungary from both Serbia and Croatia, our visions of eating goulash soup while drinking Eger wine in riverside cafes gave way to an idealistic, if unrealistic, notion that perhaps we could do something helpful. A week before we arrived, Hungary closed its borders. While they were reopened a few days later, it was only to allow controlled populations of migrants to be transported through to Austria. As our plane took off, we were not sure that there would be any migrants in Hungary by the time we were.

What we were clear about was that the images the TV news had brought nightly into our living room demanded some sort of response, if only fact-finding in preparation for future action. We agreed that waiting for a political solution on a grand scale, if indeed there is to be one, would not help the individuals whose heartbreaking images we had seen on our TV – the articulate young girl who had made her journey in a wheelchair, the old woman who was carried on her son’s back, the diabetic mother whose hospitalization had separated her from her family, the young man who said succinctly for all Syrians, “There was no life, just bombs.”

On Day Two in Budapest, we visited the headquarters of Caritas, the Catholic charity operating across borders, currently struggling not only to meet migrant needs but also to anticipate them, in a political context as challenging as any since World War II. We were impressed with the clarity and practicality of the man we spoke with. As summer gives way to fall, heated tents are the order of the day. They cost $2,000 each and must be ordered now.

On Day Three, we happened upon a group of students congregated outside a Syrian restaurant. When we asked them if there was a charity they had confidence in, not surprisingly they directed us to a Facebook site set up by a student living in Budapest. She was raising money and distributing needed supplies in camps along the Croatian border – enlisting volunteers to help her.

A chance meeting with the BBC Central European correspondent turned out to be the most valuable encounter of the week. Looking as tired as seven weeks of bringing this constantly shifting story to the airways entitled him to, Nick Thorpe shared some of what he had experienced. At one point, we struggled and failed to find words to express adequately the enormity of what these migrants were leaving behind – and the challenges that lay ahead of them.

Nick asked me if I was familiar with writer John Berger’s thoughts on emigration. When I said no, he produced a copy. Succeeding where we had failed, Berger says with a simplicity that belies the horror he is giving voice to: Emigration involves “undoing the very meaning of the world.” While there are times when “to live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen, ” he adds, emigration will always mean to “move into a lost, disoriented world of fragments.”

In the face of that undeniable truth, what in the world can we, with our homes and homelands, do? Well, the one thing we cannot do is nothing – nor can we in the United States wait for them in Europe to do something. There are global organizations – Caritas, Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children – all working to care for and resettle the migrants. For those who prefer direct aid – riskier but at times more immediately effective – social media abound with individuals who are taking matters into their own hands and helping those who have been swept onto the beaches and into their hearts.

We must write checks. We must urge our Congress, our communities, our churches, our clubs, our friends and their friends to help us raise funds. Why? Berger again says it better than I can: “It is on the site of loss that hopes are born.” While we can do nothing to mitigate the unimaginable losses these migrants have sustained, perhaps our support can honor their hopes and render less fragmented the world they are courageously moving toward.

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "As Americans watching migrant crisis, we cannot wait on Europe."