“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
(Remarks given in a graduation speech by politician, abolitionist, and social reformer Horace Mann, founder, in 1852, and first president, of Antioch College, and subsequently observed as the school’s motto.)
Odd Nansen, who died 51 years ago today, may never have heard of Horace Mann, or Antioch College (although, given Nansen’s ecumenical knowledge and significant travel in the U.S., the opposite might well be true), but there’s no doubt in my mind that no man had less to be ashamed of on his deathbed than Nansen:
- What individual, at great risk, expense, and effort, formed Nansenhjelpen, or Nansen Relief, in 1937, to aid refugees seeking to escape persecution in Europe?
- Who could write in his prison diary “I shared out to those who had had nothing, and there was gladness . . . .” (September 19, 1942), or “It isn’t ‘well’ to be well off among so many who are badly off. The only possible relief is to share the material goods which are divided among us so unequally and unjustly. To see a starving, broken-down Ukrainian eat his fill is a far richer and deeper satisfaction than most this life here can offer.” (December 14, 1944)?
- Who also wrote in his diary “My protégés are getting on. The [Jewish builder] from Budapest totters over to me . . . to fetch his soup, or rather, my soup, bread ration, bit of sausage, bag of sugar, etc.” (January 14, 1945). (This was the same person who promised to give Nansen gold and precious stones after the war in gratitude for Nansen’s generosity.)
- Who saved the life of Thomas Buergenthal by periodically bribing the orderly in Tom’s barrack with food, cigarettes, and tobacco in return for keeping Tom’s name off the list of those prisoners being sent to the gas chambers, and, by his example, inspired Tom’s own outstanding career on behalf of human rights?
- Who, while acting as a special representative of the director general of UNESCO, lobbied for better and more coordinated aid to refugees in postwar Germany?
- Who agreed to donate the profits from the German translation of From Day to Day to a fund set up to help German refugees after the war?
No, Odd Nansen need not be ashamed at all.
R.I.P. Odd Nansen
(Prior reflections on the occasion of Odd Nansen’s death can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)
