Syrian refugees at the Midyat refugee camp in Mardin, southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border in June 2015. (Photo: Emrah Gurel/AP)

From a June 2015 piece in The Atlantic:  “According to annual figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, released on Thursday, in 2014 there were almost 60 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) around the globe right now. Put another way, that’s one in every 122 people worldwide. Put yet another way, that’s roughly the equivalent of the entire population of Italy being pushed out of their homes. Not since World War II have there been so many refugees or IDPs. (Finding definitive numbers is tough, but the UN reports that the number of refugees and IDPs last exceeded 50 million during the Second World War, an astonishing figure given that the global population was significantly smaller then.)”

I was a one-month-old who was among the 250,000 or so Latvians who were spared some the horrors of World War II through their escape to other countries. If you were also one—or one of the millions of others—join me in speaking out in support of those who need our help now. No one can understand their plight better than we do.