You Can Trust the Dane

Povl Bang-Jensen (Copenhagen, April 6, 1909 – New York, November 25, 1959) was a Danish diplomat. During World War II, he served at the Danish Embassy in Washington.

The UN committee investigating the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was established in January 1957. The committee’s secretary was the American William M. Jordan, while his deputy—the secretary who carried out the actual work—was the Dane Povl Bang-Jensen. The committee was tasked with conducting an impartial investigation into the “Hungarian question” and preparing a report on it. Povl Bang-Jensen led the committee’s hearings. More than eighty Hungarian witnesses requested that their names be withheld, fearing reprisals by the Kádár regime against their relatives back home. Povl Bang-Jensen pledged the UN’s word that the names would be kept secret; hence the saying among them: “You can trust the Dane.”

The committee’s preliminary report was released in June 1957. It sparked an immediate international controversy because it unequivocally condemned the Soviet Union’s intervention, the invasion of the country, and the installation of the communist Kádár regime. Consequently, no further investigations or reports took place.

Dag Hammarskjöld ordered Povl Bang-Jensen to hand over the names of the Hungarian witnesses. Citing the word he had given, Bang-Jensen refused. He was first suspended and subsequently dismissed from the UN. After repeated consultations, three envelopes containing the list of witnesses were burned on the roof of the UN headquarters in early 1958.

Povl Bang-Jensen later found work with a refugee aid organization. On the morning of November 23, 1959, he set off for work—but never arrived. Three days later, a neighbor discovered his body beside a frozen, snow-covered path in Alley Pond Park, not far from his home. The official investigation ruled the death a suicide; however, due to several suspicious circumstances, it seems most likely that he was killed because of his integrity and his steadfast support for the Hungarian cause.

For years, Hungarians who had settled in Denmark laid wreaths on Povl Bang-Jensen’s grave. On the 30th anniversary of his death, a symbolic kopjafa (carved wooden memorial post)—which stands there to this day—was dedicated in Plot 301.