One evening in September, an American couple traversing Europe camped after dark in a national park near Sundholmen, Sweden, along the Finnish border. At dawn they were awoken by a Swedish official and Europe’s new reality: they had inadvertently pitched their tent next to a refugee encampment. What had been a resort is now packed with refugees from the Middle East, sleeping in bunk beds stacked to the ceiling in its guest rooms.

Similar arrangements can be seen throughout Europe in school gymnasiums and in antiquated airports—anywhere basic services can be provided. This humanitarian crisis is escalating: 744,000 refugees, most from the war-torn Middle East, have flooded into Europe this year. Sweden is expecting to take in an estimated 350,000 asylum-seekers by the end of 2015; Germany, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, nearly 1 million.