Folke Bernadotte
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Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden |
Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg (
2 January 1895 -
17 September 1948) or simply Count Bernadotte, was a Swedish diplomat noted for his negotiation of the release of 15,000 mostly
Scandinavian prisoners [
1] from the German
concentration camps in
World War II and for his assassination by members of a Jewish paramilitary organization during his service as
United Nations mediator in
Palestine.
He was the son of
Oscar Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (formerly Prince Oscar of Sweden) and his wife, née Ebba Henrietta Munck af Fulkila. Oscar, the son of King
Oscar II of
Sweden and
Norway, married without the King's consent in 1888, thereby leaving the
royal family, and was (in 1892) given the hereditary
title Count of Wisborg by the Grand Duke
Adolphe of
Luxembourg.
On
1 December 1928 he married Estelle Manville (b.
26 September 1904 in
Pleasantville, New York), a wealthy American heiress whom he had met in the French Riviera. They had four sons: Gustaf (b. 1930), Folke (b. 1931), Frederik (b. 1934) and Bertil (b. 1935).
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Count Folke Bernadotte talking to Australian Prisoners of War in Germany, 1943 |
Bernadotte, while vice-president of the Swedish
Red Cross in
1945, attempted to negotiate an
armistice between
Germany and
the Allies. At the very end of the war he received
Heinrich Himmler's offer, from
24 April of Germany's complete surrender to
Britain and the
United States, provided
Germany was allowed to continue resistance against the
Soviet Union. The offer was passed on to Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and President
Harry S. Truman.
Just before the end of
World War II he gained much good will leading a rescue operation transporting interned
Norwegians,
Danes and other West-
Europeans inmates from German Concentration Camps to hospitals in
Sweden, of whom some speaking
French from the
Cap Arcona. In the "
White Buses" of the Bernadotte-expedition 15,000 persons were liberated, mostly
Scandinavians but also quite a few
Jews.
Bernadotte served on the
World Scout Committee of the
World Organization of the Scout Movement from
1947 until
1948.
Following the
1947 UN Partition Plan, on
20 May 1948, Folke Bernadotte was appointed the
United Nations' mediator in
Palestine. This made him the first official mediator in the history of the world organization. In this capacity, he succeeded in achieving a truce in the
1948 Arab-Israeli War and laid the groundwork for the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
 |
Count Folke Bernadotte in uniform |
Bernadotte was assassinated on
17 September 1948 by members of the
Lehi group, sometimes known as the Stern Gang. The assassination was approved by the three-man Lehi 'center':
Yitzhak Shamir,
Natan Yellin-Mor and
Yisrael Eldad, and planned by the Lehi operations chief in Jerusalem,
Yehoshua Zetler. A four-man team lead by Meshulam Makover ambushed Bernadotte's motorcade in downtown Jerusalem and team member Yehoshua Cohen fired into Bernadotte's car. Bernadotte and his aide,
UN observer Colonel
André Serot were killed. The following day the
United Nations Security Council condemned the killing of Bernadotte as "a cowardly act which appears to have been committed by a criminal group of terrorists in Jerusalem while the United Nations representative was fulfilling his peace-seeking mission in the Holy Land".
[Security Council 57 (1948) Resolution of 18 September 1948.]Lehi took public credit for the murders in the name of a previously unknown group, but Lehi's role was never in doubt. Lehi was forcibly disarmed and many members were arrested, but nobody was ever charged with the murders. Yellin-Mor and another Lehi member Schmuelevich were charged with belonging to a terrorist organization. They were found guilty but immediately released and pardoned (Yellin-Mor had meanwhile been elected to the first
Knesset). Years later, Cohen's role was uncovered by
David Ben-Gurion's biographer
Michael Bar Zohar while Cohen was working for Ben-Gurion as a security guard. The first public admission of Lehi's role in the murder was made in 1977 (
Yediot Aharonot, Feb 28).
Three days after his death, a report describing Bernadotte's peace efforts was published. It included the following proposals:
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1947 United Nations Partition Plan For Palestine |
*To transform the first lull in the fighting into a permanent peace, or at least a ceasefire, and determine the final borders of the Jewish and Arab states in Palestine
*To grant the
Negev desert to the Arab state and the
Galilee to the Jewish state
*To internationalize
Jerusalem*To grant control over the Arab sections of Palestine to the Arab states (in effect,
Transjordan)
*To ensure that the port in
Haifa and the airport in
Lydda serve both the Jewish and Arab sections of the country, and the neighboring Arab states
*To return the Arab refugees to their homes
*To establish a Reconciliation Committee as the first step toward achieving a lasting peace in the region.
The government of
Israel rejected the proposals. After Bernadotte's death, American mediator
Ralph Bunche was appointed to replace him. Bunche eventually negotiated a ceasefire, signed on the Greek island of
Rhodes. See
1949 Armistice Agreements.
* Kushner, Harvey W. (2002).
Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Sage Publications. ISBN 0761924086
* Schwartz, Ted (1992).
Walking with the Damned: The Shocking Murder of the Man Who Freed 30,000 Prisoners From the Nazis. Paragon House, New York. ISBN 1557783152
*
Folke Bernadotte Academy*
Folke Bernadotte - how did his life end?*
Rescuers during the Holocaust Bibliography
