Folke Bernadotte
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Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (2 January 1895 – 17 September 1948) was a Swedish nobleman and diplomat. In World War II, he negotiated the release of about 450 Danish Jews and 30,550 non-Jewish prisoners of many nations from the Nazi German Theresienstadt concentration camp.Template:Efn They were released on 14 April 1945.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Independent">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1945 he received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler, though the offer was ultimately rejected by the allies.
After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties. Upon his death, Ralph Bunche took up his work at the UN, successfully mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Egypt.
Early lifeEdit
Folke Bernadotte was born in Stockholm into the House of Bernadotte, the Swedish royal family. His father, Prince Oscar Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (formerly Prince Oscar of Sweden, Duke of Gotland), was the second son of King Oscar II of Sweden; his mother, Ebba Munck af Fulkila, had been a lady-in-waiting to Victoria of Baden, the wife of Crown Prince Gustaf. Oscar had married Ebba without the consent of the King, and so was forced to renounce his Swedish titles; in 1892, he was granted the titles of Prince Bernadotte and Count of Wisborg by his uncle, Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Documentation by Government of Luxembourg 1892-04-02</ref>
Bernadotte attended school in Stockholm, after which he entered training to become a cavalry officer at the Royal Military Academy. He took the officer's exam in 1915, was commissioned a lieutenant in 1918, and subsequently was promoted to the rank of major.
Bernadotte represented Sweden in 1933 at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition, and later served as Swedish commissioner general at the New York World's Fair in 1939–40. Bernadotte had long been involved with the Swedish Boy Scouts (Sveriges Scoutförbund), and took over as director of the organization in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II, Bernadotte worked to integrate the scouts into Sweden's defense plan, training them in anti-aircraft work and as medical assistants. Bernadotte was appointed Vice Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross in 1943.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Diplomatic careerEdit
World War IIEdit
During the autumns of 1943 and 1944, he organized prisoner exchanges which brought home 11,000 prisoners from Germany via Sweden. While Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross in 1945, Bernadotte attempted to negotiate an armistice between Germany and the Allies. He also led several rescue missions in Germany for the Red Cross. In April 1945, Heinrich Himmler asked Bernadotte to convey a peace proposal to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Harry S. Truman without the knowledge of Adolf Hitler. The main point of the proposal was that Germany would surrender only to the Western Allies (the United Kingdom and the United States), but would be allowed to continue resisting the Soviet Union. According to Bernadotte, he told Himmler that the proposal had no chance of acceptance, but nevertheless he passed it on to the Swedish government and the Western Allies. It had no lasting effect.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp<ref name=Bernadotte-Lewenhaupt>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
White BusesEdit
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Upon the initiative of the Norwegian diplomat Niels Christian Ditleff in the final months of the war, Bernadotte acted as the negotiator for a rescue operation transporting interned Norwegians, Danes and other western European inmates from German concentration camps to hospitals in Sweden.
In the spring of 1945, Bernadotte was in Germany when he met Heinrich Himmler, who was briefly appointed commander of an entire German army following the assassination attempt on Hitler the year before. Bernadotte had originally been assigned to retrieve Norwegian and Danish POWs in Germany. He returned on 1 May 1945, the day after Hitler's death. Following an interview, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote that Bernadotte succeeded in rescuing 15,000 people from German concentration camps, including about 8,000 Danes and Norwegians and 7,000 women of French, Polish, Czech, British, American, Argentinian, and Chinese nationalities. The missions took around two months, and exposed the Swedish Red Cross staff to significant danger, both due to political difficulties and by taking them through areas under Allied bombing.
The mission became known for its buses, painted entirely white except for the Red Cross emblem on the side, so that they would not be mistaken for military targets. In total it included 308 personnel (about 20 medics and the rest volunteer soldiers), 36 hospital buses, 19 trucks, seven passenger cars, seven motorcycles, a tow truck, a field kitchen, and full supplies for the entire trip, including food and gasoline, none of which was permitted to be obtained in Germany. A count of 21,000 people rescued included 8,000 Danes and Norwegians, 5,911 Poles, 2,629 French, 1,615 Jews, and 1,124 Germans.
After Germany's surrender, the White Buses mission continued in May and June and about 10,000 additional liberated prisoners were thus evacuated.
Bernadotte recounted the White Buses mission in his book The End. My Humanitarian Negotiations in Germany in 1945 and Their Political Consequences, published on June 15, 1945 in Swedish.<ref name=Bernadotte-Lewenhaupt/>
Postwar controversyEdit
Following the war, some controversies arose regarding Bernadotte's leadership of the White Buses expedition, some personal and some as to the mission itself. One aspect involved a long-standing feud between Bernadotte and Himmler's personal masseur, Felix Kersten, who had played a role in facilitating Bernadotte's access to Himmler,<ref name=Palmer-94>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> but whom Bernadotte resisted crediting after the war.<ref name=Palmer-94/>Template:Rp The resulting feud between Bernadotte and Kersten came to public attention through British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp In 1953, Trevor-Roper published an article based on an interview and documents originating with Kersten.<ref name=Atlantic-TR53>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The article stated that Bernadotte's role in the rescue operations was that of "transport officer, no more". Kersten was quoted as saying that, according to Himmler, Bernadotte was opposed to the rescue of Jews and understood "the necessity of our fight against World Jewry".
Shortly following the publication of his article, Trevor-Roper began to retreat from these charges. At the time of his article, Kersten had just been nominated by the Dutch government for the Nobel Peace Prize for thwarting a Nazi plan to deport the entire Dutch population, based primarily on Kersten's own claims to this effect.<ref name=Atlantic-TR53/> A later investigation by Dutch historian Louis de Jong concluded that no such plan had existed, however, and that Kersten's documents were partly fabricated.Template:Efn Following these revelations and others, Trevor-Roper told journalist Barbara Amiel in 1995 that he was no longer certain about the allegations, and that Bernadotte may merely have been following his orders to rescue Danish and Norwegian prisoners.Template:Efn Several other historians have also questioned Kersten's account, concluding that the accusations were based on a forgery or a distortion devised by Kersten.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Some controversy regarding the White Buses trip has also arisen in Scandinavia, particularly regarding the priority given to Scandinavian prisoners.<ref name=Persson00/><ref name=Cesarani-Levine02/> Political scientist Sune Persson judged these doubts to be contradicted by the documentary evidence. He concluded, "The accusations against Count Bernadotte ... to the effect that he refused to save Jews from the concentration camps are obvious lies" and listed many prominent eyewitnesses who testified on Bernadotte's behalf, including the World Jewish Congress representative in Stockholm in 1945.<ref name=Persson00/>Template:Rp
UN mediatorEdit
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{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} In 1948, Bernadotte played a central but brief role in the expanding Arab-Israeli conflict, a role which culminated in his assassination.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed Resolution 181 for the Partition of Palestine, endorsing an independent Jewish state. Violence immediately broke out between Zionist forces and Palestinian fighters; this first phase of conflict, known as the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, lasted until May 14, 1948, when the Zionist leadership proclaimed the independent State of Israel and Britain began the termination of its 27-year control of Palestine. Arab nations bordering Israel immediately joined the battle on the Palestinian side, marking the commencement of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The United Nations Security Council demanded an immediate cease-fire, and the secretary general appointed Bernadotte as "United Nations Mediator in Palestine."<ref>UNGA@unispal, Resolution 186 (S-2). Appointment and terms of reference of a United Nations Mediator in Palestine Template:Webarchive (doc.nr. A/RES/186 (S-2)), 14 May 1948</ref>
It was the first official mediation in the UN's history - Bernadotte's assigment was to effect a cease-fire between the Zionist and Arab forces and then seek a peaceful resolution by proposing partition plans.<ref>Gordis, Daniel, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, Harper Collins, New York, 2016, pp. 176-178</ref> Bernadotte succeeded in achieving an initial truce, which went into effect on June 11 and lasted until July 8.
Achieving a satisfactory resolution to the conflict was significantly more difficult; Bernadotte wrote that "in putting forward any proposal for the solution of the Palestine problem, one must bear in mind the aspirations of the Jews, the political difficulties and differences of opinion of the Arab leaders, the strategic interests of Great Britain, the financial commitment of the United States and the Soviet Union, the outcome of the war, and finally the authority and prestige of the United Nations."<ref>Diary of Folke Bernadotte, To Jerusalem, Hodder & Stoughton, 1951, pp. 114–115</ref><ref name="Sachar1998"> Template:Cite book</ref>
Bernadotte's first proposal, which he submitted to the various parties at the end of June 1948, avoided granting statehood to either Israelis or Palestinians; this plan gained no traction. His drafts of a second proposal included statehood for both sides, but met with substantial Israeli criticism and resistance because it offered Israel less territory than the original United Nations partition proposal only a year earlier, and because Bernadotte strongly supported the return of the roughly 700,000 Palestinian refugees to the villages from which they had been displaced. Historian Daniel Gordis has written that these positions "for many Israelis, impugned any pretense that Bernadotte was a fair arbiter."<ref>Gordis, Israel: A concise History, pp. 187-188</ref>
AssassinationEdit
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On Friday 17 September 1948, four members of the Zionist paramilitary militant organization Lehi, sometimes referred to in the West as the Stern Gang, dressed in the uniforms of IDF soldiers and attacked Bernadotte's UN convoy as it drove through West Jerusalem, killing him as well as the French officer riding next to him, Colonel André Serot.
Planning and backgroundEdit
The Stern Gang saw Bernadotte as a puppet of the British and the Arabs and therefore a serious threat to the emerging State of Israel.<ref name=Heller95/>Template:Rp Since a truce was in force, Lehi feared that the Israeli leadership would agree to Bernadotte's peace proposals, which it considered disastrous.<ref name=Heller95/>Template:Rp<ref>Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. Political Assassinations by Jews. SUNY Press 1993 Template:ISBN, pp. 267–274.</ref> The group was unaware the Israeli government had already decided to reject Bernadotte's plan.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp<ref>Shamir, loc. cit., p. 241.</ref>
The killing was approved by the three-man 'center' of Lehi: Yitzhak Yezernitsky (the future Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Shamir), Nathan Friedmann (also called Natan Yellin-Mor) and Yisrael Eldad (also known as Scheib). A fourth leader, Emmanuel Strassberg (Hanegbi) was also suspected by the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of being part of the group that ordered the assassination.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp<ref> J. Bowyer Bell, Assassination in International Politics, International Studies Quarterly, vol 16, March 1972, 59–82. </ref><ref name="Haberman1995"> Template:Cite news Review of Kati Marton's biography. </ref><ref name="Cowell1991"> Template:Cite news</ref> The assassination was planned by Lehi's Jerusalem operations chief, Yehoshua Zettler.<ref name="Kifner1988"/>
The attackEdit
Template:Quotebox A four-man team, consisting of Yehoshua Cohen, Yitzhak Ben-Moshe (Markovitz), Avraham Steinberg, and Meshulam Makover, ambushed Bernadotte's motorcade in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood. The team left a Lehi base in a Jeep and set up a makeshift roadblock at Ben Zion Guini Square, off Hapalmach Street, and waited in the jeep. When Bernadotte's motorcade approached, Cohen, Ben-Moshe, and Steinberg got out and approached it, while Makover, the driver, remained in the jeep. Captain Moshe Hillman, the motorcade's Israeli liaison officer, who was sitting in the leading UN vehicle, called out in Hebrew to let them through, but was ignored.
Cohen came up to Bernadotte's sedan and fired through an open window, pumping six shots into Bernadotte's chest, throat and arms and 18 into Colonel André Serot who was seated to his left, killing both.<ref name="Independent"/> Serot had swapped places in the motorcade to join Bernadotte - they had become friends after Bernadotte was instrumental in saving Serot's wife's life in a German concentration camp.<ref name="Independent"/> Ben-Moshe and Steinberg shot at the tires of the UN vehicles, while Cohen finished the magazine by firing at the radiator. The driver of the sedan, Colonel Begley, got out and tried to grapple with Cohen as he fired his last shots, but was burned in the face by the gun flashes. Ben-Moshe and Steinberg then rushed back and mounted the jeep, which quickly accelerated down a side road, while Cohen ran away from the scene across a roadside field.<ref name="Kifner1988"> Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="baram">Template:Cite news</ref>
All four members of the hit team made it to the religious community of Shaarei Pina, where they hid with local Haredi sympathizers. After a few days in hiding, they fled to Tel Aviv in the back of a furniture truck.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Following the shooting, Bernadotte's car sped to Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital, despite damage to the radiator; the lead vehicle followed as its tires came apart. At the hospital, Bernadotte was pronounced dead. His body was moved to the YMCA, after which it was taken to Haifa and flown back to Sweden. Bernadotte was granted a state funeral, Abba Eban attended on behalf of Israel. Bernadotte was survived by a widow and two sons, a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old. He was buried in Prince Oscar Bernadotte's family tomb at the Northern Cemetery in Stockholm.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
InvestigationEdit
The Israel Police, along with the military police and security services, investigated the assassination, but failed to identify any of the participants in the assassination, and the case was eventually closed without any of the participants having been identified. It has been suggested that the reasons for the failure of the investigation were poor coordination between these bodies, which resulted in information that may have assisted the police not being turned over to them, and the lack of proficiency among police officers and investigators in the early days of the Israel Police.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The murder case was identified as 148/48 in Israeli police records.<ref name="makorrishon">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Lehi leaders initially denied responsibility for the attack.<ref name="sdc">Template:Cite news</ref> Only later did Lehi take responsibility for the killings in the name of Hazit Hamoledet (the Homeland Front), a name they copied from a war-time Bulgarian resistance group.Template:Efn<ref name=Heller95>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp
In the wake of universal condemnation of the killing, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion moved to shut down Zionist paramilitary groups like the Lehi and the Irgun permanently.<ref>Gordis, Israel: A Concise History, p. 189</ref> These groups were publicly discredited and disavowed, their members were forcibly disarmed, and many were arrested.
Yellin-Mor and another Lehi member, Mattityahu Shmulevitz, 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.<ref name=Heller95/>Template:Rp Betty Knut-Lazarus, a Lehi militant, and the granddaughter of composer Alexander Scriabin, was also imprisoned for being allegedly involved in the killing, before being subsequently released.<ref>Lazaris, V. (2000). Три женщины. Tel Aviv: Lado, pp. 363–368</ref>
Years later, Cohen's role was uncovered by David Ben-Gurion's biographer Michael Bar Zohar, while Cohen was working as Ben-Gurion's personal bodyguard. The first public admission of Lehi's role in the killing was made on the anniversary of the assassination in 1977.<ref>Yair Amikam, Yediot Aharonot, 28 February 1977: interview with Yehoshua Zetler and Yisrael Eldad. English translation in Journal of Palestine Studies, vol 6, no. 4 (1977) 145–147.</ref> The statute of limitations for the murder had expired in 1971.<ref name="Haberman1995" /><ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp In 1988, two years after Cohen's death, Zettler and Makover publicly confessed their role in the assassination and confirmed that Cohen had killed Bernadotte.<ref name="makorrishon"/> In the late 1960s, Israeli journalist Baruch Nadel published a book in which he also claimed to have taken part in planning the murder.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
The weapon which was used in the assassination (an MP 40, serial number 2581)<ref name="makorrishon"/> was lost, and was only found again in 2018 during an inventory check in the Template:Ill, when an unidentified box was found to contain an MP 40 machine pistol and the curator, Shlomi Shitrit, decided to identify the history of the weapon. Prior to finding it, it was believed to have been destroyed.<ref name="makorrishon"/>
AftermathEdit
The day after the murders, by means of Security Council Resolution 57, 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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Swedish government believed that Bernadotte had been assassinated by Israeli government agents.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp They publicly attacked the inadequacy of the Israeli investigation, and campaigned unsuccessfully to delay Israel's admission to the United Nations.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp In 1950, Sweden recognized Israel, but relations remained frosty despite Israeli attempts to mollify Sweden, such as through the planting of a Bernadotte Forest by the Jewish National Fund in Israel.<ref name=Ilan89/>Template:Rp At a ceremony in Tel Aviv in May 1995, attended by the Swedish deputy prime minister, Israeli Foreign Minister and Labor Party member Shimon Peres issued a "condemnation of terror, thanks for the rescue of the Jews and regret that Bernadotte was murdered in a terrorist way", adding that "We hope this ceremony will help in healing the wound."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Ralph Bunche, Bernadotte's American deputy, succeeded him as UN mediator. Bunche was successful in bringing about the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Awards and memorialsEdit
In 1998, Bernadotte was posthumously awarded one of the first three Dag Hammarskjöld Medals, given to UN peacekeepers who are killed in the line of duty.<ref>The First Dag Hammarskjöld Medals: Biographical Notes.</ref>
The university library at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, US is named after him.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem features one of the "white buses" of Bernadotte's mission to Nazi Germany, which it recognises as rescuing 25,000 prisoners including several thousand Jews.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Yad Vashem did not award him the Righteous Among the Nations title. His name does not appear in that database's Sweden section.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Wife and childrenEdit
In 1928 in Pleasantville, New York,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Folke Bernadotte married Estelle Romaine Manville (1904–1984), whose family had founded part of the Johns-Manville Corporation. They had four sons, two of whom died in childhood.
- Count Gustaf Eduard Bernadotte of Wisborg (1930–1936)
- Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg (born 1931), married Christine Glahns
- Count Fredrik Oscar Bernadotte of Wisborg (1934–1944)
- Count Bertil Oscar Bernadotte of Wisborg (born 1935) married Rose-Marie Heering (1942–1967) and Jill Georgina Rhodes-Maddox
Seven grandchildren were all born after Folke Bernadotte's death. His widow Estelle Bernadotte remarried in 1973.
In September 2008, it became official that before his marriage Bernadotte had a daughter with actress Template:Ill (1892–1981):<ref>"Bernadotte's unknown daughter" Fokus, 12 September 2008.</ref>
- Jeanne Birgitta Sofia Kristina Matthiessen, née Ericson (1921–1991), who was adopted by Carl G. W. Matthiessen (1886–1951) when he married Lillie Ericson in 1925.
BooksEdit
- Template:Cite book (Swedish title: Slutet.)
- Template:Cite book
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See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
NotesEdit
CitationsEdit
General sourcesEdit
Further readingEdit
- Ben-Dror, Elad (2015). Ralph Bunche and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Mediation and the UN 1947–1949, Routledge. Template:ISBN.
External linksEdit
Template:Sister project Template:Sister project
- "M. Friedman: The road to freedom. An essay by survivor of the holocaust". From the Memory Project, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Yehoshua Zettler – Daily Telegraph obituary
- Photo LIFE archive Bernadotte Palestine August 1948
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