The British Pathé audiovisual archive offers us, with just a mouse click, the image of an attractive 53-year-old man, with an austere appearance and the air of an aristocrat. In black and white, we see him shaking hands left and right, without losing the friendly smile that he shows whenever he gets off, agile, from those planes that take him from here to there to fulfill a mission that the very young UN has entrusted to him. To him, with proven diplomatic experience, who only a few years earlier had rescued thousands of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis.
Such a resume will not prevent Count Folke Bernadotte from being ambushed with homicidal intentions by a group of Israeli terrorists on the afternoon of September 17, 1948.
Bernadotte was born in 1895 in Sweden, predestined to become an important player in national politics, being part of the royal family. Educated with care, he developed as a child a deep sense of morality, which years later made him write a reflection: “We were not brought into this world to be happy, but to make others happy.”
But before Bernadotte applied himself conscientiously to fulfilling that maxim, he forged body and mind in the fires of the military, becoming a disciplined dragon who, however, could not continue his promising career. This was due to the appearance of a chronic ailment that doctors of the time called “intestinal bleeding,” and which was probably ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.
Despite this blow, the neutrality that Sweden had inaugurated in 1920 provided Bernadotte with new areas in which to develop his capabilities. Thus, in 1942, in the middle of World War II, he became vice president of the national Red Cross, a position from which he took care of prisoners of war, achieving the first exchange between Germans and Allies. But the real test for Bernadotte came in 1945. The day he met Heinrich Himmler.
During his time as a negotiator in the prisoner exchange, Bernadotte achieved a reputation as someone whose word could be trusted, something that was decisive in Himmler receiving him in February 1945 in order to discuss the liberation of the Scandinavian prisoners. What the fearsome Nazi did not know is that the Swedish count was going to cheat a little.
And, thanks to his diplomatic role, Bernadotte had enjoyed a certain freedom when moving on German roads, which caused him to run into a group of women from a concentration camp. After seeing that he wrote in his diary that “there was no future for them and their present was hell,” and he decided that he would free as many as he could. With that idea, he went to see Himmler, camouflaging his requests as simple interest in the release of Scandinavian prisoners.
The first talk didn’t go too well. The German joked that Bernadotte had not achieved any rank in the Army other than major, to which Bernadotte responded: “There is nothing more surprising than that you are commander in chief.” But, little by little, the deal between the two was softened thanks in part to Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s confidant, who supported Bernadotte’s requests.
After several deliberations, which occurred while Bernadotte was preparing a fleet of white vehicles with the markings of the Red Cross across the border to evacuate the prisoners, Himmler relented. The count spent the remaining months until the end of the war removing as many people as he could from the German concentration camps.
It is estimated that he freed some 20,937 people of various nationalities, but it is more difficult to determine how many were Jews. A controversial topic, as Bernadotte has often been accused of caring too much about Scandinavian prisoners. However, researchers believe that he saved about seven thousand Jews, probably half of them women. A figure that, despite far exceeding the approximately twelve hundred rescued by the well-known Schindler, has not earned Bernadotte an Oscar-winning film.
After the Second World War, our character became a hero in his country. In addition, the French decorated him with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, he received a mention from the World Jewish Congress and, most importantly, a huge number of dolls arrived at his house embroidered by the women he had freed from horror.
In 1945 he was appointed president of the Swedish Red Cross, and continued to enjoy great international popularity and appreciation. To the point that the newly formed UN chose him as one of its champions of peace, entrusting him with the most difficult mission of the moment. Put an end to this new war that had arisen in Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
On May 20, 1948, Bernadotte accepts the mission to pacify Palestine. Only six days have passed since the proclamation of the State of Israel and the tension is maximum. However, he does not falter. He meets with the parties, travels the terrain to see how the Arabs live, records the growing violence and, despite all the obstacles, gets Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, rising up against Israel in defense of Palestine, to commit to a four-week truce.
Those decisive days allowed Bernadotte to draft a peace proposal that contemplates the creation of two states divided politically, but united economically, with Jerusalem for the Arabs, but with an autonomous government for the Jews. Ideas that may seem impossible to us today, but that, at the time, did not arouse as much alarm among Israelis as a paragraph of the treaty in which Bernadotte raises “the right of the Arab refugee to return home.”
Because the nobleman has seen hundreds of thousands of Arabs expelled from their homes, now occupied by the Israelis, living poorly in “terrible” conditions, as he will write in his diaries. And he believes that it is fair that those people be treated humanely. This feeling caused many Israelis to begin to perceive the Swede as a nuisance.
Bernadotte does not reach the agreement, but he does not give up. He meets with each other again. He travels, as he has been doing all his life, in search of the treaty that will end the violence. And he finds himself in that task when the news breaks. On September 16, a Rhodes radio station announced that he had been murdered. Bernadotte, who is still alive, celebrates the fake news and prepares for the trip he will make to Jerusalem the next day.
But the warnings are piling up, and the Israeli government lets him know that, if he lands at the Arab airport of Kalandia, as is his intention, he risks an attack. Bernadotte ignores the message and reaches his destination without problems, where rumors of possible ambushes reach him. There are those who suggest that he change his itinerary, but he responds that he will run “the same risks” as his observers.
He leaves for Jerusalem, taken by armed gangs and where he is often greeted by supporters of Lehi, an Israeli extremist group, with banners that read: “Stockholm is yours. Jerusalem is ours. You work in vain.”
Despite everything, he manages to meet with several members of the UN and meets the French war hero André-Pierre Sérot, whose wife, arrested by the Gestapo during World War II, Bernadotte had saved. They both decide to return together to the hotel where they are staying. They ride in the third of the three vehicles that make up the UN convoy, well identified with the institution’s flags. During the journey, a green jeep blocks their way.
Its occupants look like members of the Israeli army. They go to the driver of the first car in the convoy, who believes that the soldiers are doing a random check and tells them: “Let us pass, he is the UN mediator.” These words activate the soldiers, who, in reality, are Lehi terrorists. One of them runs up to Bernadotte, machine-gunning both him and his friend André before fleeing. Neither of them survives.
Israel condemned the attack, but, although many of the Lehi members were arrested, the murderers of the count and his friend were never identified. Furthermore, a general amnesty ended up freeing all members of the organization, and years later, in 1983, Yitzhak Shamir, who was the mastermind behind the attack against Bernadotte, ended up becoming prime minister.
As for Bernadotte, after his death the UN decided, thanking him for his “good offices”, to launch Resolution 194, which supported the right of the Palestinian people to return to their homes. Seventy-six years later, that part of the Swedish count’s will remains unexecuted.
