Folke Bernadotte

The Count Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg , born the January 2nd 1895 with Stockholm, and dead the September 17th 1948 with Jerusalem, was a Diplomate Swedish known to have negotiated the release of 15.000 prisoners of the Concentration camps during the Second world war.

Ascent

Folke Bernadotte was the grandson of Oscar II of Sweden, which was king of Sweden and Norway, and the nephew of Gustave V of Sweden.

Diplomat during the Second world war

In 1945, then vice-president of the the Swedish Red Cross, Bernadotte tried to negotiate an armistice between the Germany and the Alliés. At the any end of the war, it accepted quoted by Heinrich Himmler of a complete rendering of the Germany with respect to the Great Britain and of the the United States, in the condition which Germany is authorized to continue resistance against the Soviet Union. This offer was transmitted to Winston Churchill and Harry S. Truman.

Little before the end the Second world war, Bernadotte organized a rescue operation to evacuate off-set S, in particular Norwegian S and Danish, in Swedish hospitals, as of the off-set S Francophone S of the Cape Arcona. It released 15 thus; 000 people of the hell of the Concentration camps, and acquired an immense popularity.

However, of recent historical work indicate that this operation had a moral cost, occulted a long time: to allow the Scandinavian release of the prisoners S, some 2.000 other prisoners, patients or dying, “mainly French, but also Russian S and Polish”, had left the Nazi camp of Neuengamme and… transferred towards other Nazi camps. The transfer was carried out in same “the white Bus”, led by drivers Swedish, who were used for the evacuation of the Scandinavians. “The majority of the prisoners died during the way, or right afterwards.”

Mediator of UNO

Following the Plane of division of Palestine of 1947, confrontations burst between Jews and Arabic in Palestine. Bernadotte is named mediator of the the United Nations in Palestine on June 20th, 1948. He is thus the first official mediator of the history of the organization. Its mission is then immense: to put an end to the engagements and to supervise the application of the territorial division.

Causes behind the assassination of Bernadotte

Very quickly, the tension with the Israeli part grows. June 27th, the count proposes a foreground, with an Israeli State on 20% of Palestine (instead of the 55% envisaged), which more is confederated with the Transjordanie. The Palestinian State disappears and its territory is allotted to the Transjordanie. This plan is rejected by all the parts, including Arabic. “Bernadotte becomes the target, in Israel, of a virulent press campaign”. “In July, the members of Lehi had already threatened Bernadotte of death, following a meeting which it had had with two members of the Stern, on July 24th: " We intend to kill Bernadotte and any other United Nations observer in uniform which will come to Jerusalem ". When he asked them why, " They answered that their organization was given so that Jerusalem is under the authority of the State of Israel and that it would not allow an interference on behalf of an national organization or internationale" ”

August 1st, Israel Eldad, one of the three leaders of the Stern group (or Lehi, a group armed radical Zionist) declare, at the time of a public assembly in Jerusalem: “The combatants for the freedom of Israel send a warning statement to the United Nations observers to the generals of Bernadotte. We will employ against the representatives of a foreign capacity the same methods that we employed against the British”.

According to Israel Eldad, the decision to kill Bernadotte is made in August by the three leaders of Lehi.

September 16th, Folke Bernadotte proposes a new plan of division of Palestine, in which the Trans Jordan would annex the Negev and the West Bank. The confederation between Israel and Transjordanie disappear. This plan also envisages a Jewish State occupying whole the Galileo, the passage of Jerusalem under international control and the repatriation (or compensation) of the refugees. Concerning the latter subject, the Count Bernadotte wrote “would be to offend the elementary principles to prevent these innocent victims of the conflict from turning over to their hearth, whereas the Jewish immigrants flow in Palestine and moreover threaten in a permanent way to replace the Arab refugees enracinés in this ground since centuries. ” He criticizes “plundering Zionist with large scales and the destruction of villages without apparent military need. ”

This second plan is again refused by the Arab Israelis and countries (Transjordanie, large gaining project of Bernadotte, does not dare to accept, account held of the general atmosphere).

The assassination of Bernadotte

After the landing with Kalandia - Jerusalem, Bernadotte and its guides go by car to Jerusalem. With the program of the day, two things: to meet the Observers of the truce and to make a choice for the site of a new general headquarter, because up to that point Bernadotte and its team operated since the Hotel of the Pinks, located on the Greek island of Rhodos, which was in her eyes too much far from the zone of war.

After having met the observers of the truce and having visited some possible sites for the building of the general headquarter, the convoy of Bernadotte, composed of three cars, entered the Katamon district of Jerusalem. Each car raised the flags of the United Nations and the Red Cross, and nobody, in this convoy, was armed. Bernadotte, as for him, had refused on several occasions the bullet-proof jacket that one proposed to him.

In the car of the Mediator, on the back bench, had taken seat: Bernadotte, the French colonel Andre Sérot, chief of the United Nations observers in Jerusalem, and the general Swedish Aage Lundstrom, chief of the supervision of the truce in Palestine, and staff representative of Bernadotte.

The district of Katamon, under control of the Israeli army, was almost deserted. The Christian inhabitants of this still easy part of Jerusalem at one time had been expelled with the point of the bayonets by the armed forces Zionists, at the end of April.

To have crossed a check-point of the Israeli army shortly after, the convoy is stopped by a jeep which bars the passage to him. Three armed men, covered uniform of the Israeli army, emerge from this jeep while the driver remains at the wheel. The three cars are sprinkled balls. Bernadotte is cut down with end carrying of six gusts of Schmeisser machine-gun.

In their typed declaration, recognizing their responsibility in the double assassination, the killers ask that one want to excuse them well to have cut down Sérot “by error”.

It is known today that “the murder was planned by Zettler, the commander of the section of Jerusalem (the last in the hardest activity and), that it was decided in August with the more high level by the three persons in charge of the center and that the execution was entrusted by it to a veteran of Lehi, Yéhochua Cohen. The two other gunners were Yitzhak Ben-Moshe and “Gingi” Zinger, and the driver of the jeep was called Meshulam Makover.

Continuations of the assassination of Bernadotte

The assassination of Bernadotte caused a universal judgment.

The Lehi is immediately suspecté. “Of 24 hours, more than 250 members of Lehi are challenged in all the country. The government benefits from it to dissolve the units of the IZL in Jerusalem, although it knows that they were not frays with the crime. Two days later, the Lehi is officially dissolved under a law “for the prevention of terrorism”. ” “Zettler will affirm to have received an explicit promise of the Minister of Interior Department Yitzhak Grünbaum: “you will be condemned to satisfy the world opinion. After which, you will be amnestied”. ” In fact, “Yalin Mor and its assistant Mattiyahu Shmulovitz, condemned on February 2nd, 1949 to several years of prison, not for murder but for membership of an terrorist organization, two weeks after all the other prisoners of Lehi will be slackened will profit from a general amnesty”.

Nathan Yalin-Mor was elected with the Knesset in January 1949 and the gunner Yeoshua Cohen became the bodyguard personnel of Ben Gourion in the years 1950. Yitzhak Shamir, the chief of the operations of Lehi, will become as for him Prime Minister of Israel twice.

Its proposals for peace

Three days after its death, a report describing was published the efforts suggested by Bernadotte to lead to peace. It contained the following proposals:

To transform the first lull in the engagements into a permanent peace, or at least into a cease-fire, and to determine the final borders of the States Jew and Arabic in Palestine;
To grant the desert of the Negev at the Arab State and the Galileo at the Jewish State;
To internationalize Jerusalem;
To give the control of the Arab parts of the Palestine to the Arab States (in fact with the Transjordanie);
to make sure that the port of Haïfa and the Aéroport of Lod serve at the same time the Arab and Jewish parts of the area, as well as the Arab States of the vicinity;
To organize the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees or, failing this, their compensation;
To establish a committee of reconciliation, first stage having to lead to a durable peace in the area.

The Israeli government disallowed these proposals. Bernadotte was replaced by the mediator states-unien Ralph Bunche, who will negotiate finally a cease-fire signed on the Greek island of Rhodos.

External bonds

Folke Bernadotte and the first roadmap
Folke Bernadotte - how did his life end?

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