Folke Bernadotte

Count Folke Bernadotte was born on January 2, 1895, in Stockholm, the grandson of King Oscar II. Serving as Vice-Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II, he conducted humanitarian prisoner-of-war exchanges between Allied and German forces.

In the spring of 1945, negotiating directly with Heinrich Himmler in Berlin, Bernadotte led the historic White Buses (Vita bussarna) humanitarian expedition into crumbling Nazi Germany, rescuing over 21,000 concentration camp inmates (including Danish, Norwegian, French, and Jewish prisoners) to safety in Sweden. In May 1948, the UN Security Council appointed him its first official mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine. On September 17, 1948, his motorcade was ambushed in Jerusalem by the militant group Lehi, dying a martyr for peace.