Count Folke Bernadotte, Swedish Red Cross, Germany, 1945

Count Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948) was Vice President of the Swedish Red Cross in Germany in 1945.  He was nephew to King Gustav V of Sweden.  In the Spring of 1945, Bernadotte negotiated with SS commander Heinrich Himmler for the release of thousands of prisoners held in Nazi concentration camps.  These included over 400 Danish Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt.  Later, he negotiated and arranged for the release of 10, 0000 women from the Ravensbrück and Bergen Belsen concentration camps.  He arranged for special busses, converted to ambulances, known as the "white busses," to take them from the camps.  They were then transported by boat to Sweden.  Bernadotte wrote about his wartime activities in a book entitled, The Curtain Falls. 

In 1948, Bernadotte was appointed to the position of Mediator for the Security Council of the United Nations in Palestine.  Bernadotte negotiated a temporary truce between Arab and Jewish armies.  He was assassinated by the Jewish underground on September 17, 1948, while serving in this position.  The Israeli government has since apologized to his family.