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Count Folke Bernadotte: Sweden's Servant of Peace (2010)

’s Servant of Peace Folke Bernadotte was a great humanitarian who navigated the perilous path between warring parties, a mission that was to cost him his life. On 17 September 1948 Count Folke Bernadotte, the first of many United Nations mediators assigned the thankless task of attempting to find a peaceful solution to the seemingly intractable problem of hostility in the Middle East, was assassinated in Jerusalem.

On 17 September 1948 Count Folke Bernadotte, the first of many United Nations mediators assigned the thankless task of attempting to find a peaceful solution to the seemingly intractable problem of hostility in the Middle East, was assassinated in Jerusalem. The hopelessness of Bernadotte’s peacemaking efforts was underlined by the fact that his murder was the second attempt on his life that day, the first being carried out by the ‘other side’ in the conflict: a young Arab had shot at his car as he drove from the airport, the bullet passing harmlessly through the vehicle’s bumper. The convoys, painted bright white and emblazoned with huge red crosses to deter the Allied planes then ravaging Germany, made their perilous journeys bearing their often sick and starving human cargoes to freedom in Sweden.

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