Folke Bernadotte

Shot on 17 September 1948 in Jerusalem by gunmen of the Lehi group; the UN mediator who rescued thousands in the war was killed pursuing an Arab-Israeli truce.

Overview

Count Bernadotte, Swedish diplomat and president of the Swedish Red Cross, had negotiated the release of thousands of prisoners from German camps in the White Buses operation of 1945. As the first United Nations mediator, appointed after the 1948 war began, he brokered truces and proposed boundaries and refugee return that the extremist Lehi group, the Stern Gang, judged a betrayal of the new state. Lehi gunmen in Israeli army uniforms stopped his convoy in the Katamon quarter and shot him and the French colonel Serot. Israel disbanded the group, tried and amnestied the killers; one leading figure, Yitzhak Shamir, later became prime minister, which fed lasting controversy. Bernadotte murder remains a dark precedent of the murder of UN peacemakers.