A Forgotten Hero

June 17, 2019
Former foreign correspondent Emling (Setting the World on Fire: The Brief, Astonishing Life of St. Catherine of Siena) delivers a worthy tribute to “the dashing Swedish diplomat who dared to breach Hitler’s inner circle during the waning days of WWII, for the sole purpose of saving thousands of strangers the rest of the world had appeared willing to write off.
” A prologue beginning in 1939 depicts a Polish Jew’s experiences of Nazi oppression, including imprisonment in the concentration camp Ravensbruck, from which she was freed in 1945 in an escape arranged by Folke Bernadotte. Relying on Bernadotte’s writings and conversations with his children and with secondary sources, Emling flashes back to the beginning of her subject’s life: the son of Sweden’s Prince Oscar, Bernadotte began a career in the military and, in 1940, assumed responsibility for providing safe haven for military personnel from hostile countries who had ended up in Sweden. That led to a senior role with the Swedish Red Cross and, ultimately, negotiations with high-level Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, which brought about improved conditions for Scandinavian prisoners and the release of 7,500 women, 1,000 of them Jewish. After the war, Bernadotte was appointed a United Nations mediator in Palestine, where his peace proposals were regarded as “calamitous” by the leaders of Israel’s right-wing Lehi movement, who had him assassinated in 1948. Emling’s accessible account of Bernadotte’s humanitarian achievements will inspire readers.

March 15, 2019
A biography of "the dashing Swedish diplomat who dared to breach Hitler's inner circle during the waning days of World War II."Emling (Setting the World on Fire: The Brief Astonishing Life of St. Catherine of Siena, 2016), a senior editor at AARP.org, introduces us to Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948), a member of the Swedish royal family who was in a unique position to promote humanitarian projects throughout his long career. Health problems derailed his military career, but he maintained an interest in diplomacy. He represented Sweden's king at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition in 1933 and served as Swedish commissioner general for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Later, he became vice president of the Swedish Red Cross. Though Sweden had practiced active neutrality since the 1920s, that stance was growing increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of rampant German aggression. In the spring of 1943, word leaked that Germany planned to round up and deport all the Jews in Denmark, and Danish physicist Niels Bohr convinced the king to allow the Jews into Sweden. Over the course of two weeks, fishermen ferried 8,000 to safety. Bernadotte was responsible for the first prisoner exchange between the Allies and Germany, a massive effort that benefitted thousands of POWs. With the end of the war looming, German prisoners were being quickly exterminated. Heinrich Himmler knew the war was lost, and Bernadotte convinced him to let Scandinavian prisoners be removed to a camp near Denmark. Himmler also hoped Bernadotte would carry a capitulation offer to Dwight Eisenhower. In March 1945, Bernadotte's "White Buses," under strict German control, retrieved prisoners from a series of camps. In April, Himmler finally said he could evacuate any prisoners he liked. Added to the white buses were more than 7,000 women from Ravensbr�ck.Emling effectively shows her subject's "extraordinary feats" as well as the immense difficulties facing those involved in humanitarian work during World War II.

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May 15, 2019
Count Folke Bernadotte, grandson of King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway, found satisfaction in working with organizations focused on helping others, a guiding principle in his life. At the start of WWII, he was director of the Swedish Boy Scouts, and in 1943, he was appointed vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross. He soon began working on prisoner exchanges, doing all he could to free those trapped in Hitler's death camps, ultimately rescuing more than 30,000 individuals. Emling covers, in varying degrees of detail, a wide range of topics, from Bernadotte's royal lineage to political decisions made by Sweden's government during the war to Bernadotte's diplomatic work in the Middle East on behalf of the newly formed UN to his assassination, at 53, in Jerusalem in 1948. The illustrations help make Bernadotte and his family fully present in this succinct yet far-reaching portrait, which will best serve readers looking for a deep dive into the complex life of a figure not often addressed in historical accounts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)