International: Man of Peace

For a week members of the Stern gang, who haunt the Galina café on Tel Aviv’s Herbert Samuel Esplanade, had been telling correspondents that they intended to deal with Count Folke Bernadotte. Posters appeared showing Bernadotte’s gaunt figure, his hair flying, being kicked out of Israel by a huge boot. The caption read: “Advice to Agent Bernadotte: Get out of our country!”

It was not only the “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel” (as the Stern gangsters like to call themselves) who had inveighed against the U.N. mediator. The Communists (whose line the Sternists follow) called Bernadotte a “traveling agent of American business.” Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok accused him of partiality to the Arabs, and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion himself snapped: “The truce is an act of war designed to break our will.”

“I Must Take Risks.” Bernadotte, a courageous and stubborn man, was not deterred by the country’s temper. Last week he reported on conditions in Jerusalem. “It’s like this,” he said. “Both Arabs and Jews are trigger-happy. They shoot into the dark at night. They snipe by daylight. Excuse me, but it is a most idiotic thing.”

Nevertheless he went to Jerusalem for one more inspection tour before leaving for Paris. When his aide, Swedish General Aage Lundström, suggested that he take a detour to avoid snipers, Bernadotte said: “I must take the same risks as my observers.” Near Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, his car was hit by an irregular’s bullet. Said he: “I do not like irregulars, and I do not like to be shot at.”

A few minutes later, in Jerusalem’s Katamon quarter (formerly an Arab residential district, now held by Israeli forces), the Count’s cream-colored Chrysler was stopped at a roadblock. From a jeep stepped two men in Israeli army uniforms, carrying Sten guns. While U.S. Colonel Frank Begley (a U.N. observer who drove the Count’s car) grappled with one of the men, the other looked into the car, recognized the Count, shoved his gun through the window and started shooting. The bullets went straight through the ribbons on Bernadotte’s uniform. Said General Lundstrom, who sat beside him but escaped injury: “There was a considerable amount of blood on his clothes, mainly around his heart.”

Also hit (17 times) was Colonel Andre P. Serot, a French member of the U.N. truce mission. He was killed instantly. Bernadotte, still breathing, was rushed to nearby Hadassah Hospital, where he died. The assailants got away in their jeep.

“Life Has Been Cheap.” For hours following the assassination, there was only stunned silence. Then Sternists were heard from: “We executed Bernadotte, who served as an overt agent of the British enemy . . . Such be the end of all enemies of Jewish freedom . . .” Said the Israel government: “Appalling crime . . . desecration of the Holy City . . . insane gunmen . . .”

Jews throughout Israel showed not much sorrow for the man, whom they had disliked, but horror at the act. “The personal tragedy didn’t hit us at all,” said one Israel newspaperman. “We are too hardened. Life has been cheap here for years. What shocked us is the recurrence of political murder. God knows where that will lead us. If a couple of snot-noses can kill anyone they like, and get away with it, they might decide to turn on Shertok or Ben-Gurion next.”

The Israel government immediately launched a manhunt for the killers. Hundreds of suspects were arrested. Ports and airfields throughout the country were closed. Crack troops entered Jerusalem, prowled the city in armored cars, guns ready. They knew little more than that the murderer was “sallow-faced and dark-haired.” But they knew a lot about the Stern gang.

Formed in 1940 by one Abraham Stern as a terrorist weapon against the British, it had committed such deeds before. During the war, Stern offered to help the Axis invade the Middle East if they would recognize the Sternists as Palestine’s government. In 1944 the Sternists murdered Lord Moyne, British Resident Minister in the Middle East.

Even though the vast majority of Israelis were shocked by the crime, world public opinion would link the assassination with the long record of gangsterism, terrorism and almost insanely violent propaganda which had become associated with Israel’s struggle for independence, and which moderate Zionists seemed unable to stop. In other cases, propaganda had excused or glossed over the crimes of the Jewish extremists by alleging “imperialism” on the part of the British or charging worse atrocities to the Arabs. In Bernadotte’s case there was no excuse to make. He was obviously a good man who sought nothing in Palestine but peace.

“Be Prepared.” Folke Bernadotte, nephew of King Gustav of Sweden, was raised in a thoroughly Lutheran home. Because of his marked musical talent, he was forced to play the organ during the family’s daily religious services. He disliked this as much as his enforced attendance at his mother’s sewing circle.

He served as an officer in the King’s Own Mounted Regiment (which has not had to fight a battle in 134 years). In 1928 he married Estelle Romaine Manville (of Johns-Manville). He was 33, she 24. They moved into Dragongarden, a villa in Stockholm’s diplomatic quarter, surrounded by old oaks, vast lawns, and a canal where all the Bernadottes went skating. Together with his two sons, Folke and Bertil (two others died), the Count grew into an enthusiastic Boy Scout, was frequently seen in Scout garb at international Scout encampments.

He became adjutant to the Swedish Crown Prince, Swedish commissioner to the New York World’s Fair, chairman of countless societies including the Y.M.C.A., the Swedish Association to Promote Swimming, the International Red Cross. In the last months of World War II he shuttled back & forth between Sweden and Germany; he arranged for the exchange of war prisoners, started negotiations with Heinrich Himmler for Germany’s surrender. He remained true to the Scout motto: Alltid Redo (Be Prepared). When the U.N. appointed him its mediator in Palestine, he was not only ready, but eager.

For four months Bernadotte flew up & down the Middle East in his Red Cross plane. In his Red Cross uniform (with khaki short trousers) he still looked like a Boy Scout. He was not a brilliant man, but all who met him recognized his sincere desire to bring to others the peace he had always known at home.

On the evening of the murder, 13-year-old Bertil Bernadotte switched on the radio at Dragongärden. That is how he heard the news. He ran to his mother, who took the news with outward calm; she had feared for weeks that her husband would be killed. Quietly she went to call her elder son, who was away at school. Soon the whole family assembled. King Gustav heard of his nephew’s death as he was returning from his summer vacation; the old King wept. In Paris, U.N. delegates heard the news as they were getting ready for this week’s General Assembly.

“That Troublesome Zone.” Count Folke Bernadotte’s assassination reminded U.N. of its crucial weakness—inability to enforce its decisions or even to protect its emissaries. Secretary General Trygve Lie, looking weary after a hurried flight from Oslo, said angrily: “The murder reflects an unprecedented and intolerable lack of respect for the dignity and authority of the United Nations.”

Then the Security Council appointed the U.S.’s Ralph Bunche as Bernadotte’s temporary successor. Bunche is a brilliant American Negro, son of a Detroit barber and grandson of a southern slave; a Ph.D. (Harvard), he was professor of political science at Howard University, specialized in colonial problems, served in OSS during the war, joined the State Department and finally became director of U.N.’s trusteeship division.

In Haifa, Israeli security police hovered anxiously about the new mediator. From Stockholm, Countess Bernadotte spoke to her husband’s aide by shortwave radio. Said she: “Give my best to Ralph Bunche. I know what he meant to my husband.” Said Mrs. Bunche in Manhattan: “I feel very sad about this appointment … I can’t help but have fears for him as long as he’s in that troublesome zone.”

This week the U.N. published Bernadotte’s recommendations for a peace settlement which he had completed just before his death. The gist: Galilee was to go to the Jews, the Negeb desert was to go to the Arabs, Jerusalem was to be placed under U.N. control.

In Israel there was general fear that Bernadotte’s murder would bring even more violence. Arabs were reported massing troops; Israeli forces took up battle positions. But in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, two days after the murder, life seemed normal. “We were more worried about Lord Moyne’s assassination,” said one Israeli. “But the world soon forgot it, and other incidents like it won our state.”

The car in which Bernadotte was killed was brought to Tel Aviv and parked in front of the U.N. mission’s hotel. Someone had chalk-marked a jagged bullet hole in the rear seat, and a pretty brunette girl told passersby: “That’s the one that got him.” The staff of the U.N. truce mission had lost its last shred of idealism about its task. “I’m in the country where Christ was born,” said a U.S. captain in a bar, “and I wish to Christ I was in the country where I was born.”

“We Are Too Ashamed.” Meanwhile, in a Swedish ambulance driven by a lone U.S. marine, the flag-draped bodies of Count Bernadotte and Colonel Serot were taken from Jerusalem to Haifa. Israelis lined the streets in silence. “We are too ashamed to talk about it,” said a Jerusalem cabdriver. In synagogues, rabbis denounced the murder. At Latrun, a detachment of Abdullah’s Arab Legion presented arms as the ambulance passed. Beneath the dead man’s folded hands rested his broad-brimmed Scout hat.

Then Bernadotte’s body was transferred to a plane; after stopping in Rome and Paris, where statesmen paid tribute to him, he was flown home.