 The color of the busses was later changed, so was also the true story about White Busses. |
The color of the busses was changed, so was also the true story about White Busses.
Bernadotte's White Busses mission is often described, mentioned, as the rescue of the Jews from the concentration camps. Rescue from the Holocaust. The Holocaust is underlined! However, it should be questioned whether he ever intended to rescue Jews at all. The mission is nowadays always described as saving Jews from the Holocaust. This is fake.
The truth is, that the rescue, saving from the concentration camps took place a few weeks before the liberation of camps and the end of WWII in Europe.
The truth is that it was the Danish Foreign Minister that began negotiating with the Nazis in 1944 with the aim of getting Danish citizens freed from incarceration. To start with, the Danes focussed on people who had been deported and become sick in the camps. First thereafter Swedish Red Cross (February 1945) started to negotiate together with Danes.
Quick publishing, 5 weeks after WWII ended, of Folke Bernadotte´s book Slutet (about his White bus mission) with an enormous number of books and editions guaranteed the book’s success both in Sweden and abroad. What was most important at that time it garnered much good will for Sweden and to Swedish efforts to repair its bad image after keeping a selective neutrality during WWII.
Therefore, Folke Bernadotte himself has not been recognized as one of the "Righteous among the Nations". However, the White Buses are remembered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
Folke Schimanski, told the true story in 1999 of how he, his mother and his sister Vera, all of them German-Swedes or Nazi-Swedes were rescued by White Busses. They were about 1500. Folke Schimanski's father was the Nazi as it was his sister that was traveling in BDS cloths.
Although the White Buses are remembered, however, the Swedish White boat action is often completely forgotten.
Please read also, Escape from the Third Reich: Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses by Sune Persson. In this book, there is a description of the last minute race between Swedish and Swiss Red Cross. The race of saving. In some cases, it was a question of hours or a few days before the camp was liberated and selected prisoners were "saved".
On 22 April the White busses fetched 500 women from Ravensbrück were handed over to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross. On April 29th the last German guards fled the Ravensbrück camp. On 30 April 1945, fewer than 3,500 malnourished and sickly prisoners were discovered alive at the camp when it was liberated by the Red Army. The survivors of the death march from Ravensbrück were liberated in the following hours by a Russian army scout unit.
Therefore, Folke Bernadotte himself has not been recognized as one of the "Righteous among the Nations". However, the White Buses are remembered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
Folke Schimanski, told the true story in 1999 of how he, his mother and his sister Vera, all of them German-Swedes or Nazi-Swedes were rescued by White Busses. They were about 1500. Folke Schimanski's father was the Nazi as it was his sister that was traveling in BDS cloths.
Although the White Buses are remembered, however, the Swedish White boat action is often completely forgotten.
Please read also, Escape from the Third Reich: Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses by Sune Persson. In this book, there is a description of the last minute race between Swedish and Swiss Red Cross. The race of saving. In some cases, it was a question of hours or a few days before the camp was liberated and selected prisoners were "saved".
On 22 April the White busses fetched 500 women from Ravensbrück were handed over to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross. On April 29th the last German guards fled the Ravensbrück camp. On 30 April 1945, fewer than 3,500 malnourished and sickly prisoners were discovered alive at the camp when it was liberated by the Red Army. The survivors of the death march from Ravensbrück were liberated in the following hours by a Russian army scout unit.
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| Top picture: White busses with German Swedes. Gestapo boys are around the bus and also together with Folke Bernadotte (below). |
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| White boats heading for Sweden left Germany in late June 1945. |
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| The arrival of the White boats to Stockholm. The victims from the concentrations camps were placed in numerous Swedish hospitals. |
