The rescue with the white buses

Shortly before the end of the war, the Swedish Red Cross organized the liberation of around 15,000 concentration camp prisoners in secret talks. On April 20, 1945 alone, 4,200 inmates were evacuated from Neuengamme.

by Britta Probol

At the last minute, the message came from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs:All vehicles had to be painted white and marked with a red cross, otherwise the Allies would not guarantee safe passage. At this point, the first half of the Red Cross convoy is already in the port of Malmö and being embarked. In a hurry, the leader almost drums the assembled Malmö painters' guild to the harbour. Time is short:"They were there on the ferry over to Copenhagen and painted the buses," remembers the then 24-year-old Sten Olsson, who had volunteered as a driver. The last brush stroke is done over Øresund.

Count Folke Bernadotte organizes the rescue operation

It is March 9, 1945, when the aid operation from Sweden begins to roll. Count Folke Bernadotte paved the way for this:the nephew of King Gustaf V. Adolf was Vice-Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross (SRK) at the time and had already overseen international negotiations on the exchange of prisoners of war on behalf of the IRC. "Bernadotte spoke German without an accent," says author and lecturer Michael Grill, who has been researching the Scandinavian camp in the Neuengamme concentration camp for many years. The good knowledge of the language predestined the blue-blooded Swedes to support the internees from the occupied neighboring countries.

Mass executions in the concentration camps feared

During the Second World War, the Germans had deported several thousand Jews, police officers and those classified as "resisters" from occupied Norway and Denmark. Most recently, around 9,000 Norwegians and 6,000 Danes are imprisoned in German camps. As the Allies advanced, the Scandinavians grew concerned that the Germans might blow up the concentration camps or carry out mass executions. Niels Christian Ditleff, representative of the Norwegian government in exile in Stockholm, and the Danish rear admiral Carl Hammerich maintain contacts with compatriots in Germany who secretly collect data on the situation of the Scandinavian prisoners. Finally, in November 1944, Ditleff suggested a rescue operation under Red Cross leadership at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A rune book as a gift for Himmler

By government decision, Bernadotte flies to Berlin in mid-February 1945. "In his luggage he had a tome from the 17th century about Swedish runic inscriptions," says Michael Grill, "as a gift." The gift is intended for the one man in the Nazi leadership who has sufficient influence and at the same time seems to be interested in negotiations:Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Word has gotten around about his soft spot for Germanic mythology.

Since the summer of 1944, it has been clear to the head of the Gestapo that the war can no longer be won on the German side, and he is striving - on his own initiative, against Hitler's will - for a separate peace with the western powers. Himmler's hope:perhaps the internationally recognized Red Cross Deputy could open doors for him with the British.

First success:All Scandinavians are allowed to go to an assembly camp

On February 19, 1945, the Hohenlychen sanatorium in the Uckermark is the scene of the first meeting between Bernadotte and Himmler. It's going better than expected. Although Himmler refused any transfer of prisoners to areas outside of Germany, he ultimately agreed to the proposal to collect the Scandinavian political prisoners in the Neuengamme camp near Hamburg and have them cared for by the Swedish Red Cross. However, he qualifies that the Swedes would have to organize all transport themselves, because Germany does not have enough vehicles and petrol. And one more condition:absolute secrecy.

Within just two weeks, Bernadotte got the relief effort going in Stockholm. Meanwhile, he travels to Berlin a second time and, in talks with the head of the Reich Security Main Office, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and the head of the secret service, Walter Schellenberg, negotiates that the Scandinavian Jews may also be taken to the assembly camp.

300 helpers are clearly committed

Officially, the rescue operation is under the aegis of the Swedish Red Cross, which, however, does not have enough funds, so the government provides military buses. The entourage with 75 vehicles - including 36 buses - and around 300 volunteers gathered in Hässleholm (southern Sweden) for departure. In the luggage are food and medicine, tents and field kitchens. At the same time, the ship "Lillie Mathiesen" with 350,000 liters of fuel mixture on board leaves for Lübeck.

Expedition to war-torn Germany

Most of the helpers have no war experience. "In Copenhagen we met German SS. They came at us with assault rifles and pistols," Axel Molin recalled in an interview with the Swedish "Forum för levande historia" in 2005 - as a 22-year-old he had driven one of the buses. "That's when I thought for the first time:What have you gotten yourself into here?" The column gets lost on the bombed-out streets of northern Germany, but on March 12 it reaches Friedrichsruh in the east of Hamburg as planned and sets up its headquarters in the forest.

Riding the gauntlet under air raids

However, the most dangerous part is yet to come:the journeys back and forth through the German war zone. As a precaution, the essential route planning was passed on to the Allies; because of the air raids, many trips were made late in the evening. Nevertheless, two convoys in Mecklenburg come under low-flying aircraft fire, a bus driver and several prisoners die.

Incredulous amazement among the concentration camp prisoners

If the helpers had counted on a jubilant greeting from the prisoners, they were wrong. The detention in the camp intimidated the people and taught them to be suspicious. Axel Molin first steers his bus to Dachau, where the Scandinavian prisoners are waiting in columns:"They had been standing there for a few hours. There was a rumor that the Swedish Red Cross was on the way, but they didn't believe it. Our colonel had to tell them twice to put their cap on before they dare. Under normal circumstances, they were not allowed to wear a cap in the presence of a German officer."

The 423 Danish Jews who were rescued from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in mid-April initially flatly refused to get on the buses. They think it's a camouflage transport to the death camp.

Gestapo people accompanied all trips. "The guards," the Hamburg-based Michael Grill found out in his research, "occasionally mixed laxatives into their food as revenge." The stomachs of many of the rescued had to struggle even more. After the hardships in the camp, they could not cope with the nutritious Red Cross food.

Emaciated concentration camp prisoners are relocated

At the end of March, around half of the Scandinavians have gathered in Neuengamme, but the camp is already bursting at the seams. Two generations later, the following part of the "White Buses" campaign triggered heated debates in Sweden:On March 27 and 28, 1945, the Swedish Red Cross envoys relocated around 2,000 mainly French, Belgian, Russian and Polish prisoners. They take them with their buses from the Neuengamme "protection block" to subcamps near Hanover and Salzgitter.

The encounter with these prisoners, the so-called Moslems, shocked the helpers deeply. These prisoners are obviously in a worse condition than the Scandinavians, who - as "pure Aryans" - received comparatively preferential treatment and were even able to receive food parcels from home. At the end of 1945, the Swedish Major Sven Frykman published the memoirs collected by those involved in the rescue operation. Bus driver Sten Olsson reports:"Obviously not many of the people we shipped to Hanover are still alive as I write these lines. The way these people were treated is not even allowed to be treated in Sweden. With I saw with my own eyes a guard hit a prisoner over the head with a rifle butt, causing him to fall to the ground. The prisoner died on a bus later that night." Lieutenant Gösta Hallquist writes in his diary:"The sick and emaciated prisoners [...] had appeared completely apathetic and were so thin that each bus could hold around fifty of them instead of the normal ten people."

"Dark spots on the 'White Buses'"?

In 2005, the Swedish historian Ingrid Lomfors described this part of the Bernadotte action as a "breach of the Geneva Convention and a violation of the Red Cross principle of impartiality". In a book and several newspaper articles, she denounced the "bartering of human lives":Shouldn't the Red Cross take care of the sick and the weak instead of dumping them elsewhere so that the Scandinavians can have it better?

Lomfors was met with a storm of outrage:many former helpers and those rescued protested. In October 2005 they published a joint article in the Norwegian newspaper "Aftenposten":Lomfors did not understand that the action took place in the chaotic final phase of a war, that the buses could not simply drive into the camps and collect the sickest prisoners there. The post concluded:"Lomfors should apologize to the Swedish Red Cross."

The discussion continues to this day. "The historical reality doesn't change, but what does change are the questions we ask," explained Ingrid Lomfors in the newspaper Norrköpings Tidningar. Like many countries in Europe, Sweden is experiencing that the generation of grandchildren is looking at the history of the Second World War from a new perspective.

The first from Neuengamme are allowed to go home

When Bernadotte visited Neuengamme on March 30 with a Red Cross delegation, Danes and Norwegians had moved into the cleared protection block. They sing the Swedish national anthem in honor of him and the helpers.

Three days later, the Count embarks on the third round of negotiations. Himmler is now completely obsessed with the subject of separate peace - the Red Army is already forming up to march on Berlin. But Bernadotte cannot be cooked soft. He achieves that all Danish police officers can be sent home and all sick Scandinavians can be sent to Sweden.

This marks a breakthrough, as many concentration camp inmates suffer from serious illnesses. On April 9, the first patient transport leaves Neuengamme for the quarantine station in Padborg, Denmark. Danish vehicles are now also involved, because some of the Swedish helpers were only committed for a month and are already on their way home. In the following ten days, 1,216 sick prisoners are rescued to Sweden via Padborg.

Events are tumbling down:the Nazi regime clears camps

Suddenly a new kind of order comes from Himmler's headquarters:All Scandinavians are to leave for Denmark on April 20th. The British liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15 - the Nazi regime now wants to evacuate the Neuengamme concentration camp as quickly as possible before the Allies find it. Transport for around 4,200 people has to be arranged within a single day.

The Danes provide an additional 124 vehicles overnight - "the so-called 'Jyllandskorps', from regular buses to fish transporters," says Michael Grill, describing the hastily assembled caravan of vehicles. Painted white and with a Danish flag. The undertaking works:up to half an hour before the deadline expires, buses evacuate the last inmates from the Scandinavian camp.

Rescue for women from Ravensbrück concentration camp

In these last days of the war the dam bursts. During negotiations on April 21, Himmler gave Bernadotte permission to bring all the women from Ravensbrück concentration camp to Sweden. As the front north of Berlin is rapidly approaching, the SRK organizes a freight train to provide support. Around 7,000 women, mostly from France, Belgium, Holland, the Czech Republic and Poland, reach safe ground on the "White Buses" or the train.

Homecoming to cheers

In Denmark and Sweden crowds celebrate the returning transports with cheers, throw flowers and hand out food and drinks. Many ex-prisoners recover in the sanatoriums of Ramlösa Brunn near Helsingborg. Some stay and start a new life in Sweden.

Count Folke Bernadotte continues his humanitarian mission after the war. He works for the United Nations as a mediator in the Palestine conflict. On September 17, 1948, he died together with a French UN observer in an assassination attempt by the Jewish terrorist group "Lehi".