In the spring of 1945, Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat, used his country’s neutrality to persuade Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS, to secretly permit the rescue of Scandinavian prisoners from Nazi concentration camps.

Kathy Gastle knows about it because her father, Pte. Ormie Carter, was part of the humanitarian mission.

The Nazi regime was near defeat. Himmler, a top Nazi who embraced genocide, hoped to use Bernadotte as a conduit to persuade the Western powers to negotiate .

Carter was a prisoner of war, held by Germany after he was captured on a French mountain in 1944.

Sweden’s rescue effort, remembered today as the White Buses, launched March 8, 1945, after the Allies invaded Germany. The International Red Cross participated out of neutral Switzerland.

On March 1

See Full Page