White Buses was a Swedish humanitarian operation with the objective of freeing Scandinavians in German concentration camps in Nazi Germany during the final stages of World War II. Although the White Buses operation was envisioned to rescue Scandinavians, one-half of those taken from the camps to Sweden were of other nationalities. The buses used to transport the prisoners were painted white with red crosses painted on the roof, side, front and back, so that the buses would not be mistaken for military targets by Allied air forces. Those allowed by the Germans to be freed from the concentration camps were transported by the white buses and trucks to the port city of Lübeck, Germany. Swedish ships took them onward to Malmö, Sweden. Danes continued on by land on the white buses to Denmark.
Swedish white buses gathered in their field headquarters at Friedrichsruh
On 19 April 1945, the White Buses started driving prisoners from concentration camps in Germany. As a young citizen, Stig Svensson was a volunteer driver on one of the white Red Cross buses (not the one in the picture). "I'll never forget what I've seen", he said in a 1992 interview.
Gestapo officers escorting the "white buses"
Danish Red Cross buses, possibly near Friedrichsruh
Johan Bernhard Hjort was a Norwegian supreme court lawyer. He is known for co-founding Nasjonal Samling in 1933, his later resistance work against Nazi Germany, including his work to help Scandinavian prisoners, as well as for his role as one of the country's leading defense attorneys after the war.
Johan Bernhard Hjort (circa 1930)
Johan Bernhard Hjort and his wife Anna Cathrine, Bestum (1967)
Hjort (right), with Vidkun Quisling (left), ca. 1936