Қара нағылы: Швеция дипломаты Харальд Эдельстамның өмірі мен ерлігі

Swedish diplomat

Gustav Harald Edelstam (March 17, 1913 – April 16, 1989) was a Swedish diplomat. During World War II he earned the nickname Svarta nejlikan ("the Black Pimpernel," a reference to the Scarlet Pimpernel) for helping hundreds of Norwegian Jews, SOE agents, and saboteurs escape from the Germans. During the early 1970s he was stationed in Santiago, Chile, and became known as the "Raoul Wallenberg of the 1970s" when he helped over 1,200 Chileans, hundreds of Cuban diplomats and civilians, and 67 Uruguayan and Bolivian refugees escape persecution by dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Harald Edelstam was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and was the son of chamberlain Fabian Edelstam and Hilma Dickinson. He was the older brother of the ambassador Axel Edelstam and grandson of member of parliament Ernst Edelstam. Edelstam passed studentexamen in 1933 and earned a Candidate of Law degree in Stockholm in 1939 before becoming employed as an attaché at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm the same year.

Harald Edelstam served in Rome in 1939 and the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm in 1940, in Berlin in 1941, and in Oslo in 1942 where Edelstam became acting Second Vice Consul in 1944. After the incident, the Cuban Embassy in Santiago de Chile remained under Swedish protecting power for 18 years until 1991. Prime Minister Olof Palme gave him all his support. Edelstam also helped many other Cubans to escape from Chile and was honored by Fidel Castro as a hero. Due to his remarkable courage and moral integrity, Edelstam is today considered as a true modern day hero among millions around Latin America, and particularly so among the hundreds of thousands of Chileans who were forced into exile by the dictatorial regime. The Chilean military regime did not appreciate Edelstam's engagement and declared him persona non grata in December 1973. Edelstam married a third time in 1981 with Christine Colmain. In the marriage with von Rosen he had three sons: Carl (born 1941), Hans (born 1943) and Erik (born 1946). Edelstam died from cancer in 1989.

A film about Edelstam's activities in Chile, The Black Pimpernel, was released in September 2007. He was portrayed by Michael Nyqvist. In 2019, he was portrayed by Mikael Persbrandt in Finnish Chilean television series Invisible Heroes, depicting his efforts with Finnish Chargé d'affaires Tapani Brotherus to save refugees from Chile during the military coup.