Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg
Occupation	Diplomat
Parent(s)	Raoul Oscar Wallenberg and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising)

Raoul Gustav Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 16, 1947?) was a Swedish humanitarian sent to Hungary under diplomatic cover to save Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.

He worked at great personal risk to save "tens of thousands" of Hungarian Jews in the later stages of World War II by issuing them protective passports from the Swedish embassy. These passports identified the bearers as Swedish nationals awaiting repatriation.

On January 17, 1945, a day before Pest (the eastern side of Budapest) was liberated by the Russians, he was arrested on direct order from Stalin, who may have suspected him of being a spy for the Americans, or wanted to use him to trade for Soviet nationals that defected to Sweden. The Swedes, believing he was already dead, failed to negotiate for his release and he disappeared into a Soviet prison. Later (1957) the Soviets announced that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in 1947 in Lubyanka prison in Moscow, but this has been disputed (see below). Almost all of the paperwork of his arrest and interrogation were destroyed by the Soviets, but in 1989, they returned Wallenberg's personal belongings to his family.

Early life

He was born in Lidingö near Stockholm, Sweden to Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). Raoul Oscar Wallenberg died of cancer three months before his son was born. In 1918, his mother married Fredrik von Dardel, and Raoul had a half-brother, Guy Von Darden. Raoul Wallenberg also had a maternal half-sister, Nina Lagergren. Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan.

In 1931, Wallenberg went to study in the United States and received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1935. In college, he learned to speak English, German and French. He used his vacations to explore America. Although he came from a wealthy family, during his free time, he worked at odd jobs, including a World's Fair.

He returned to Sweden, and his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town, South Africa, where he worked in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. Between 1935 and 1936, he was employed at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa. He returned to Sweden in 1936 and took a job at the Central European Trading Company. The firm was owned by a Hungarian Jewish emigree, Kálmán Lauer, who was barred from visiting certain areas of Europe because of the war. Wallenberg was able to travel for him on his neutral Swedish passport.. Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the international director of the company.

The Holocaust

Sign on Wallenberg's residence, Haifa, Israel

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Sign commemorating Wallenberg in Budapest

Starting in 1938, Hungary under the regency of Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures that restricted their professions, reduced the number of Jews in government jobs, and prohibited intermarriage. The first massacre of Hungarian Jews took place in July of 1941, when 20,000 Jews were driven from Carpathian Ruthenia into German-occupied Soviet territory, where they were killed by the SS.

Hillel Kook (also known as Peter Bergson) and his rescue group incessantly pressured the U.S. government to help rescue Jews from the Nazis and Fascists. The group had considerable support in the Senate and Congress and from Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.. As the pressure for action mounted and after much delay, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board (WRB) in January of 1944, to aid civilian victims of the Nazis and the Axis powers. The executive order establishing the board read: "it is the policy of this Government to take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death and otherwise to afford such victims all possible relief and assistance consistent with the successful prosecution of the war". Partly because of his role in setting up the War Refugee Board, some leading historians specializing in Holocaust era rescue by Jews attribute to Hillel Kook and his group rescue of over 200,000 people, probably mostly in Hungary. Well known Israeli Holocaust historian, Prof. Yehuda Bauer, emphatically disagrees with this.

On March 23, 1944 the Germans installed a puppet government in Hungary with Döme Sztójay as Prime Minister. Miklós Horthy was still the regent, but now had less power. The mass deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began on May 15, 1944, at the rate of 12,000 per day.

In late spring 1944, within 24 hours of receipt, George Mantello (also known as Mandl Gyuri) publicized what has now been called the Wetzler-Vrba Report, or the Auschwitz Report included as the main section in the Auschwitz Protocol. This triggered a major grass roots protest in Switzerland, with about 400 glaring headlines protesting against Europe's barbarism and its dark age in the twentieth century. The news articles were published in spite of strict Swiss censorship rules. Publication of the report also triggered Sunday sermons in Swiss churches expressing deep concern over the fate of Jews, and a leading Swiss theologian, Paul Vogt, wrote and published a book called "Am I my brother's keeper". In addition there were various street protests. The intensity and scale of the Swiss protests led to Churchill, Roosevelt and other world leaders pressuring Hungary's ruler Horthy into stopping the deportations to Auschwitz. The lull gave the Wallenberg mission time to set up and also rescue efforts by many others in Budapest, among them Carl Lutz, Monsignor Angelo Rotta, Giorgio Perlasca, the Spanish legation and the Zionist Youth Underground in Budapest. It also "put rescue in the air", empowering ordinary citizens to act on behalf of the remnant of Hungary's Jews.

Iver Olsen of the War Refugee Board was in contact with Kálmán Lauer; it was Lauer who recommended his business partner to the board. On July 9, 1944, with the cooperation of the Swedish government, Wallenberg was given diplomatic status as First Secretary to the Swedish legation in Budapest, Hungary. His mission was to save as many Hungarian Jews as possible, with financing provided by the board.

Working with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger, they used their diplomatic status to prevent deportations to death camps by issuing "protective passports" (German: Schutz-Pass), which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation. Although not legally valid, these documents looked official and were generally accepted by German and Hungarian authorities, who sometimes were also bribed. The Swedish legation in Budapest also succeeded in negotiating with the Germans that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow Star of David on their chests.

With the American money, Wallenberg rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest, and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as "The Swedish Library" and "The Swedish Research Institute" on their doors and hung oversize Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people.

Sandor Ardai, one of the drivers for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

...he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.

Under pressure from Wallenberg and others, Miklós Horthy reasserted his authority and stopped the transporting of Jews to concentration camps on July 9, 1944.

Wallenberg then started sleeping in a different house each night to avoid being captured or killed by Arrow Cross Party members or by Adolf Eichmann. Two days before the Russians liberated Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Eichmann and General Gerhard Schmidthuber, the commander of the German army in Hungary. Wallenberg bribed Arrow Cross Party member Pál Szalai to deliver a note in which Wallenberg persuaded them to cancel a final effort to organize a death march of the remaining Jews in Budapest by threatening to have them prosecuted for war crimes once the war was over.

Wallenberg did not work alone in Budapest; at the height of his program, over 350 people were involved. Sister Sara Salkahazi was caught sheltering Jewish women and was killed by members of the Arrow Cross Party. Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat, also issued protective passports from the Swiss embassy, and was the initiator of the saving action in spring 1944. Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca posed as a Spanish diplomat and issued forged visas. Henryk Sławik was a Polish diplomat who distributed fake passports. People saved by Wallenberg include biochemist Lars Ernster, who was housed in the Swedish embassy, and Tom Lantos, later a member of the United States House of Representatives, who lived in one of the Swedish protective houses.

On January 13, 1945, Wallenberg contacted the Russians to secure food and supplies for the people under his protection. He and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder (c1910-1947), were detained by the Soviet Red Army on January 17, 1945 when they captured Budapest, on suspicion of being a spy for the United States, since the War Refugee Board was actually engaged in espionage. The Soviets may have moved him to Moscow, hoping to exchange him for defectors in Sweden. He was driven to the headquarters of Rodion Malinovsky in Debrecen by the NKVD. Wallenberg's last recorded words were: "I'm going to Malinovsky's ... whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet." In 2003, a review of wartime Soviet correspondences, indicated Vilmos Böhm may have provided Wallenberg's name to Stalin as a person to detain.

Moscow

Wallenberg was then transported by train from Debrecen through Romania to Moscow.. In October 1944 Wallenberg rented 32 buildings where he hid over 15,000 jews. Vladimir Dekanosov notified the Swedes on January 16, 1945 that Wallenberg was in the hands of the Soviet authorities and was being protected. On January 21, 1945, Wallenberg was transferred to Lubyanka prison and put in cell 123, with fellow prisoner, Gustav Richter, a police attaché at the German embassy in Romania. Richter testified in Sweden in 1955 that Wallenberg was interrogated once for about an hour and a half, in early February of 1945. On March 1, 1945, Richter was moved from his cell and never saw Wallenberg again.

On March 8, 1945, Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Wallenberg and his driver had been murdered on their way to Debrecen, suggesting that they were killed by the Arrow Cross Party or the Gestapo. Sweden's foreign minister, Östen Undén, and ambassador to the Soviet Union, Staffan Söderblom, wrongly assumed that they were dead. In April of 1945, William Averell Harriman of the U.S. State Department, offered the Swedish government help in inquiring about Wallenberg’s fate, but the offer was declined. Söderblom met with Molotov and Stalin in Moscow on June 15, 1946. Söderblom, believing Wallenberg was dead, ignored talk of an exchange for Russian defectors in Sweden.

On February 6, 1957 the Soviets released a document found in their archives which stated that "I report that the prisoner Walenberg [sic] who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Walenberg [sic] under my care, I request approval to make an autopsy with a view to establishing cause of death... I have personally notified the minister and it has been ordered that the body be cremated without autopsy." The document was dated July 17, 1947, and was signed by Smoltsov, then the head of the Lubyanka prison infirmary. It was addressed to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, the Soviet minister of state security. In 1989, the Soviets returned Wallenberg's personal belongings to his family, including his passport and cigarette case. Soviet officials said they found the materials when they were upgrading the shelves in a store room.

A Swedish-Russian working group was set up in 1991 to search 11 separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg. In Stockholm in 2000, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev announced that Wallenberg had been executed in 1947 in Lubyanka prison. He claimed that Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former Soviet secret police chief, told him about the shooting in a private conversation. The statement did not explain why Wallenberg was killed or why the government had lied about it, claiming since 1957 that he had died of a heart attack while in Soviet custody. Pavel Sudoplatov claimed that Raoul Wallenberg was poisoned by Grigory Mairanovsky Russian prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov signed a verdict posthumously rehabilitating Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, as "victims of political repression".

Because of the deliberate destruction of documents by the Soviets, the rationale for the arrest and death of Wallenberg may never be known. There is a parallel to his fate in the arrest of two Swiss diplomats ordered detained in Budapest, whose records still exist. Stalin directly ordered the arrest of Maximilian Jaeger and Harald Feller of the Swiss embassy. They were interrogated by Smersh and were released in exchange for two Russian pilots that defected to Switzerland.

Several former prisoners have claimed that Wallenberg may still have been alive into the early 1950s. The last reported sightings of Wallenberg after his official death, were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November of 1987.

Raoul Wallenberg's brother, Professor Guy von Dardel, a well known physicist is dedicated to finding out his brother's fate. He traveled to the Soviet Union about fifty times for discussons and research, including research of the Vladmir prison records. He, his sister Nina Lagergren and their mother never gave up hope on finding Raoul Wallenberg. Many, including Profesor von Dardel and his daughters Louise and Marie, don't accept the various versions of Wallenberg's death and to date ask that the archives in Russia, Sweden and Hungary be open to impartial researchers. It is assumed that rather than state affiliated committees an independent, inspired and talented international board of inquiry is required to resolve what, indeed, was Raoul Wallenberg's fate. In the family today Wallenberg's niece, Ms. Louise von Dardel, is the main activist and dedicates much of her time to speak about Wallenberg and to lobby with various countries to help find remaining information about her uncle.

Wallenberg show trial preparations 1953 in Hungary

The State Protection Authority (Hungarian: Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH) was the State Police force of Hungary from 1945 until 1956. ÁVH actions were not subject to judicial review. On 1953-04-07, early in the morning, Miksa Domonkos, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest was kidnapped by ÁVH officials to extract "confessions". Preparations for a show trial started in Budapest in 1953 to prove that Wallenberg had not been dragged off in 1945 to the Soviet Union, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists. For the purposes of this show trial, two more Jewish leaders – László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler – as well as two would-be "eyewitnesses" – Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó – were arrested and interrogated by torture.

The last people to meet Wallenberg in Budapest were Ottó Fleischmann, Károly Szabó, and Pál Szalai, who were invited to a supper at the Swedish Embassy building in Gyopár street on 1945-01-12. The next day, January 13, Wallenberg contacted the Russians to secure food and supplies for the people under his protection. He and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder (c1910-1947), were detained. By 1953, Ottó Fleischmann had left Hungary, working as a physician in Vienna.

Károly Szabó was captured on the street on 1953-04-08 and arrested without any legal procedure. His family had no news of him throughout the following six months. A secret trial was conducted against him of which no official record is available to date. After six months of interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.

The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist leader Ernő Gerő, which is shown by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi. The show trial was then initiated in Moscow, following Stalin-s anti-Zionist campaign. After the death of Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, the preparations for the trial were stopped and the arrested persons were released. Miksa Domonkos spent a week in hospital and died shortly afterwards at home, mainly due to the torture he had been subject to .

Legacy

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USPS stamp, 1997

Memorial at Great Cumberland Place, London

Honors

• In 1966, Wallenberg was honored at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, recognizing non-Jews who saved Jews from the Holocaust.

• He was made an Honorary Citizen of the United States in 1981. When President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation in October 1981, Wallenberg became the second person to be granted this status, after Winston Churchill. Wallenberg was also made an honorary citizen of Canada in 1985, of Israel in 1986, and of the city of Budapest in 2003.

• January 17, the day he disappeared, was declared Raoul Wallenberg Day in Canada.

• The United States Postal Service issued a stamp to honor him in 1997. Representative Tom Lantos, one of those saved by Wallenberg's actions, said: "It is most appropriate that we honor [him] with a U.S. stamp. In this age devoid of heroes, Wallenberg is the archetype of a hero -- one who risked his life day in and day out, to save the lives of tens of thousands of people he did not know whose religion he did not share."

• The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States bestows the Raoul Wallenberg Award "on individuals, organizations and communities that reflect Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian spirit, personal courage and nonviolent action in the face of enormous odds."

• The Wallenberg Endowment at the University of Michigan awards the Wallenberg Medal and Lecture to outstanding humanitarians. The university's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning also awards Wallenberg Scholarships to exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, many of which are given to enable students to broaden their study of architecture to include work in distant locations.

• Groups in the USA, Israel, China and Hungary have been holding International Rescuer Day events on January 17 for the past few years. This is the anniversary of Wallenberg's abduction.

• During the 1980s, Wallenberg had his own entry ("Most Lives Saved") in the Guinness Book of World Records.

• The musical "Another Kind of Hero", composed by E.A. Alexander with collaborator Lezley Steele, was performed at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia in 1992, and in Toronto and New York in 1993. Music clips: [1]

Memorials

• In 2001, a memorial was created in Stockholm to honour Wallenberg. It was unveiled by King Carl XVI Gustaf, at a ceremony attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife, Wallenberg's niece. It is an abstract memorial depicting people rising from the concrete, accompanied by a bronze replica of Wallenberg's signature. It generated criticism in Sweden because many saw it as ugly and unworthy of such a great hero; however, Wallenberg's sister Nina Lagergren approved of it. At the unveiling, King Carl XVI Gustaf said Wallenberg is "a great example to those of us who want to live as fellow humans." Kofi Annan praised him as "an inspiration for all of us to act when we can and to have the courage to help those who are suffering and in need of help."

• There are a number of sites honoring Wallenberg in Budapest, among them Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, which commemorates those who saved many of the city's Jews from deportation to extermination camps, and the building that housed the Swedish Embassy in 1945.

• The Raoul Wallenberg Monument is located on Raoul Wallenberg Walk in Manhattan, across from the headquarters of the United Nations. It was commissioned by the Swedish consulate and was designed by Swedish sculptor Gustav Graitz. Kraitz’s piece, is called Hope, and it is a replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, a sphere, five pillars of black granite, and paving stones which once were used on the streets of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest.

See also

• Wallenberg family

Related Books

• David Kranzler, The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's Finest Hour, Forward by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Syracuse University Press (March 2001), ISBN 978-0815628736
• Jenö Lévai, Zsidósors Európában (published in 1948 in Hungarian, about George Mantello and the major Swiss grass roots protests against the Holocaust)
• Larry Jarvik, Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die (video documentary)
• Rapaport, Louis. Shake Heaven & Earth: Peter Bergson and the Struggle to Rescue the Jews of Europe. Gefen Publishing House, Ltd., 1999.
• Raoul Wallenberg, Letters and Dispatches, 1924-1944, Arcade Publishing Inc., New York, 1995, ISBN 1-55970-257-3. Portions published in Sweden as, Alskade farfar! [Dearest Grandfather] by Bonniers Foerlag, Sweden
• Berger, Susanne (2005) "Stuck in Neutral: The Reasons behind Sweden's Passivity in the Raoul Wallenberg Case." at www.raoul-wallenberg.asso.fr

External links

• The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
• International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
• Wallenberg case chronology
• Raoul Wallenberg bibliography
• Search for Raoul Wallenberg
• Raoul Wallenberg memorial in Budapest, Hungary