But it has forgotten the greatest hero of World War II, Wallenberg, who put his humanity on the line and went up against the Nazi machine. Berenyi needn't worry about Hollywoodizing Wallenberg's life. The facts themselves read like a first-rate thriller. By , an Allied victory in Europe seemed imminent. The Nazis had already murdered 5 million Jews; the only remaining large Jewish population in Europe was in Hungary, which had a pro-Nazi government and consequently had not been occupied by the Germans.
Hitler, however, angered by Hungary's failure to "solve the Jewish question" and to resist the Russians adequately on the Eastern front, sent in troops on March 19, Adolf Eichmann was assigned to exterminate Hungary's , Jews.
Eichmann worked with grisly efficiency. He deported 12, Jews daily in sealed cattle cars to Auschwitz and Birkenau. From May to July of that year, , Jews from rural Hungary were transported to the extermination camps. In the fall of , when train routes were bombed by the Western Allies, Eichmann ordered "death marches" to the Austrian border, miles from Budapest.
Hundreds perished and were left in roadside ditches. Survivors were herded into concentration camps. In Budapest, thousands more were concentration camps. In Budapest, thousands more were dragged from their homes and shot by roaming gangs from the anti-Semitic Hungarian Arrow Cross Party. By the summer of , the US could no longer ignore the horror in Hungary. The Roosevelt administration, through the American War Refugee Board, called upon neutral Sweden to send a representative to Budapest to rescue as many Jews as possible.
Raoul Wallenberg, a young businessman, was selected. His credentials were impeccable: Not only did he come from a banking dynasty known as "the Rockefellers of Sweden," but he was also doing business in Budapest at the time and had a Hungarian Jew as his partner. Though Wallenberg had no previous diplomatic training, he was already somewhat of a world citizen.
He spoke accent-free German, was educated in the US. He had traveled to Mexico and South Africa, and worked in the s for a Dutch bank in Haifa, Israel, where he had repeated encounters with Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich's persecution.
Before his journey to Budapest, Wallenberg had dabbled in architecture and banking. He once unsuccessfully tried to market in Sweden a new line of zippers and a device for recorking bottles. He recalls his older brother as "kind and good-humored. He was a good organizer, avid hiker, and had a lot of unspent energy. Shortly after Wallenberg's arrival in Hungary on July 9, , he began issuing documents called "Swedish protective passports. Nevertheless, neutral Sweden had diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany and Wallenberg ingeniously parlayed that tie into recognition from the Hungarian government for the initial printing of 5, of these Swedish passports.
With money from the American War Refugee Board, he sheltered the passport holders in 32 houses he bought or rented. These "safe houses" flew the Swedish flag and were stocked by Wallenberg with food and medicine. In some cases he outfitted young Jews in Nazi storm trooper uniforms and posted them outside the houses as a protection against roving Arrow Cross vigilantes.
The neutral Swiss and Portuguese embassies quickly followed suit, issuing protective passports and establishing their own "safe houses. Wallenberg masterfully used the legitimacy of the 5, passports as a cover for most of his other rescue tactics. Between July and January, the Swedish government printed an additional 15, passports, which Wallenberg would often personally distribute to Jews on cattle cars about to leave for Auschwitz.
Per Anger worked with Wallenberg at the Swedish Legation. He was laster appointed Sweden's ambassador to Canada and has since written a book on Wallenberg. Ambassador Anger recalls:. You have people under the protection of the Swedish government and we want them back! Raoul would then announce: 'Those with Swedish passports, come out.
Raoul would say, 'Come with me,' and march off to the Swedish houses with to people. One of Wallenberg's personal drivers on those rescue missions was a Hungarian Jew who is now working as a chemist in Los Altos Hills, Calif. He came to the US in , and had not spoken since then about his experience.
He asked not to be identified. When the Germans invaded, they closed down the university. That's when I joined the Swedish effort. He always overwhelmed the German SS with double talk. Wallenberg would threaten to call their superiors if they didn't cooperate. Wallenberg used every possible subterfuge, including bribery and telling the SS he would put in a good word for them after Germany lost the war.
Sometimes it was all blank pages, and when he got to the train he would make up 20 Jewish names and begin calling them out. Usually three or four had passports, but for those who didn't, I stood behind Raoul with another 50 unfilled passports. You know how long it took me to write in their names? About 10 seconds. We handed them out and said, 'Oh, I'm sorry you couldn't get to the embassy to pick it up. Here it is, we brought it to you.
Wallenberg's driver carried forged identity papers for every occasion. One set showed he worked for the Swedish Embassy. Another showed he was a doctor for the German SS. In fact, he was told that the Soviet officers would bring him to Debrecen in eastern Hungary, where the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front General Rodion Malinovsky would receive him to discuss the suggested cooperation. Encouraged by what he thought lay before him, Wallenberg went to his office to express his great joy over the fact that the International ghetto had just been liberated and that the majority of the Hungarian Jews living there had been saved.
But since he was in a hurry, he told his coworkers that they would have to wait to describe how this came about until he returned from Debrecen. Instead on January 25, following orders from the Kremlin, he and his driver Vilmos Langfelder were transported to Moscow by train.
We know today that Raoul Wallenberg was, in fact, alive in Soviet prisons at least up until the summer of Still it took until before Sweden issued a formal demand for the diplomat's return for the first time. During those seven years, the Swedish government simply took the Soviets at their word: Wallenberg was not in Soviet territory and he was unknown to them. In the fall of , the situation changed. The first prisoners-of-war were released by the Soviet Union and an Italian diplomat Claudio de Mohr said that he had had contact with Wallenberg at Lefortovo prison.
But the following February, when Sweden issued their first formal demand for the return of Raoul Wallenberg, the Soviets stonewalled them by repeating the lie. Then, following Stalin's death in , thousands of German prisoners-of-war were released, and detailed witness accounts surfaced, describing encounters with Raoul Wallenberg in Moscow prisons. Faced with the new Swedish evidence, Khrushchev realized that he had to acknowledge the arrest, but how?
The search for a new lie started. Internal Soviet Foreign Ministry documents reveal that later that spring, Soviet officials were put to work in the hospital archives to search its documents for a cause of death that could appear as true. The first suggestion was to tell the Swedes that Wallenberg died of pneumonia in the Lefortovo prison in July , but throughout the process both the cause of death and the location were changed.
To this day, the formal Soviet report that finally was presented in remains the official Russian account of the case—Raoul Wallenberg died in his cell in Lubyanka prison on July 17, , two and a half years after his initial arrest.
Cause of death: heart attack. Decades later, Glasnost not only brought the Soviet Union down, but also opened Soviet archives to a combined Swedish-Russian working group, with the aim to put an end to the Wallenberg case by answering the lingering question: What happened to him? Still despite a ten-year Swedish-Russian investigation, nothing could convince either side. The archives closed again and Russia continued to say that Wallenberg died at Lubyanka July 17, Since no charges were ever brought against Raoul Wallenberg and no trial was ever held, the real reasons for the arrest also remain unknown.
Such documents have in any case never been made public. The only thing we know for sure is when he was interrogated and for how long. Moreover, given the different suggestions, we can be sure that the cause of death was not a heart attack.
On January 13, , an advancing Soviet army unit saw a man standing and waiting for them in front of a house with a large Swedish flag above the door. Wallenberg requested, and was given permission to visit the Soviet military headquarters in the city of Debrecen east of Budapest. To one of his colleagues, Dr. The Russians claimed that he died in Russian captivity on July 17, But why did Wallenberg want contact with the Russians in Debrecen? And why did the Russians arrest him?
In November , Wallenberg had established a section in his department that under his supervision would make a detailed financial support plan for the surviving Jews.
Therefore, it was important to Wallenberg to explain his rescue operation. The Russians, on the other hand, probably believed that Wallenberg had other reasons for his rescue efforts. Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, never returned from Debrecen. According to reliable testimonies they were arrested and sent to Moscow. The Swiss legation had also run extensive rescue operations for the Hungarian Jewish population. The Russians arrested a secretary of their legation together with a clerk and sent them to the Soviet Union.
The Swiss succeeded, however, in getting them extradited in exchange for Soviet citizens detained in Switzerland. The Swedes, of course, expected Wallenberg to be sent home soon. On March 8, , the Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Raoul Wallenberg had been murdered on his way to Debrecen, probably by Hungarian Nazis or Gestapo agents. This created a certain passiveness within the Swedish government.
These men promised to re-investigate what had happened to Wallenberg. The document was addressed to Viktor Abakumov, the minister for state security in the Soviet Union. The Russians expressed regret in their letter to the Swedes that Smoltsov died in May and that Abakumov had been executed. The Swedes were suspicious but the Russians never deviated from this story. According to the Swedish foreign department, two very interesting testimonies were the basis for a note to Moscow requesting the case to be reexamined.
The answer from the Kremlin was the same as earlier — Wallenberg died in The reply was the same as usual — Wallenberg died in In , he became an honorary citizen of the United States. He received the same honor in Canada in and Israel in In Sweden and other countries, Raoul Wallenberg associations worked tirelessly to find answers to what happened.
He said Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former Soviet secret police chief, told him of the shooting in a private conversation. The statement did not explain why Wallenberg was killed or why the government lied about his death for 55 years, claiming from to that he died of a heart attack while under Soviet protection.
The report did unearth evidence that the reason the Soviets arrested Wallenberg was the suspicion that he was a spy for the United States. Sources : David Metzler, Raoul Wallenberg.
Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library. Category » Per Anger. Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. Righteous Among the Nations. Soviet Union. Raoul Wallenberg Arrives in Budapest. Raoul Wallenberg. Yad Vashem. Per Anger.
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