Raoul Wallenberg
Encyclopedia
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish
businessman, diplomat
and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for his successful efforts to rescue thousands of Jews
in Nazi-occupied Hungary
from the Holocaust, during the later stages of World War II
. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest
between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passport
s and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory
, saving tens of thousands of lives.
On January 17, 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army
, Wallenberg was detained by Soviet authorities on suspicion of espionage
and subsequently disappeared. He was later reported to have died on July 7, 1947 in Lubyanka prison in Moscow
. The motives behind Wallenberg's arrest and imprisonment by the Soviets, along with questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and his possible ties to US intelligence
, remain mysterious and are the subject of continued speculation.
Due to his courageous actions on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg has been the subject of numerous humanitarian honors in the decades following his presumed death
. In 1981, Congressman Tom Lantos
, among those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States
. He is also an honorary citizen of Canada
, Hungary
, and Israel
. Israel has also designated Wallenberg one of the Righteous among the Nations
. Monuments have been dedicated to him, and streets have been named after him throughout the world. A Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
was created in 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg". It gives the Raoul Wallenberg Award annually to recognize persons who carry out those goals. A postage stamp was issued by the U.S. in his honour in 1997.
Wallenberg was born in 1912 in Kappsta, Lidingö
, near Stockholm
, where his maternal grandparents, professor Per Johan Wising and his wife Sophie Wising, had built a summer house in 1882. His paternal grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, was a diplomat and envoy to Tokyo
, Constantinople
and Sofia
.
His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer
who died of cancer three months before his son was born, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). In 1918, his mother married Fredrik von Dardel (d. 1979); they had a son, Guy von Dardel
, http://www.raoul-wallenberg.eu/articles/guy-von-dardel-introduction-to-the-report-of-the-independent-consultants/ and a daughter, Nina Lagergren.
In 1931, Wallenberg went to study architecture at the University of Michigan
in the United States
. In college, he learned to speak English
, German
and French
. He used his vacations to explore the United States. Although the Wallenberg family
was wealthy, he worked at odd jobs in his free time. He joined other young male students as a passenger rickshaw handler at Chicago
's Century of Progress
.
On his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. Eventually, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town
, South Africa
, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. Between 1935 and 1936, Wallenberg was employed in a minor position at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa
. He returned to Sweden in 1936 and obtained a job in Stockholm with the help of his uncle and godfather, Jacob Wallenberg, at the Central European Trading Company, an export-import company trading between Stockholm and central Europe, owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew.
, under the regency of Miklós Horthy
, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage. Because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kalman Lauer, found it increasingly difficult to travel to his native Hungary, which was moving still deeper into the German orbit, becoming a member of the Axis Powers
in November 1940 and later joining the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union
in June 1941. Out of necessity Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative, traveling to Hungary to conduct business on Lauer's behalf and also to look in on members of Lauer's extended family who remained in Budapest. He soon learned to speak Hungarian
, and from 1941 made increasingly frequent travels to Budapest
. Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the International Director of the company. In this capacity Wallenberg also made several business trips to Germany
and Occupied-France during the early years of World War II
. It was during these trips that Wallenberg was able to closely observe the Nazi's bureaucratic and administrative methods, knowledge which would prove quite valuable to him later.
Meanwhile, the situation in Hungary had begun to deteriorate as the tide of the war began to turn decisively against Germany and its allies. Following the catastrophic Axis defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad
(in which Hungarian troops fighting alongside German forces suffered an appalling 84% casualty rate) the regime of Miklos Horthy began secretly pursuing peace talks with the United States
and the United Kingdom
. Upon learning of Horthy's duplicity, Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary
by German troops in March 1944. The Wehrmacht
quickly took control of the country and placed Horthy under house arrest
. A pro-German puppet government was installed in Budapest, with actual power resting with the German military governor, SS-Brigadefuhrer
Edmund Veesenmayer
. With the Nazis now in control, the relative security from the Holocaust
enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In April and May 1944 the Germans and their accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to concentration camps
in occupied-Poland
. Under the personal leadership of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer
Adolf Eichmann
, who would later gain infamy due to his role as the bureaucratic architect of the Nazi's Final Solution
, deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 individuals per day.
publicized what is now called the Wetzler-Vrba Report
, a detailed account of the operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp written by two recent escapees. Following the report's publication, the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
turned to the newly created War Refugee Board (WRB)
in search of a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Hungary. In spring 1944, Roosevelt dispatched US Treasury Department official Iver C. Olsen
to Stockholm as a representative of the WRB. Olsen was tasked specifically by the President with finding a way to aid the Hungarian Jews. This, however, was not the sole reason for Olsen being posted to Sweden. In addition to his duties with the WRB, Olsen was also secretly functioning as the chief of currency operations
for the Stockholm branch of the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS), the United States' wartime espionage service.
In search of someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue program for the nation's Jews, Olsen established a committee composed of many prominent Swedish Jews
to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the WRB's planned rescue operation. One member of the committee was Wallenberg's business associate Kalman Lauer.
The committee's first choice to lead the mission was Count
Folke Bernadotte
, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross and a member of the Swedish Royal Family
. When Bernadotte's proposed appointment was rejected by the Hungarians, Lauer suggested Wallenberg as a potential replacement. Olsen was introduced to Wallenberg by Lauer in June 1944 and came away from the meeting impressed and, shortly thereafter, appointed Wallenberg to lead the mission. Olsen's selection of Wallenberg was initially met with objections from some US officials who doubted his reliability, in light of existing commercial relationships between businesses owned by the Wallenberg family
and the German government
. These differences were eventually overcome and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs agreed to the American request to assign Wallenberg to its legation
in Budapest as part of an arrangement in which Wallenberg's appointment was granted in exchange for a lessening of American diplomatic pressure on the neutral Swedes to curtail their nation's free-trade policies toward Germany.
in Budapest in July 1944, the campaign against the Jews of Hungary had already been underway for several months. Between May and July 1944, Eichmann and his associates had successfully deported over 400,000 Jews by freight train. Of those deported all but 15,000 were sent directly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland
. By the time of Wallenberg's arrival there were only 230,000 Jews remaining in Hungary. Together with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger
, he issued "protective passports" (German: Schutz-Pass), which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus prevented their deportation. Although not legal, 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 so that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow badge
required for Jews.
With the money raised by the board, Wallenberg rented 32 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 working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:
At the height of the program, over 350 people were involved in the rescue of Jews. Sister Sára Salkaházi
was caught sheltering Jewish women and was killed by members of the Arrow Cross Party. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz
also issued protective passports from the Swiss embassy in the spring of 1944; and Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca
posed as a Spanish diplomat and issued forged visas. Berber Smit (Barbara Hogg), the daughter of Lolle Smit (1892–1961), director of N.V. Philips Budapest and a Dutch spy working for the British MI6, also assisted Wallenberg. According to her son, she had a romance with him. Smit's other daughter, Reinderdina Petronella (1922–1945), died on 18 August 1945 in Bucharest
.
Wallenberg started sleeping in a different house each night, to guard against being captured or killed by Arrow Cross Party members or by Adolf Eichmann
's men. Two days before the Russians occupied Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Eichmann and Major-General Gerhard Schmidthuber, the supreme commander of German forces in Hungary. Wallenberg bribed Arrow Cross Party member Pál Szalai
to deliver a note in which Wallenberg persuaded the Germans 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.
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.
under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky
launched an offensive against Budapest
and by late December the city had been successfully encircled by Soviet forces. Despite this the German commander of Budapest, SS Lieutenant General
Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch
, refused all offers to surrender, setting in motion a protracted and bloody siege of the Hungarian capital. At the height of the fighting, on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg was called to General Malinovsky's headquarters in Debrecen
on suspicion of being a spy for the United States and that the War Refugee Board was engaged in espionage. Wallenberg's last recorded words were, "I'm going to Malinovsky's ... whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet." Documents recovered in 1993 from previously secret Soviet military archives and published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
show that an order for Wallenberg's arrest was issued by Deputy Commissar for Defence (and future Soviet Premier) Nikolai Bulganin
and transmitted to Malinovsky's headquarters on the day of Wallenberg's disappearance. In 2003, a review of Soviet wartime correspondences indicated that Vilmos Böhm, a Hungarian politician who was also a Soviet intelligence
agent, may have provided Wallenberg's name to the NKVD
as a person to detain for possible involvement in espionage
.
Information about Wallenberg after his detention is mostly speculative; there were many witnesses who claim to have met him during his imprisonment. Wallenberg was transported by train from Debrecen
, through Romania
, to Moscow
. The Soviets may have moved him to their capital in hopes of exchanging him for defectors in Sweden. Vladimir Dekanosov notified the Swedes on January 16, 1945 that Wallenberg was under the protection of Soviet authorities. On January 21, 1945, Wallenberg was transferred to Lubyanka prison
and held in cell 123 with fellow prisoner Gustav Richter
, formerly 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 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 had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party
or the Gestapo
. Sweden's foreign minister, Östen Undén
, and its ambassador to the Soviet Union
, Staffan Söderblom, wrongly assumed that they were dead. In April 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 Vyacheslav Molotov
and Stalin in Moscow
on June 15, 1946. Söderblom, still believing Wallenberg to be dead, ignored talk of an exchange for Russian defectors in Sweden.
infirmary, and 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.
In 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov was charged by the Russian government to investigate Wallenberg's fate. He concluded that Wallenberg died in 1947, executed while a prisoner in Lubyanka.
In Moscow 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. General Pavel Sudoplatov
claimed that Raoul Wallenberg died after being poisoned by Grigory Mairanovsky
, a notorious NKVD assassin. In 2000, Russian prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov
signed a verdict posthumously rehabilitating Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, as "victims of political repression". A number of files pertinent to Wallenberg were turned over to the chief rabbi
of Russia by the Russian government in September 2007. They will be housed at the Museum of Tolerance in Moscow, scheduled to open in 2011.
, a prisoner of war, provided evidentiary statements concerning Wallenberg. While in the transit camp in Kirov
, en route to Vorkuta
, Dufving encountered a prisoner with his own special guard and dressed in civilian clothes. The prisoner claimed that he was a Swedish diplomat and that he was there "through a great error."
Renowned Nazi hunter
Simon Wiesenthal
searched for Wallenberg and collected several testimonies. For example, British businessman Greville Wynne
, who was imprisoned in the Lubyanka prison in 1962 for his connection to KGB
defector Oleg Penkovsky
, stated he talked to, but could not see the face of, a man who claimed to be a Swedish diplomat. Efim (or Yefim) Moshinsky claims to have seen Wallenberg on Wrangel Island
in 1962. An eyewitness asserted that she had seen Wallenberg in the 1960s in a Soviet prison.
During a private conversation about the conditions of detention in Soviet prisons at a party reception in the mid-1970s, a KGB general is reported to have said that "conditions could not be that harsh, given that in Lubyanka prison there is some foreign prisoner who had been there now for almost three decades".
The last reported sightings of Wallenberg were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November 1987.
A Swedish-Russian working group was set up in 1991 on Guy von Dardel's initiative to search eleven separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg's fate.
Raoul Wallenberg's half-brother, Professor Guy von Dardel, a well-known physicist, retired from CERN
, was dedicated to finding out his half-brother's fate. He traveled to the Soviet Union about fifty times for discussions and research, including an examination of the Vladimir prison records. Over the years, Professor von Dardel had compiled a 50,000-page archive of interviews, journal articles, letters, and other documents related to his quest. Many, including Professor von Dardel and his daughters Louise and Marie, do not accept the various versions of Wallenberg's death. They continue to request that the archives in Russia, Sweden and Hungary be opened to impartial researchers. Wallenberg's niece, Louise von Dardel, is the main activist in the family and dedicates much of her time to speaking about Wallenberg and lobbying various countries to help uncover information about her uncle.
( or ÁVH) kidnapped Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler, three leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest, to extract confessions. Two purported eyewitnesses – Pál Szalai
and Károly Szabó
– were also arrested and interrogated using torture
. This was in preparation for a show trial to be mounted in 1953 by the Hungarian ÁVH to prove that Wallenberg had not been moved to the Soviet Union in 1945, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists.
The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist
leader Ernő Gerő
, demonstrated by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi
. The show trial was to be held in Moscow. But, after the death of Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria
, the AVH stopped preparations for the trial and released the prisoners. Domonkos spent a week in the hospital and died at home shortly afterward, mainly due to the torture he had suffered.
released thousands of previously classified documents regarding Raoul Wallenberg, in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, along with an investigation conducted by the publication US News and World Report, appeared to confirm the long-held suspicion that Wallenberg was an American intelligence asset
during his time in Hungary. In addition to Wallenberg's name appearing on a roster found in the National Archives
which listed the names of operatives associated with the CIA's wartime predecessor the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
, the documents also included a 1954 memo from an anonymous CIA source that identified a Hungarian-exile living in Stockholm who, according to the author: "assisted…in inserting Roul [sic] Wallenberg into Hungary during WWII as an agent of OSS". Another declassified memorandum written in 1990 by the curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection
William Henhoeffer, characterized the conclusion that Wallenberg was working for the OSS while in Budapest as being "essentially correct".
More telling was a communique sent on November 7, 1944 by the OSS Secret Intelligence Branch
in Bari, Italy which apparently acknowledged that Wallenberg was acting as an unofficial liaison
between the OSS and the Hungarian Independence Movement (MFM)
, an underground anti-Nazi resistance organization
. The OSS message notes Wallenberg's contacts with Geza Soos, a high-ranking MFM leader and further explains that Soos "may only be contacted" through the Swedish legation
in Budapest, which was Wallenberg's workplace and also served as the operational center for his attempts to aid the Hungarian Jews. The same message's assertion that Wallenberg "will know if he (Soos) is not in Budapest" is also curious, in that by November 1944 Soos was in hiding and knowledge of his whereabouts would only have been available to individuals closely involved with the MFM. This conclusion is given further weight by additional evidence suggesting that communications from the MFM to US intelligence were transmitted first to Stockholm and then relayed to Washington via Iver C. Olsen
, the American OSS operative who initially recruited Wallenberg to go to Budapest in June 1944.
This particular disclosure has given rise to speculation as to whether, in addition to his efforts to rescue the Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg may have also been pursuing a parallel clandestine mission aimed at politically destabilizing Hungary’s pro-Nazi government on behalf of the OSS. This would also seem to add some credence to the potential explanation that it was his association with US intelligence that led to Wallenberg being targeted by the Soviets in January 1945.
Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan
.
, in 1948 by more than 50 qualified nominators and in 1949 by a single nominator (at that time, technically the prize could be awarded posthumously, but the concept of such awards was controversial).
Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne, Australia, together with Max Stern & Co, a leading stamp dealer in Melbourne, and Australia Post, have released a limited edition Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet and Envelope Set to mark the Unit's 25th anniversary in 2010. The Stamp Sheet shows a photo of Raoul Wallenberg together with a brief outline of his life, a monument in honour of Raoul Wallenberg by artist, Karl Duldig, in the Raoul Wallenberg Garden at Kew Junction, Melbourne, and ten 60 cent Australia Post stamps with tabs of Raoul Wallenberg from early childhood to adult soldier. The Envelope has a transparent front to show the Stamp Sheet; a Schutzpass is shown on the back accompanied by an explanation.
a street was named "Raoul-Wallenberg-Gasse". Fittingly, it accommodates an ambulance and fire station.
of Canada
in 1985; and the government declared January 17, the day he disappeared, as "Raoul Wallenberg Day" in Canada.
Numerous memorials, parks, and monuments honouring Wallenberg can be found across Canada, including the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, Raoul Wallenberg Corner in Calgary
, Raoul Wallenberg Park in Saskatoon
, Parc Raoul Wallenberg in Ottawa, Ontario, and a memorial behind Christ Church Cathedral
in downtown Montreal
, where a bust of Wallenberg and a caged metal box (styled as a barbed-wire gate) stand beside each other. The main entrance to Earl Bales Park in Toronto, Ontario is named Raoul Wallenberg Road.
. A Wallenberg-Straße (named in 1967) is in the western district of Wilmersdorf
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe+berlin&sll=52.548036,13.556934&sspn=0.013283,0.020814&gl=uk&g=Raoul-Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe,+Berlin,+Germany&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Wallenbergstra%C3%9Fe,+Wilmersdorf+10713+Berlin,+Germany&ll=52.483342,13.314207&spn=0.006651,0.010407&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A, and Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße (named in 1992), with a station of the S-Bahn, is in the eastern district of Marzahn
.http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=raoul+wallenberg+strasse+berlin&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Raoul-Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe,+Berlin,+Germany&gl=uk&ei=FOvgSq3gJ5HbjQe_wpGxDA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ8gEwAA
granted Wallenberg honorary citizenship in 1986 and honored him at the Yad Vashem
memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations
; this designation recognizes Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust. Other tributes to Wallenberg in Israel include at least five streets named after him. On Raoul Wallenberg Street in Tel Aviv
, a statue identical to one in Budapest was installed in 2002 (see below), made by the sculptor Imre Varga.
to honor Wallenberg. It was unveiled by King Carl XVI Gustaf, at a ceremony attended by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
and his wife Nane Maria Annan (Wallenberg's niece). The abstract sculpture portrays people rising from the concrete, accompanied by a bronze replica of Wallenberg's signature. 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."
A memorial to Wallenberg was installed in Göteborg, near Hagakyrkan (Haga Church). Kofi Annan attended the unveiling ceremony.
outside of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue
. On separate occasions in the 1990s and 2000s, Queen Elizabeth II and Charles, Prince of Wales
paid tribute to Wallenberg at the Western Marble Arch site. A separate memorial stands near the Welsh National War Memorial in Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff
.
A bronze briefcase memorial by Gustav Kraitz with the initials RW is located in the garden of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre near Laxton
in Nottinghamshire
.
in 1981, the second person to be so honored, after Winston Churchill
. In 1985, the portion of 15th Street, SW in Washington, D.C.
on which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
is located, was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place by Act of Congress
.
In 1997, the United States Postal Service
issued a stamp in his honor. 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."
In Manhattan
, a monument honoring him was installed on Raoul Wallenberg Walk, named in his honor, across from the headquarters of the United Nations
. The Swedish consulate commissioned the piece, created by Swedish sculptor Gustav Kraitz. The sculpture, Hope, is a replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, a sphere, five pillars of black granite, and paving stones (setts
) which were formerly used on the streets of the Budapest ghetto
. Another memorial stands in front of the Art and Architecture building at the University of Michigan, where he received his architecture degree in 1935.
Places named after Wallenberg include Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School
in San Francisco, the PS 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in Brooklyn
, New York, and Raoul Wallenberg Avenue in Trenton, New Jersey
.
Since 2005, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
has campaigned to establish October 5 as Raoul Wallenberg Day throughout the United States, as this was the day Wallenberg was awarded Honorary U.S. Citizenship. By 2010, Raoul Wallenberg Day was being observed by the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Wallenberg was posthumously awarded the Train Foundation's Civil Courage Prize
, which recognizes "extraordinary heroes of conscience".
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 University of Michigan
awards the Wallenberg Medal annually to outstanding humanitarians who embody the humanitarian values and commitment of its distinguished alumnus. The first Wallenberg Medal was presented in 1990 to Elie Wiesel
. The twentieth Wallenberg Medal was awarded in October 2010 to Dr. Denis Mukwege
. 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.
(1985), starring Richard Chamberlain
, the 1990 Swedish production God afton, Herr Wallenberg
(Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg), featuring Stellan Skarsgård
, and various documentaries, such as Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1984) and Searching for Wallenberg (2003). He also appears in the Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest
and is played by Iván Fenyő
.
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
businessman, diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for his successful efforts to rescue thousands of Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
in Nazi-occupied Hungary
Hungary during World War II
Hungary during World War II was a member of the Axis powers. In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression. By 1938, Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become increasingly pro-Fascist Italian and...
from the Holocaust, during the later stages of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
s and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory
Extraterritoriality
Extraterritoriality is the state of being exempt from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Extraterritoriality can also be applied to physical places, such as military bases of foreign countries, or offices of the United Nations...
, saving tens of thousands of lives.
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, Wallenberg was detained by Soviet authorities on suspicion of espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
and subsequently disappeared. He was later reported to have died on July 7, 1947 in Lubyanka prison in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The motives behind Wallenberg's arrest and imprisonment by the Soviets, along with questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and his possible ties to US intelligence
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, remain mysterious and are the subject of continued speculation.
Due to his courageous actions on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg has been the subject of numerous humanitarian honors in the decades following his presumed death
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
. In 1981, Congressman Tom Lantos
Tom Lantos
Thomas Peter "Tom" Lantos was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of southwest San Francisco...
, among those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States
Honorary Citizen of the United States
A person of exceptional merit, generally a non-United States citizen, may be declared an Honorary Citizen of the United States by an Act of Congress, or by a proclamation issued by the President of the United States, pursuant to authorization granted by Congress.Seven people have been so honored,...
. He is also an honorary citizen of Canada
Honorary Canadian citizenship
Honorary Canadian citizenship is an honour wherein Canadian citizenship is bestowed by the Governor General of Canada, with the approval of parliament, on foreigners of exceptional merit...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Israel has also designated Wallenberg one of the Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
. Monuments have been dedicated to him, and streets have been named after him throughout the world. A Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States was created in May 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg"....
was created in 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg". It gives the Raoul Wallenberg Award annually to recognize persons who carry out those goals. A postage stamp was issued by the U.S. in his honour in 1997.
Early life
Lidingö Municipality
Lidingö Municipality is a municipality just east of Stockholm in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. Its seat is located in the city of Lidingö...
, near Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, where his maternal grandparents, professor Per Johan Wising and his wife Sophie Wising, had built a summer house in 1882. His paternal grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, was a diplomat and envoy to Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
and Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
.
His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer
Swedish Navy
The Royal Swedish Navy is the naval branch of the Swedish Armed Forces. It is composed of surface and submarine naval units – the Fleet – as well as marine units, the so-called Amphibious Corps .In Swedish, vessels of the Swedish Navy are given the prefix "HMS," short for Hans/Hennes...
who died of cancer three months before his son was born, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). In 1918, his mother married Fredrik von Dardel (d. 1979); they had a son, Guy von Dardel
Guy von Dardel
Guy von Dardel, born August 26, 1919 in Stockholm, died August 28, 2009 in Geneva, was a Swedish physicist who did research in particle physics and participated in the establishment of CERN....
, http://www.raoul-wallenberg.eu/articles/guy-von-dardel-introduction-to-the-report-of-the-independent-consultants/ and a daughter, Nina Lagergren.
In 1931, Wallenberg went to study architecture at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In college, he learned to speak English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. He used his vacations to explore the United States. Although the Wallenberg family
Wallenberg family
The Wallenberg family is a prominent Swedish banking family, renowned as bankers, industrialists, politicians, diplomats and philanthropists. The most famous of the Wallenbergs, Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat, worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust...
was wealthy, he worked at odd jobs in his free time. He joined other young male students as a passenger rickshaw handler at Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
's Century of Progress
Century of Progress
A Century of Progress International Exposition was the name of a World's Fair held in Chicago from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation...
.
On his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. Eventually, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. Between 1935 and 1936, Wallenberg was employed in a minor position at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
. He returned to Sweden in 1936 and obtained a job in Stockholm with the help of his uncle and godfather, Jacob Wallenberg, at the Central European Trading Company, an export-import company trading between Stockholm and central Europe, owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew.
World War II
Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of HungaryKingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
, under the regency of Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage. Because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kalman Lauer, found it increasingly difficult to travel to his native Hungary, which was moving still deeper into the German orbit, becoming a member of the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
in November 1940 and later joining the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
in June 1941. Out of necessity Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative, traveling to Hungary to conduct business on Lauer's behalf and also to look in on members of Lauer's extended family who remained in Budapest. He soon learned to speak Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, and from 1941 made increasingly frequent travels to Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
. Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the International Director of the company. In this capacity Wallenberg also made several business trips to Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and Occupied-France during the early years of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. It was during these trips that Wallenberg was able to closely observe the Nazi's bureaucratic and administrative methods, knowledge which would prove quite valuable to him later.
Meanwhile, the situation in Hungary had begun to deteriorate as the tide of the war began to turn decisively against Germany and its allies. Following the catastrophic Axis defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
(in which Hungarian troops fighting alongside German forces suffered an appalling 84% casualty rate) the regime of Miklos Horthy began secretly pursuing peace talks with the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Upon learning of Horthy's duplicity, Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary
Operation Margarethe
During World War II, the Germans planned two discrete operations using the codename Margarethe.Operation Margarethe I was the occupation of Hungary by German forces on 19 March 1944. The Hungarian government was an ally of Nazi Germany, but had been discussing an armistice with the Allies...
by German troops in March 1944. The Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
quickly took control of the country and placed Horthy under house arrest
House arrest
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
. A pro-German puppet government was installed in Budapest, with actual power resting with the German military governor, SS-Brigadefuhrer
Brigadeführer
SS-Brigadeführer was an SS rank that was used in Nazi Germany between the years of 1932 and 1945. Brigadeführer was also an SA rank....
Edmund Veesenmayer
Edmund Veesenmayer
Edmund Veesenmayer was a German politician, officer and war criminal. He significantly contributed to The Holocaust in Hungary and Croatia...
. With the Nazis now in control, the relative security from the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In April and May 1944 the Germans and their accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
in occupied-Poland
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
. Under the personal leadership of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer
Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer was a paramilitary Nazi Party rank used by both the SA and the SS. It was created in May 1933 to fill the need for an additional field grade officer rank above Sturmbannführer as the SA expanded. It became an SS rank at the same time...
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
, who would later gain infamy due to his role as the bureaucratic architect of the Nazi's Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
, deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 individuals per day.
Recruitment by the War Refugee Board
The persecution of the Jews in Hungary soon became well known abroad, unlike the full extent of the Holocaust. In late spring 1944, George MantelloGeorge Mantello
George Mantello, born György Mandl or Mandel was a Jewish diplomat who, while working for the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, Switzerland, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by providing fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers and rescued tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands...
publicized what is now called the Wetzler-Vrba Report
Vrba-Wetzler report
The Vrba-Wetzler report, also known as the Vrba-Wetzler statement, the Auschwitz Protocols, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 32-page document about the German Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland during the Holocaust...
, a detailed account of the operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp written by two recent escapees. Following the report's publication, the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
turned to the newly created War Refugee Board (WRB)
War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency created to aid civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers...
in search of a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Hungary. In spring 1944, Roosevelt dispatched US Treasury Department official Iver C. Olsen
Iver C. Olsen
Iver C. Olsen was an accountant for the Office of Strategic Services and the War Refugee Board in Stockholm during World War II...
to Stockholm as a representative of the WRB. Olsen was tasked specifically by the President with finding a way to aid the Hungarian Jews. This, however, was not the sole reason for Olsen being posted to Sweden. In addition to his duties with the WRB, Olsen was also secretly functioning as the chief of currency operations
Economic warfare
Economic warfare is the term for economic policies followed as a part of military operations during wartime.The purpose of economic warfare is to capture critical economic resources so that the military can operate at full efficiency and/or deprive the enemy forces of those resources so that they...
for the Stockholm branch of the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS), the United States' wartime espionage service.
In search of someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue program for the nation's Jews, Olsen established a committee composed of many prominent Swedish Jews
History of the Jews in Sweden
The History of the Jews in Sweden probably began with arrivals from the Hanseatic League in medieval times, but there are no records. In Elizabethan times it was common for European royalty to have Jewish doctors at court, and there is a record of a Jewish doctor who served Gustav Vasa in the 16th...
to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the WRB's planned rescue operation. One member of the committee was Wallenberg's business associate Kalman Lauer.
The committee's first choice to lead the mission was Count
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...
Folke Bernadotte
Folke Bernadotte
Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg was a Swedish diplomat and nobleman noted for his negotiation of the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II, including 450 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt released on 14 April 1945...
, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross and a member of the Swedish Royal Family
Swedish Royal Family
The Swedish Royal Family since 1818 consists of a number of persons in the Swedish Royal House of Bernadotte, closely related to the King of Sweden. They are entitled to royal titles and style , and some perform official engagements and ceremonial duties of state...
. When Bernadotte's proposed appointment was rejected by the Hungarians, Lauer suggested Wallenberg as a potential replacement. Olsen was introduced to Wallenberg by Lauer in June 1944 and came away from the meeting impressed and, shortly thereafter, appointed Wallenberg to lead the mission. Olsen's selection of Wallenberg was initially met with objections from some US officials who doubted his reliability, in light of existing commercial relationships between businesses owned by the Wallenberg family
Wallenberg family
The Wallenberg family is a prominent Swedish banking family, renowned as bankers, industrialists, politicians, diplomats and philanthropists. The most famous of the Wallenbergs, Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat, worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust...
and the German government
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. These differences were eventually overcome and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs agreed to the American request to assign Wallenberg to its legation
Legation
A legation was the term used in diplomacy to denote a diplomatic representative office lower than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an Ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary....
in Budapest as part of an arrangement in which Wallenberg's appointment was granted in exchange for a lessening of American diplomatic pressure on the neutral Swedes to curtail their nation's free-trade policies toward Germany.
Mission to Budapest
When Wallenberg reached the Swedish legationLegation
A legation was the term used in diplomacy to denote a diplomatic representative office lower than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an Ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary....
in Budapest in July 1944, the campaign against the Jews of Hungary had already been underway for several months. Between May and July 1944, Eichmann and his associates had successfully deported over 400,000 Jews by freight train. Of those deported all but 15,000 were sent directly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. By the time of Wallenberg's arrival there were only 230,000 Jews remaining in Hungary. Together with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger
Per Anger
Per Johan Valentin Anger was a Swedish diplomat who participated in numerous efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews from arrest and deportation by the Nazis during World War II.-Early career:...
, he issued "protective passports" (German: Schutz-Pass), which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus prevented their deportation. Although not legal, 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 so that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow badge
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
required for Jews.
With the money raised by the board, Wallenberg rented 32 buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity
Diplomatic immunity
Diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity and a policy held between governments that ensures that diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country's laws...
. 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 working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:
At the height of the program, over 350 people were involved in the rescue of Jews. Sister Sára Salkaházi
Sara Salkahazi
Blessed Sára Salkaházi, S.S.S. , born as Sára Schalkház, was a Hungarian Roman Catholic religious sister who saved the lives of approximately one hundred Jews during World War II...
was caught sheltering Jewish women and was killed by members of the Arrow Cross Party. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz
Carl Lutz
Carl Lutz was the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary from 1942 until the end of World War II. He helped save tens of thousands of Jews from deportation to Nazi Extermination camps during the Holocaust. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews...
also issued protective passports from the Swiss embassy in the spring of 1944; and Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca
Giorgio Perlasca
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:...
posed as a Spanish diplomat and issued forged visas. Berber Smit (Barbara Hogg), the daughter of Lolle Smit (1892–1961), director of N.V. Philips Budapest and a Dutch spy working for the British MI6, also assisted Wallenberg. According to her son, she had a romance with him. Smit's other daughter, Reinderdina Petronella (1922–1945), died on 18 August 1945 in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
.
Wallenberg started sleeping in a different house each night, to guard against being captured or killed by Arrow Cross Party members or by Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
's men. Two days before the Russians occupied Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Eichmann and Major-General Gerhard Schmidthuber, the supreme commander of German forces in Hungary. Wallenberg bribed Arrow Cross Party member Pál Szalai
Pál Szalai
Pál Szalai also spelled Pál Szalay and anglicized as Paul Sterling was a high ranking member of the Budapest police force and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party during World War II....
to deliver a note in which Wallenberg persuaded the Germans to cancel a final effort to organize a death march
Death marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
of the remaining Jews in Budapest by threatening to have them prosecuted for war crimes once the war was over.
People saved by Wallenberg include biochemist Lars Ernster
Lars Ernster
Lars Ernster was a professor of biochemistry, and a member of the Board of the Nobel Foundation- Biography :Lars Ernster was born in Hungary and came to Sweden 1946. He played a prominent role in the scientific community. He took his Ph.D. degree at the Stockholm University in 1956...
, who was housed in the Swedish embassy, and Tom Lantos
Tom Lantos
Thomas Peter "Tom" Lantos was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of southwest San Francisco...
, later a member of the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, who lived in one of the Swedish protective houses.
Disappearance
On October 29, 1944 elements of the Red ArmyRed Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky
Rodion Malinovsky
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was a Soviet military commander in World War II and Defense Minister of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s. He contributed to the major defeat of Nazi Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Budapest...
launched an offensive against Budapest
Budapest Offensive
The Budapest Offensive was the general attack by Soviet forces against Germany and their allies from the territory of Hungary. The offensive lasted from 29 October 1944 until the fall of Budapest on 13 February 1945.-Prelude:...
and by late December the city had been successfully encircled by Soviet forces. Despite this the German commander of Budapest, SS Lieutenant General
Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch
Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch
Karl Pfeffer Wildenbruch was a staff officer of the German General Staff during World War I and a Obergruppenführer General der Waffen-SS und der Polizei, during World War II, he commanded the 4th SS Polizei Division and the VI SS Army Corps and the IX SS Mountain Corps, he was awarded the...
, refused all offers to surrender, setting in motion a protracted and bloody siege of the Hungarian capital. At the height of the fighting, on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg was called to General Malinovsky's headquarters in Debrecen
Debrecen
Debrecen , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar county.- Name :...
on suspicion of being a spy for the United States and that the War Refugee Board was engaged in espionage. Wallenberg's last recorded words were, "I'm going to Malinovsky's ... whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet." Documents recovered in 1993 from previously secret Soviet military archives and published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet is a daily newspaper in Sweden. The first issue appeared on 18 December 1884. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as local coverage of the Greater Stockholm region...
show that an order for Wallenberg's arrest was issued by Deputy Commissar for Defence (and future Soviet Premier) Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense and Premier of the Soviet Union . The Bulganin beard is named after him.-Early career:...
and transmitted to Malinovsky's headquarters on the day of Wallenberg's disappearance. In 2003, a review of Soviet wartime correspondences indicated that Vilmos Böhm, a Hungarian politician who was also a Soviet intelligence
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka"...
agent, may have provided Wallenberg's name to the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
as a person to detain for possible involvement in espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
.
Information about Wallenberg after his detention is mostly speculative; there were many witnesses who claim to have met him during his imprisonment. Wallenberg was transported by train from Debrecen
Debrecen
Debrecen , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar county.- Name :...
, through Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The Soviets may have moved him to their capital in hopes of exchanging him for defectors in Sweden. Vladimir Dekanosov notified the Swedes on January 16, 1945 that Wallenberg was under the protection of Soviet authorities. On January 21, 1945, Wallenberg was transferred to Lubyanka prison
Lubyanka (KGB)
The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...
and held in cell 123 with fellow prisoner Gustav Richter
Gustav Richter
Gustav Richter was an aide to Nazi Adolf Eichmann during World War II.Richter was born in 1913 and he received a law degree .Richter was a devoted Nazi...
, formerly 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 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 had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party
Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party was a national socialist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which led in Hungary a government known as the Government of National Unity from October 15, 1944 to 28 March 1945...
or the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. Sweden's foreign minister, Östen Undén
Östen Undén
Bo Östen Undén , J.D., was a Swedish academic, civil servant and Social Democratic politician and acting Prime Minister of Sweden 6 October 1946-11 October 1946 following the death of Per Albin Hansson...
, and its ambassador to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Staffan Söderblom, wrongly assumed that they were dead. In April 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 Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
and Stalin in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
on June 15, 1946. Söderblom, still believing Wallenberg to be dead, ignored talk of an exchange for Russian defectors in Sweden.
Death
On February 6, 1957, the Soviets released a document dated July 17, 1947, which stated "I report that the prisoner Wallenberg who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack or heart failure. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Wallenberg 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 signed by Smoltsov, then the head of the Lubyanka prisonLubyanka (KGB)
The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...
infirmary, and 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.
In 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov was charged by the Russian government to investigate Wallenberg's fate. He concluded that Wallenberg died in 1947, executed while a prisoner in Lubyanka.
In Moscow in 2000, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev was a Soviet politician and historian who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
announced that Wallenberg had been executed in 1947 in Lubyanka prison. He claimed that Vladimir Kryuchkov
Vladimir Kryuchkov
Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov was a former Soviet politician and Communist Party member, having been in the organization from 1944 until he was dismissed in 1991...
, 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. General Pavel Sudoplatov
Pavel Sudoplatov
Lieutenant General Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov was a member of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union who rose to the rank of lieutenant general...
claimed that Raoul Wallenberg died after being poisoned by Grigory Mairanovsky
Grigory Mairanovsky
Grigory Mairanovsky was a Soviet biochemist and poison developer.He was head of secret laboratories in the Bach Institute of Biochemistry in Moscow . As the head of Laboratory No. 1 of the NKVD , he initiated the secret "scientific" poison program conducted by the Soviet secret police services...
, a notorious NKVD assassin. In 2000, Russian prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov
Vladimir Ustinov
Vladimir Vasilyevich Ustinov is a Russian politician.He currently is the Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Southern Federal District. Until 2008, he was Russia's Minister of Justice....
signed a verdict posthumously rehabilitating Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, as "victims of political repression". A number of files pertinent to Wallenberg were turned over to the chief rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
of Russia by the Russian government in September 2007. They will be housed at the Museum of Tolerance in Moscow, scheduled to open in 2011.
Disputes regarding his death
Several former prisoners have claimed to have seen Wallenberg after his reported death in 1947. In February 1949, former German Colonel Theodor von DufvingTheodor von Dufving
-Berlin, 1945:Dufving completed Senior Staff Officers' training in the War Academy at 1944, and was then assigned as the 76th Panzer Artillery Regiment's chief of staff....
, a prisoner of war, provided evidentiary statements concerning Wallenberg. While in the transit camp in Kirov
Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Kirov , formerly known as Vyatka and Khlynov, is a city in northeastern European Russia, on the Vyatka River, and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast. Population: -History:...
, en route to Vorkuta
Vorkuta
Vorkuta is a coal-mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin at the Usa River. Population: - Labor camp origins :...
, Dufving encountered a prisoner with his own special guard and dressed in civilian clothes. The prisoner claimed that he was a Swedish diplomat and that he was there "through a great error."
Renowned Nazi hunter
Nazi hunter
A Nazi-hunter is a private individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, SS members and Nazi collaborators involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity...
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
searched for Wallenberg and collected several testimonies. For example, British businessman Greville Wynne
Greville Wynne
Greville Maynard Wynne was a British spy famous for his involvement with, and imprisonment as a result of, the espionage activities of Oleg Penkovsky.-Life:...
, who was imprisoned in the Lubyanka prison in 1962 for his connection to KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
defector Oleg Penkovsky
Oleg Penkovsky
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, codenamed HERO ; April 23, 1919, Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, Soviet Russia, – May 16, 1963, Soviet Union), was a colonel with Soviet military intelligence in the late 1950s and early 1960s who informed the United Kingdom and the United States about the Soviet Union...
, stated he talked to, but could not see the face of, a man who claimed to be a Swedish diplomat. Efim (or Yefim) Moshinsky claims to have seen Wallenberg on Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island as well as the Chukchi Peninsula on the Russian mainland...
in 1962. An eyewitness asserted that she had seen Wallenberg in the 1960s in a Soviet prison.
During a private conversation about the conditions of detention in Soviet prisons at a party reception in the mid-1970s, a KGB general is reported to have said that "conditions could not be that harsh, given that in Lubyanka prison there is some foreign prisoner who had been there now for almost three decades".
The last reported sightings of Wallenberg were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November 1987.
A Swedish-Russian working group was set up in 1991 on Guy von Dardel's initiative to search eleven separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg's fate.
Raoul Wallenberg's half-brother, Professor Guy von Dardel, a well-known physicist, retired from CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
, was dedicated to finding out his half-brother's fate. He traveled to the Soviet Union about fifty times for discussions and research, including an examination of the Vladimir prison records. Over the years, Professor von Dardel had compiled a 50,000-page archive of interviews, journal articles, letters, and other documents related to his quest. Many, including Professor von Dardel and his daughters Louise and Marie, do not accept the various versions of Wallenberg's death. They continue to request that the archives in Russia, Sweden and Hungary be opened to impartial researchers. Wallenberg's niece, Louise von Dardel, is the main activist in the family and dedicates much of her time to speaking about Wallenberg and lobbying various countries to help uncover information about her uncle.
Show trial in 1953
In April 1952, Hungarian State Protection AuthorityState Protection Authority
The State Protection Authority was the secret police force of Hungary from 1945 until 1956. It was conceived of as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's secret police forces, but attained an indigenous reputation for brutality during a series of purges beginning in 1948, intensifying in 1949...
( or ÁVH) kidnapped Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler, three leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest, to extract confessions. Two purported eyewitnesses – Pál Szalai
Pál Szalai
Pál Szalai also spelled Pál Szalay and anglicized as Paul Sterling was a high ranking member of the Budapest police force and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party during World War II....
and Károly Szabó
Károly Szabó
Károly Szabó was an employee of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest from 1944 to 1945. He was a supporter of Raoul Wallenberg and had a significant role in making contact with the representatives of the Hungarian police and other state officials...
– were also arrested and interrogated using torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
. This was in preparation for a show trial to be mounted in 1953 by the Hungarian ÁVH to prove that Wallenberg had not been moved to the Soviet Union in 1945, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists.
The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist
People's Republic of Hungary
The People's Republic of Hungary or Hungarian People's Republic was the official state name of Hungary from 1949 to 1989 during its Communist period under the guidance of the Soviet Union. The state remained in existence until 1989 when opposition forces consolidated in forcing the regime to...
leader Ernő Gerő
Erno Gero
Ernő Gerő was a Hungarian Communist Party leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as first secretary of its ruling communist party.-Life and career:...
, demonstrated by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born as Mátyás Rosenfeld, in present-day Serbia...
. The show trial was to be held in Moscow. But, after the death of Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
, the AVH stopped preparations for the trial and released the prisoners. Domonkos spent a week in the hospital and died at home shortly afterward, mainly due to the torture he had suffered.
Possible connection to US intelligence
In May 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
released thousands of previously classified documents regarding Raoul Wallenberg, in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, along with an investigation conducted by the publication US News and World Report, appeared to confirm the long-held suspicion that Wallenberg was an American intelligence asset
Asset (intelligence)
In intelligence, assets are persons within organizations or countries that are being spied upon who provide information for an outside spy.There are different categories of assets, including people...
during his time in Hungary. In addition to Wallenberg's name appearing on a roster found in the National Archives
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
which listed the names of operatives associated with the CIA's wartime predecessor the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, the documents also included a 1954 memo from an anonymous CIA source that identified a Hungarian-exile living in Stockholm who, according to the author: "assisted…in inserting Roul [sic] Wallenberg into Hungary during WWII as an agent of OSS". Another declassified memorandum written in 1990 by the curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection
CIA Library
The CIA Library, available to Central Intelligence Agency personnel only, contains approximately 125,000 books and subscribes to about 1,700 periodicals. The Library maintains three collections—Reference, Circulating, and Historical Intelligence. New material for these collections is selected...
William Henhoeffer, characterized the conclusion that Wallenberg was working for the OSS while in Budapest as being "essentially correct".
More telling was a communique sent on November 7, 1944 by the OSS Secret Intelligence Branch
Secret Intelligence Branch
The Secret Intelligence Branch of the United States' Office of Strategic Services was a wartime foreign intelligence service responsible for the collection of human intelligence from a network of field stations in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East....
in Bari, Italy which apparently acknowledged that Wallenberg was acting as an unofficial liaison
Liaison officer
A liaison officer or LNO is a person that liaises between two organizations to communicate and coordinate their activities. Generally, they are used to achieve the best utilization of resources or employment of services of one organization by another. In the military, liaison officers may...
between the OSS and the Hungarian Independence Movement (MFM)
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
, an underground anti-Nazi resistance organization
Resistance during World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
. The OSS message notes Wallenberg's contacts with Geza Soos, a high-ranking MFM leader and further explains that Soos "may only be contacted" through the Swedish legation
Legation
A legation was the term used in diplomacy to denote a diplomatic representative office lower than an embassy. Where an embassy was headed by an Ambassador, a legation was headed by a Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary....
in Budapest, which was Wallenberg's workplace and also served as the operational center for his attempts to aid the Hungarian Jews. The same message's assertion that Wallenberg "will know if he (Soos) is not in Budapest" is also curious, in that by November 1944 Soos was in hiding and knowledge of his whereabouts would only have been available to individuals closely involved with the MFM. This conclusion is given further weight by additional evidence suggesting that communications from the MFM to US intelligence were transmitted first to Stockholm and then relayed to Washington via Iver C. Olsen
Iver C. Olsen
Iver C. Olsen was an accountant for the Office of Strategic Services and the War Refugee Board in Stockholm during World War II...
, the American OSS operative who initially recruited Wallenberg to go to Budapest in June 1944.
This particular disclosure has given rise to speculation as to whether, in addition to his efforts to rescue the Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg may have also been pursuing a parallel clandestine mission aimed at politically destabilizing Hungary’s pro-Nazi government on behalf of the OSS. This would also seem to add some credence to the potential explanation that it was his association with US intelligence that led to Wallenberg being targeted by the Soviets in January 1945.
Family
In 2009, reporter Joshua Prager revealed in the Wall Street Journal that Raoul's mother and stepfather both committed suicide by overdosing on pills two days apart in 1979. Their daughter Nina Lagergren, Raoul's half-sister, attributed their suicide to their despair about never finding their son.Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
.
Honors
Wallenberg was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace PrizeNobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
, in 1948 by more than 50 qualified nominators and in 1949 by a single nominator (at that time, technically the prize could be awarded posthumously, but the concept of such awards was controversial).
Argentina
In Buenos Aires, there is a monument in honour of Wallenberg at a park. It is a replica of the London monument by Philip Jackson, was unveiled in 1998 and can be seen from the Figueroa Alcorta Avenue, in Palermo neighbourhood.Australia
In Melbourne, a small memorial in honour of Wallenberg stands at the Jewish Museum Holocaust and Research Centre; a monument dedicated to him is on the corner of Princess Street and High Street, Kew; and a tree and memorial seat are at St Kilda Town Hall. The Australian Centre for Clinical Neuropharmacology in Melbourne adopted the name 'The Raoul Wallenberg Centre' on the occasion of Raoul Wallenberg's 89th birthday. In Sydney are a Raoul Wallenberg garden and sculpture in Woollahra, and a statue inside the Jewish Museum of Australia. Commemorative trees have been planted in front of federal Parliament and in many other locations.Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne, Australia, together with Max Stern & Co, a leading stamp dealer in Melbourne, and Australia Post, have released a limited edition Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet and Envelope Set to mark the Unit's 25th anniversary in 2010. The Stamp Sheet shows a photo of Raoul Wallenberg together with a brief outline of his life, a monument in honour of Raoul Wallenberg by artist, Karl Duldig, in the Raoul Wallenberg Garden at Kew Junction, Melbourne, and ten 60 cent Australia Post stamps with tabs of Raoul Wallenberg from early childhood to adult soldier. The Envelope has a transparent front to show the Stamp Sheet; a Schutzpass is shown on the back accompanied by an explanation.
Austria
In the 22. district of ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
a street was named "Raoul-Wallenberg-Gasse". Fittingly, it accommodates an ambulance and fire station.
Canada
Wallenberg was made the first Honorary CitizenHonorary Canadian citizenship
Honorary Canadian citizenship is an honour wherein Canadian citizenship is bestowed by the Governor General of Canada, with the approval of parliament, on foreigners of exceptional merit...
of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 1985; and the government declared January 17, the day he disappeared, as "Raoul Wallenberg Day" in Canada.
Numerous memorials, parks, and monuments honouring Wallenberg can be found across Canada, including the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, Raoul Wallenberg Corner in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Raoul Wallenberg Park in Saskatoon
Saskatoon
Saskatoon is a city in central Saskatchewan, Canada, on the South Saskatchewan River. Residents of the city of Saskatoon are called Saskatonians. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Corman Park No. 344....
, Parc Raoul Wallenberg in Ottawa, Ontario, and a memorial behind Christ Church Cathedral
Christ Church Cathedral (Montreal)
Christ Church Cathedral is an Anglican Gothic Revival cathedral in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the seat of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal. It is located at 635 Saint Catherine Street West, between Union Avenue and University Street. It is situated on top of the Promenades Cathédrale underground...
in downtown Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, where a bust of Wallenberg and a caged metal box (styled as a barbed-wire gate) stand beside each other. The main entrance to Earl Bales Park in Toronto, Ontario is named Raoul Wallenberg Road.
Germany
Streets were named after Wallenberg in both east and west BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. A Wallenberg-Straße (named in 1967) is in the western district of Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe+berlin&sll=52.548036,13.556934&sspn=0.013283,0.020814&gl=uk&g=Raoul-Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe,+Berlin,+Germany&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Wallenbergstra%C3%9Fe,+Wilmersdorf+10713+Berlin,+Germany&ll=52.483342,13.314207&spn=0.006651,0.010407&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A, and Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße (named in 1992), with a station of the S-Bahn, is in the eastern district of Marzahn
Marzahn
Marzahn is a locality within the borough of Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Berlin. Berlin's 2001 administrative reform led to the former boroughs of Marzahn and Hellersdorf fusing into a single new borough...
.http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=raoul+wallenberg+strasse+berlin&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Raoul-Wallenberg-Stra%C3%9Fe,+Berlin,+Germany&gl=uk&ei=FOvgSq3gJ5HbjQe_wpGxDA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ8gEwAA
Hungary
Budapest named Wallenberg as an honorary citizen in 2003. Several sites honor him, including 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.Israel
IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
granted Wallenberg honorary citizenship in 1986 and honored him at the Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament....
memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
; this designation recognizes Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust. Other tributes to Wallenberg in Israel include at least five streets named after him. On Raoul Wallenberg Street in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, a statue identical to one in Budapest was installed in 2002 (see below), made by the sculptor Imre Varga.
Russia
A memorial to him stands in the courtyard of the Russian Rudomino Library of Foreign Languages in Moscow, and an educational institute in Saint Petersburg was named after him.Sweden
In 2001, a memorial was created in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
to honor Wallenberg. It was unveiled by King Carl XVI Gustaf, at a ceremony attended by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
and his wife Nane Maria Annan (Wallenberg's niece). The abstract sculpture portrays people rising from the concrete, accompanied by a bronze replica of Wallenberg's signature. 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."
A memorial to Wallenberg was installed in Göteborg, near Hagakyrkan (Haga Church). Kofi Annan attended the unveiling ceremony.
United Kingdom
A Raoul Wallenberg memorial was installed at Great Cumberland Place in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
outside of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue
Western Marble Arch Synagogue
The Western Marble Arch Synagogue was founded 1761. Currently the Western Marble Arch Synagogue is a leading modern orthodox synagogue based in central London, England...
. On separate occasions in the 1990s and 2000s, Queen Elizabeth II and Charles, Prince of Wales
Charles, Prince of Wales
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales is the heir apparent and eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Since 1958 his major title has been His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. In Scotland he is additionally known as The Duke of Rothesay...
paid tribute to Wallenberg at the Western Marble Arch site. A separate memorial stands near the Welsh National War Memorial in Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
.
A bronze briefcase memorial by Gustav Kraitz with the initials RW is located in the garden of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre near Laxton
Laxton, Nottinghamshire
Laxton is a small village in the civil parish of Laxton and Moorhouse in the English county of Nottinghamshire, situated about 25 miles northeast of Nottingham city centre....
in Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
.
United States
The US Congress made Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United StatesHonorary Citizen of the United States
A person of exceptional merit, generally a non-United States citizen, may be declared an Honorary Citizen of the United States by an Act of Congress, or by a proclamation issued by the President of the United States, pursuant to authorization granted by Congress.Seven people have been so honored,...
in 1981, the second person to be so honored, after Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
. In 1985, the portion of 15th Street, SW in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
on which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
is located, was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place by Act of Congress
Act of Congress
An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by government with a legislature named "Congress," such as the United States Congress or the Congress of the Philippines....
.
In 1997, the United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a stamp in his honor. Representative Tom Lantos
Tom Lantos
Thomas Peter "Tom" Lantos was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1981 until his death, representing the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of southwest San Francisco...
, 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."
In Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, a monument honoring him was installed on Raoul Wallenberg Walk, named in his honor, across from the headquarters of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. The Swedish consulate commissioned the piece, created by Swedish sculptor Gustav Kraitz. The sculpture, Hope, is a replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, a sphere, five pillars of black granite, and paving stones (setts
Sett (paving)
A sett, usually the plural setts and in some places called a Belgian block, often incorrectly called "cobblestone", is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used originally for paving roads, today a decorative stone paving used in landscape architecture...
) which were formerly used on the streets of the Budapest ghetto
Budapest ghetto
The Budapest Ghetto was a ghetto where Jews were forced to live in Budapest, Hungary during the Second World War.- History :The area consisted of several blocks of the old Jewish quarter of the city surrounding the main synagogue, and was surrounded by a high fence and stone wall that was guarded...
. Another memorial stands in front of the Art and Architecture building at the University of Michigan, where he received his architecture degree in 1935.
Places named after Wallenberg include Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School
Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School
Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School is a high school in San Francisco, California, USA. It was a California Distinguished School from 1990-1992....
in San Francisco, the PS 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York, and Raoul Wallenberg Avenue in Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...
.
Since 2005, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is a non-governmental organization which researches Holocaust rescuers and advocates for their recognition. The organization developed educational programs for school to promote peace and civil service...
has campaigned to establish October 5 as Raoul Wallenberg Day throughout the United States, as this was the day Wallenberg was awarded Honorary U.S. Citizenship. By 2010, Raoul Wallenberg Day was being observed by the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Wallenberg was posthumously awarded the Train Foundation's Civil Courage Prize
Civil Courage Prize
The Civil Courage Prize is a human rights award which is awarded to "steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk — rather than military valor." It is awarded by the Trustees of The Train Foundation annually and may be awarded posthumously....
, which recognizes "extraordinary heroes of conscience".
Awards in his name
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United StatesThe Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States was created in May 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg"....
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 University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
awards the Wallenberg Medal annually to outstanding humanitarians who embody the humanitarian values and commitment of its distinguished alumnus. The first Wallenberg Medal was presented in 1990 to Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel
Sir Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE; born September 30, 1928) is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and...
. The twentieth Wallenberg Medal was awarded in October 2010 to Dr. Denis Mukwege
Denis Mukwege
Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynecologist. Working in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he specializes in the treatment of women who have been gang-raped by Rwandan militia, Mukwege has probably become the world's leading expert on how to repair the internal physical damage caused by gang rape...
. 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.
Sweden
- Raoul Wallenbergskolan Bromma
- Raoul Wallenbergförskolan Bromma
- Raoul Wallenbergskolan SkövdeSkövdeSkövde is a locality and the seat of Skövde Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 34 446 inhabitants .Skövde is situated some 150 km northeast of Gothenburg, between Sweden's two largest lakes, Vänern and Vättern. It sits on the eastern slope of a low mountain ridge Billingen ,...
- Raoul Wallenberggymnasiet Skövde
- Raoul Wallenbergskolan UppsalaUppsala- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...
- Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian LawRaoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian LawThe Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law is an independent academic institution of Lund University established in 1986 after monumental humanitarian work of Raoul Wallenberg...
(Lund UniversityLund UniversityLund University , located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, is one of northern Europe's most prestigious universities and one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, frequently ranked among the world's top 100 universities...
)
USA
- P.S. 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in BrooklynBrooklynBrooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York - Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, a street in Washington, D.C. The United States Holocaust Museum is located on this street.
- Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco
Films
A number of films have been made of Wallenberg's life, including the 1985 made-for-television movie Wallenberg: A Hero's StoryWallenberg: A Hero's Story
Wallenberg: A Hero's Story is a 1985 NBC made-for-television movie starring Richard Chamberlain as Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat instrumental in saving thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust....
(1985), starring Richard Chamberlain
Richard Chamberlain
George Richard Chamberlain is an American actor of stage and screen who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare .-Early life:...
, the 1990 Swedish production God afton, Herr Wallenberg
God afton, Herr Wallenberg
Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg is a 1990 film about Swedish World War II diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was instrumental in saving the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust...
(Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg), featuring Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan Skarsgård
Stellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor, known internationally for his film roles in Angels & Demons, Breaking the Waves, The Hunt for Red October, Ronin, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist,...
, and various documentaries, such as Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1984) and Searching for Wallenberg (2003). He also appears in the Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest
El ángel de Budapest
El ángel de Budapest is a Spanish 2011 television World War II-Holocaust miniseries based on the book "Un español frente al Holocausto" written by journalist and radio executive director Diego Carcedo...
and is played by Iván Fenyő
Iván Fenyo
Iván Fenyő is a Hungarian actor.He made his studies at the University of Drama, Film and Television, Budapest.Fenyő made his feature film debut as a Hungarian soldier in Jarhead, directed by Sam Mendes. Although most of his scenes were cut from the movie, he went on to play the lead in the...
.
See also
- Ángel Sanz BrizÁngel Sanz BrizÁngel Sanz Briz was a Spanish diplomat during World War II who helped save many Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution.After studying law, his first diplomatic posting was to Cairo...
and Giorgio PerlascaGiorgio PerlascaGiorgio Perlasca was an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:... - Chiune SugiharaChiune Sugiharawas a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from...
- Folke BernadotteFolke BernadotteFolke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg was a Swedish diplomat and nobleman noted for his negotiation of the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II, including 450 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt released on 14 April 1945...
- Henryk Sławik
- Nicholas WintonNicholas WintonSir Nicholas George Winton, MBE is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe...
- Marvin MakinenMarvin MakinenMarvin William Makinen has been a member of the faculty at The University of Chicago since 1974 and is a founding member of the Human Rights Board at The University of Chicago. Born in Chassell, Michigan, Makinen earned a B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961, an M.D. at the University of...
- Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for HumanityRaoul Wallenberg International Movement for HumanityThe Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for Humanity is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of the work of Raoul Wallenberg ]and to the promotion of the moral principles that made it possible.-Raoul Wallenberg:...
(founded by Dr. Vera Parnes)
External links
- The Importance of Raoul Wallenberg - a Swedish Human Right Hero at The Global Herald
- Raoul Wallenberg - Righteous Among the Nations - Yad Vashem
- Raoul Wallenberg Center at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
- The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
- The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States
- Searching for Raoul Wallenberg
- Holocaust Rescuers Bibliography with information and links to a variety of books about Raoul Wallenberg
- University of Michigan Wallenberg Committee
- Public Lecture by Dr Paul Levine 'Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust' held at the Wiener Library London on 8 March 2010 PODCAST