Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (born 4 August 1912, death date unknown) was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian Fascists 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 passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory.
On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared. He was later reported to have died on 17 July 1947 while imprisoned by the KGB secret police in the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters and affiliated prison in Moscow. The motives behind Wallenberg's arrest and imprisonment by the Soviet government, along with questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and his 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, U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, himself one of those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States. He was the second person ever to receive this honor, after Winston Churchill (and unlike Churchill, neither of his parents had been born in the United States). Wallenberg is also an honorary citizen of Canada, Hungary, Australia 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. Postage stamps have been issued in his honour by Argentina, Australia, Canada, Dominica, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Sweden and the United States. On 26 July 2012, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress "in recognition of his achievements and heroic actions during the Holocaust."
In October 2016, 71 years after his disappearance, Wallenberg was formally declared dead by the Swedish Tax Agency.
Video Raoul Wallenberg
Early life
Wallenberg was born in 1912 in 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, Istanbul and Sofia.
His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888-1912), a Swedish naval officer, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891-1979). His father died of cancer three months before he was born, and his maternal grandfather died of pneumonia three months after his birth. His mother and grandmother, now both suddenly widows, raised him together. In 1918, his mother married Fredric von Dardel; they had a son, Guy von Dardel, and a daughter, Nina Lagergren.
After high school and his compulsory eight months in the Swedish military, Wallenberg's paternal grandfather sent him to study in Paris. He spent one year there, and then, in 1931, he matriculated at the University of Michigan in the United States to study architecture. Although the Wallenberg family was rich, he worked at odd jobs in his free time and joined other young male students as a passenger rickshaw handler at Chicago's Century of Progress. He used his vacations to explore the United States, with hitchhiking being his preferred method of travel. About his experiences, he wrote to his grandfather saying, "When you travel like a hobo, everything's different. You have to be on the alert the whole time. You're in close contact with new people every day. Hitchhiking gives you training in diplomacy and tact."
Wallenberg was aware of his one-sixteenth Jewish ancestry, and proud of it. It came from his great-great-grandfather (his maternal grandmother's grandfather) Michael Benedicks, who immigrated to Stockholm in 1780. Professor Ingemar Hedenius (one of the leading Swedish philosophers) recalls a conversation with Raoul dating back to 1930, when they were together in an army hospital during military service:
We had many long and intimate conversations. He was full of ideas and plans for the future. Although I was a good deal older - you could choose when to do your service - I was enormously impressed by him. He was proud of his partial Jewish ancestry and, as I recall, must have exaggerated it somewhat. I remember him saying, 'A person like me, who is both a Wallenberg and half-Jewish, can never be defeated'.
He graduated from university in 1935, but upon his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. Later that year, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town, South Africa, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. After six months in South Africa, he took a new job 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.
Maps Raoul Wallenberg
World War II
Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, 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, Kálmán 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 Nazi-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 Nazis' 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 a staggering 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, Adolf 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-Brigadeführer 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 Nazi regime and its accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. Under the personal leadership of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, who would later be tried and hanged in Israel for his major role in the implementation of the Nazis' Final Solution, deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 people 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. At the end of May 1944, George Mantello publicized two important reports. One of the reports was probably Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl's five-page abridged version of the 33-page Auschwitz Protocols: both the Vrba-Wetzler report and Rosin-Mordowicz report. The reports described in detail the operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The second was a 6-page Hungarian report, that detailed the ghettoization and deportation of 435,000 already deported Hungarian Jews, updated to 19 June 1944, town by town, to Auschwitz. The report's publication resulted in Winston Churchill's letter: "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world...."
Following the report's publication, the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to the newly created War Refugee Board (WRB) established as a result of activism by the "Bergson Group" led by Hillel Kook and later by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr and team in search of a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Hungary. In spring 1944, President 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 contact with a relief committee composed of many prominent Swedish Jews led by the Swedish Chief Rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the 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 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 neutral Sweden to curtail their nation's free-trade policies toward Germany.
Mission to Budapest
When Wallenberg reached the Swedish legation in Budapest in July 1944, the campaign against the Jews of Hungary had already been under way for several months. Between May and July 1944, Eichmann and his associates had deported over 400,000 Jews by freight train. Of those deported all but 15,000 were sent directly to the German Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland. By the time of Wallenberg's arrival there were only 230,000 Jews remaining in Hungary. 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 German authorities 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. When the German government said the travel passes were invalid, Wallenberg appealed for help from Baroness Elisabeth Kemény, wife of Baron Gabor Kemény, Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs in Budapest. She convinced her husband to have 9,000 passes honoured.
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 oversized 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:
... he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.
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. Portuguese diplomats Sampaio Garrido and Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho rented houses and apartments to shelter and protect refugees from deportation and murder and issued safe conducts to approximately 1,000 Hungarian Jews. 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, as did her son. She later claimed to have been his girlfriend. However, she was temporarily engaged to Wallenberg's colleague Lars Berg, and later married a Scottish officer; it has not dispelled claims that Wallenberg was homosexual.
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 Soviet Army occupied Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with Eichmann and with 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 occupying Germans to prevent a Fascist plan to blow up the Budapest ghetto and kill an estimated 70,000 Jews. The note also 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.
According to Giorgio Perlasca, who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944 and saved 5218 Jews, Pál Szalai lied to save his life during his criminal trial, and the history of the saving is different. Raoul Wallenberg (who was already dead at the time of the Szalai's deposition) saved hundreds of people but was not directly involved in the plan to save the ghetto. While Perlasca was posing as the Spanish consul-general, he came to know about the intention to burn down the ghetto. Shocked and incredulous, he asked for a direct hearing with the Hungarian interior minister Gábor Vajna, in the basement of the Budapest City Hall where he had his headquarter, and threatened fictitious legal and economic measures against the "3000 Hungarian citizens" (in fact, a much smaller number) declared by Perlasca as residents of Spain, and the same treatment by two Latin American governments, to force the minister to withdraw the project. This actually happened in the following days.
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.
Disappearance
On 29 October 1944, elements of the 2nd Ukrainian Front under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky launched an offensive against Budapest and by late December the city had been 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 Budapest. At the height of the fighting, on 17 January 1945, Wallenberg was called to General Malinovsky's headquarters in Debrecen to answer allegations that he 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 SMERSH 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 Soviet authorities may have moved him to Moscow in the hope of exchanging him for defectors in Sweden. Vladimir Dekanozov notified the Swedish government on 16 January 1945 that Wallenberg was under the protection of Soviet authorities. On 21 January 1945, Wallenberg was transferred to Lubyanka prison and held in cell 123 with fellow prisoner Gustav Richter, who had been 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 1 March 1945, Richter was moved from his cell and never saw Wallenberg again.
On 8 March 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, W. Averell Harriman, then 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 15 June 1946. Söderblom, still believing Wallenberg to be dead, ignored talk of an exchange for Russian defectors in Sweden.
Death
On 6 February 1957, the Soviet government released a document dated 17 July 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 prison infirmary, and addressed to Viktor Abakumov, the Soviet minister of state security. In 1989, Wallenberg's personal belongings were returned 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 with investigating Wallenberg's fate. He concluded that Wallenberg died in 1947, executed while a prisoner in Lubyanka. He may have been a victim of the C-2 poison (carbylamine-choline-chloride) tested at the poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services.
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. The items were slated to be housed at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, which opened in 2012.
In August 2016, new information about Wallenberg's death came to light when the diary of KGB head Ivan Serov surfaced after Serov's granddaughter found the diary hidden in a wall of her house. "I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947" Serov wrote.
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 Dufving, a prisoner of war, provided statements concerning Wallenberg. While in the transit camp in Kirov, while being moved to Vorkuta, Dufving encountered a prisoner dressed in civilian clothes with his own special guard. The prisoner claimed that he was a Swedish diplomat and said he was there "through a great error".
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 that he had 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 Communist 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. John Farkas was a resistance fighter during World War II and was the last man claiming to have seen Wallenberg alive. Farkas' son has stated that there have been sightings of Wallenberg "up into the 1980s in Russian prisons and psychiatric hospitals."
Raoul Wallenberg's half-brother, 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 compiled a 50,000-page archive of interviews, journal articles, letters, and other documents related to his quest. In 1991, Dardel initiated a Swedish-Russian working group to search eleven separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg's fate, but the group was not able to find conclusive information. 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.
In 2012, Russian lieutenant-general Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration branch of the Russian Federal Security Service, said that the Wallenberg case was still open. He dismissed allegations of a continuing cover-up; referring to the legacy Soviet agency from which his department sprang, Khristoforov said: "This is another state and a different special service."
Declared death in absentia
On 29 March 2016, an announcement was made by the Swedish Tax Agency that a petition to have Wallenberg declared dead in absentia had been submitted. It stated that if he does not report to the Tax Agency before 14 October 2016, he will be declared dead legally: "Raoul Wallenberg kallas jämlikt 7 § (2005:130) om dödförklaring att senast den 14 oktober 2016 anmäla sig hos Skatteverket."
Wallenberg was declared dead in October 2016. Consistently with the approach used in cases where the circumstances of death were not known, the Swedish tax agency recorded the date of his death as 31 July 1952, five years after he went missing.
Connection to US intelligence
In May 1996, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 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 newsmagazine 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 7 November 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 Soviet authorities in January 1945. Several other humanitarians who had helped refugees during World War II disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in the period 1949/50, several years after Wallenberg's disappearance. OSS ties may have been of interest to the Soviets, but are not a complete explanation because some of those detained, i.e. Hermann Field and Herta Field, had not worked for the OSS. All of these humanitarians, however, like Wallenberg, had interacted with a large number of anti-fascist and socialist refugees during the War, and this experience was used in the Stalin regime's factional politics and show trials.
Family
In 2009, reporter Joshua Prager wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal profiling the long-term toll that Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance had on his family. His mother, Maj, and his stepfather, Fredrik von Dardel, spent the rest of their lives searching for their son. They 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. Lagergren and Raoul's half-brother Guy von Dardel established organizations and worked to find their brother or confirmation of his death. At the request of their parents, they were to assume he was alive until the year 2000.
During the war, the Wallenberg bank, Stockholms Enskilda Bank, collaborated with the German government. The Secretary of the US Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr. considered Jacob Wallenberg strongly pro-German, and in 1945, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation subjected the Bank to a blockade from engaging in business in the United States that was only lifted in 1947. Author Alan Lelchuk who interviewed, amongst others, Wallenberg's KGB interrogator, has speculated that the more powerful of the family may have chosen not to use their influence to locate Raoul as it could have drawn attention to their misdeeds, and they may have considered him an embarrassment, not only for being a man of morality, but his possible homosexuality.
Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, and is active in many humanitarian efforts. Another of Wallenberg's nieces, 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. The extended Wallenberg family remains an influential part of Swedish society as major shareholders in banks and corporations including Saab and Scandinavian Airlines.
Honours
Wallenberg was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1948 by more than 50 qualified nominators and in 1949 by a single nominator At the time, 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 Recoleta neighbourhood.
Australia
In Melbourne, a small memorial in honour of Wallenberg stands at the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre; a monument by the sculptor Karl Duldig dedicated to him is at Kew Junction on the corner of Princess Street and High Street, Kew; and a tree and memorial seat are in Carlisle St 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 the federal Parliament and in many other locations.
Established in 1985, Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne, Australia, with Max Stern & Co, a leading stamp dealer in Melbourne, and Australia Post, 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.
To commemorate the Centenary Year, a limited number of the Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet were stamped with a special Centenary cancellation. These are available from Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne.
Raoul Wallenberg Unit requested clergy around the world to speak about Raoul Wallenberg and his heroic deeds - 'One Person can Make a Difference' - from their pulpits over the weekend 3-5 August 2012 which coincided with the date of his 100th birthday, 4 August 2012.
Raoul Wallenberg Reserve in the neighbourhood of Yokine in Perth was dedicated in honour of Raoul Wallenberg. The small park is located in close proximity to many of Perth's Jewish institutions including a Jewish Day School, aged care facility, community centre, sports club and orthodox synagogue.
Wallenberg was named Australia's first honorary citizen in April 2013, during his centenary year. Frank Vajda AM was saved by Wallenberg in 1944 from the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party and campaigned for decades for him to be recognised with the award. A ceremony at Government House, Canberra, to mark the occasion was held on 6 May 2013, and was attended by Governor-General Quentin Bryce AC CVO, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. Vajda also attended the ceremony, as did the son of World War II resistance fighter John Farkas, who was the last person known to have seen Wallenberg alive. George Farkas described the award as "recognition that some people can do unbelievable good in the face of reprehensible evil".
A 70 cent Raoul Wallenberg postage stamp and associated philatelic items were released by Australia Post on 5 October 2015, one of three to by honoured in this manner by Australia; the other two are Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela.
Austria
In the 22nd district of Vienna a street was named "Raoul-Wallenberg-Gasse".
Canada
Wallenberg was made the first Honorary Citizen of Canada in 1985; and the government declared 17 January, 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.
On 17 January 2013, which marked the 68th anniversary of Wallenberg's arrest by Soviet troops, Canada released a postage stamp in honour of Wallenberg.
In 2008, the Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto added "Wallenberg" to the name of the school, thus spawning the moniker, Tanebaum CHAT Wallenberg Campus.
There is also a road named after him in the city of Toronto
Georgia
In the center of Batumi a street was named "Raoul Wallenberg Street".
Germany
Streets were named after Wallenberg in both East and West Germany.
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.
In July 2012, Hungary paid tribute to Raoul Wallenberg in a ceremony at Budapest's Holocaust museum, marking 100 years since his birth. Zoltan Balog, minister for human resources and social affairs, said that "evil must be rejected".
Israel
Israel granted Wallenberg honorary citizenship in 1986 and honored him at the Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. 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.
Netherlands
- Raoul Wallenbergplantsoen at the (Joodse begraafplaats (Gouda))
Poland
A plaque commemorating Wallenberg was unveiled in downtown Warsaw on the occasion of naming a city street after him. The unveiling ceremony was part of commemorations marking the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Peru
A memorial to his name was made in 2013 in the capital city of Lima. Taking the form of a park, it is situated on the coast of the San Miguel District.
Russia
A memorial to him stands in the courtyard of the Russian Rudomino Library of Foreign Languages in Moscow. In Saint Petersburg, the Institute of Special Pedagogy and Psychology bears Wallenberg's name.
Sweden
In 2001, a memorial was created in Stockholm 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. 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". The memorial's design (see photo) has been considered inappropriate by some critics.
A memorial to Wallenberg was installed in Gothenburg, near Hagakyrkan (Haga Church). Kofi Annan attended the unveiling ceremony.
United Kingdom
A monument to Raoul Wallenberg by Scottish sculptor Philip Jackson is located at Great Cumberland Place in London's Marble Arch district, outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. It was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997, in the presence of the President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and survivors of the Holocaust. A separate monument stands near the Welsh National War Memorial in Cathays Park, Cardiff. A bronze briefcase monument by Gustav Kraitz with the initials RW is located in the garden of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre near Laxton in Nottinghamshire.
United States
The US Congress made Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States 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. There is also Wallenberg Forest in Riverdale, Bronx, established in 1990 and named Wallenberg Forest in 1996.
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, Raoul Wallenberg Avenue in Trenton, New Jersey, and Raoul Wallenberg Blvd in Charleston, South Carolina.
Since 2005, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has campaigned to establish 5 October 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".
On 26 July 2012, Wallenberg was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress "in recognition of his achievements and heroic actions during the Holocaust".
Awards in his name
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States bestows the Raoul Wallenberg Award "on individuals, organizations and communities that reflect Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian spirit, personal courage and nonviolent action in the face of enormous odds".
The 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. Recently, the University also established the "Wallenberg Fellowship", which grants students $25,000 to pursue humanitarian projects to better humanity. The University's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning also awards Wallenberg Scholarships to exceptional undergraduate students in their final Senior-Year studio class, which is given to enable students to broaden their study of architecture to include work in distant locations, following Wallenberg's Grandfather's wish for him to be a "citizen of the world". The projects which won the scholarship in recent years addressed Chinese relations, nuclear accident cleanup, and the recent thaw of US-Cuban relations. The Scholarship gives out on average anywhere between $10,000 to $20,000 for travel-related expenses.
The Raoul Wallenberg Academy has created the Raoul Wallenberg Prize, financed by Sweden's Ministry of Employment. In 2013, the jury was chaired by Olle Wästberg, and the award was presented by Minister for Integration Erik Ullenhag. The winner of the 2013 Raoul Wallenberg Award was Siavosh Derakhti, who founded 'Young People against Antisemitism and Xenophobia', an organization dedicated to promoting collaboration and respect for all.
Schools named after him
Argentina
- Raoul Wallenberg Educational Center
Brazil
- The Raoul Wallenberg Integral High School
Canada
- The Anne & Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto Wallenberg Campus
- Wallenberg Academy (formerly Wagar High School), Montreal, Quebec.
Ecuador
- Raoul Wallenberg Kindergarten & Primary School
Germany
- Raoul-Wallenberg Schule, Dorsten
- Raoul-Wallenberg-Oberschule, Berlin
Hungary
- Raoul Wallenberg Humán Szakközépiskola és Gimnázium
Poland
- Raoul Wallenberg Integrated Primary School of Warsaw
Sweden
- Raoul Wallenberg School Bromma
- Raoul Wallenberg Preschool Bromma
- Raoul Wallenberg Preschool Skövde
- Raoul Wallenberg School Uppsala
- Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Lund University)
Uruguay
- Raoul Wallenberg Lyceum
United States
- P.S. 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in Brooklyn, New York
- Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco
- Raoul Wallenberg Avenue, Trenton, New Jersey.
- Raoul Wallenberg Playground, Washington Heights NYC
Raoul Wallenberg Street, Margate City New Jersey
Venezuela
- Raoul Wallenberg Pre-School Educational Unit
Films
A number of films have been made of Wallenberg's life, including the 1985 made-for-television movie Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985), starring Richard Chamberlain, the 1990 Swedish production Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg, featuring Stellan Skarsgård, and various documentaries, such as Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1984), the AFI Award-winning Raoul Wallenberg, Between The Lines (1985) and Searching for Wallenberg (2003). He also appears in the Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest and is played by Iván Feny?. In 2006, the film "Raoul Wallenberg-l'ange de Budapest" (translated by Nigel Spencer as "Raoul Wallenberg: the Angel of Budapest"), featuring relatives and the Winnipeg lawyer still piloting inquiries into his case, was released in Canada and broadcast on the Bravo! network.
Art
He is featured prominently in the work of painter and Holocaust survivor Alice Lok Cahana. Her father was saved by Wallenberg.
Operas
- Wallenberg. Opera premiered at the Opernhaus Dortmund on 5 May 2001.
- Composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, Libretto of Lutz Hübner
- Raoul. Opera premiered at the Theater Bremen on 21 February 2008.
- Composer Gershon Kingsley, Libretto of Michael Kunze
Song
Irish musician Andy Irvine wrote the song "Raoul Wallenberg" which features on his album Rude Awakening.
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
- Levine, Paul A. Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2010)
- Matz, Johan. "Sweden, the United States, and Raoul Wallenberg's Mission to Hungary in 1944", Journal of Cold War Studies (2012) 14#3 pp 97-148 in Project MUSE
External links
- Wallenberg 1953
- Budapest Times
- 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
- Wallenberg at Michigan - University of Michigan Heritage Project
- 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
- Raoul Wallenberg - Holocaust Heroes Budapest Raoul Wallenberg - Holocaust Heroes Budapest
- The International Raoul Wallenberg Essay Competition The official essay competition to Raoul Wallenbergs memory
- Raoul Wallenberg Park Ottawa Ontario
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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