Raoul Wallenberg

1. “To me there is no other choice. I’ve accepted this assignment and I could never return to Stockholm without the knowledge that I’d done everything within human power to save as many Jews as possible.” Raoul Wallenberg to his friend Per Anger. Raoul Wallenberg

2. The family of Raoul Wallenberg contributed several generations of bankers, diplomats and politicians to his native Sweden. Raoul’s father, Raoul Oscar Wallenberg served as an officer in the navy and his cousins Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg were two of Sweden’s famous bankers and industrialists. Raoul was born on August 4, 1912, three months after his father died. His mother, Maj Wising Wallenberg, remarried Fredrik von Dardel in 1918.

3. Raoul’s grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, took responsibility for Raoul’s education. Gustav Wallenberg sent Raoul to the University of Michigan so he could experience people of different backgrounds and cultures.

4. A young Raoul on his bicycle.

5. Raoul Wallenberg at the University of Michigan.

6. After Raoul graduated, his Grandfather Wallenberg expected him to continue the family tradition and become a banker. Raoul graduated in 1930 with top grades in Russian and drawing. After he served in the Army, he came to America in 1931 to study architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He took most of his classes in what is now Lorch Hall and spent much time studying. At this point in his life he spoke English, German, Russian, and French as well as Swedish.

7. Raoul wrote to his grandfather, “When I now look back upon the last school year, I find I have had a completely wonderful time.” In 1935 Raoul graduated with honors and won a medal that went to the person with the most impressive academic record. With his bachelor degree of Science in Architecture in hand, he returned to Sweden. There wasn’t a large market for architects in Sweden, so Raoul’s grandfather sent him to Cape Town, South Africa where he sold building materials for a Swedish firm. After he spent six months in South Africa, Raoul’s grandfather secured him a new job at a Dutch bank office in Haifa, Palestine, now Israel.

8. In Palestine Raoul Wallenberg encountered Jews that had escaped from Hitler’s Germany and their stories of the Nazi persecution deeply affected him. He had developed a deep reverence for life and compassion for human suffering. He also had a legacy of Jewish blood through his grandmother’s grandfather. In 1936 Raoul returned to Sweden for Haifa and resumed his old role in the family business. Over the next few years he accumulated business and social contacts and knowledge during his trips throughout Nazi-occupied France and Germany and learned how the German bureaucracy worked. He also made several trips to Hungary and Budapest.

9. By the spring of 1944, Hitler and the Nazis were thoroughly implementing their “final solution to the Jewish problem” . In the beginning of 1944 about 700,000 Jews still lived in Hungary which had joined Germany in the war against Russia in 1941. When the Germans lost the battle of Stalingrad in 1943, Hungary wanted to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. When Hungarian head of state Milos Horthy refused to meet Hitler’s demands, Hitler invaded Hungary on March 19, 1944. The Germans began to deport Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland soon after that.

10. The Jewish citizens of Budapest knew that they too would soon join the thousands of people who had been deported to Auschwitz for the final solution. Desperately, they sought help from the embassies of the neutral countries, where provisional passes were issued for Jews with special connections to these countries.

11. The Swedish legation in Budapest negotiated with the Germans to ensure that people carrying these protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and would not have to wear the yellow Star of David on their chest. Per Anger, a young diplomat at the Swedish legation in Budapest, initiated the first of these Swedish protective passes. In less than a year, the Swedish legation issued 700 protective passes and requested staff reinforcements from the foreign department in Stockholm.

12. In 1944 the United States established the War Refugee Board to save Jews from Nazi persecution. The War Refugee Board’s representative in Stockholm met to select a people to work in the Budapest office and run the rescue operation. Raoul Wallenberg’s business partner Koloman Lauer was chosen as an expert on Hungary. Koloman Lauer suggested that his business partner, Raoul Wallenberg, head the Budapest office, insisting that despite his youth Wallenberg was a quick thinker, energetic, brave, and compassionate. He also had a famous name.

13. In June 1944 Wallenberg was appointed the first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest with a mandate to start a rescue operation for the Jews. Before he went to Hungary, Raoul demanded that he be granted full authority to operate as he saw fit without having to contact the Swedish ambassador first and the right to send diplomatic couriers beyond the usual channels. German SS officer Adolf Eichmann had already sent over 400,000 Jewish people on freight trains to Auschwitz and there were only about 230,000 Jews left in Budapest.

14. Raoul Wallenberg designed a Swedish protective pass to help the Jews escape the Germans and Hungarians. Understanding that the Germans and Hungarian authorities had a weakness for flashy symbols, Wallenberg had the passes printed in yellow and blue with the coat of arms of the Three Crowns of Sweden in the middle.

15. Eventually Wallenberg expanded the original 1,500 protective passes that he had permission to issue to over 4,500 protective passes. Then the Hungarian leadership changed and Raoul Wallenberg applied and mediated enough diplomatic pressure to remove the responsibility of solving the Jewish issue in Hungary from Adolf Eichmann. Wallenberg planned to dismantle his department and return to Sweden. He thought that the invading and winning troops of the Soviet Union would soon occupy Budapest.

16. Then on October 15, 1944, the Germans overthrew Hungarian head of state Miklos Horthy and replaced him with FerencSzalasi, the leader of the Hungarian Nazis called the Arrow Cross Organization. The Arrow Cross were just as feared as the German Nazis for their cruel treatment of the Jews. Adolf Eichmann returned with a free hand to continue the terror against the Jews. Raoul Wallenberg stayed in Budapest and continued his campaign to save the Jews from the clutches of the Nazis with firm action and courage his only weapon. He started to build his “Swedish houses” in the Pest part of Budapest and eventually the number of Swedish houses that sheltered Jewish refugees increased to over thirty. The population of the Swedish houses rose to 15,000 refugees.

17. At this point Adolf Eichmann started his brutal “death marches,” forcing hundreds of Jews to leave Hungary on foot. The first march started November 20, 1944, and the conditions along the long road between Budapest and the Austrian border were so bad that the Nazis even complained. Raoul Wallenberg was present during the deportations and marches to hand out passes, food and medicine. Threatening and bribing the Nazis, he managed to free refugees with Swedish passes. Wallenberg outside the Budapest train station.

18. When the Nazis transported the Jews in trains, Wallenberg even climbed the train wagons, stood on the tracks, ran along the wagon roofs, and stuck bunches of protective passes down to the people inside. The German soldiers were ordered to open fire, but they were so impressed by Wallenberg’s courage that they deliberately aimed too high. Wallenberg jumped down unharmed and ordered the Jews with passes to leave the train with him.

19. Wallenberg’s department at the Swedish legation constantly grew and finally kept 340 people busy. Another 700 people lived in their building. The other neutral legations in Budapest followed Wallenberg’s example and issued protective passes and many diplomats from other countries opened their own “protective houses” for Jewish refugees. In the desperate days at the end of the War, Wallenberg issued a simplified version of his protective pass. It consisted of one copied page with his signature alone. In the chaos of the times, it worked.

20. Toward the end of 1944, Wallenberg moved across the Danube River from Buda to Pest where the two Jewish ghettos were located. Although a lower level of law and order had existed in the ghetto, now the Arrow Cross and the police and German war machine shared power. Desperately searching for people to bribe, Wallenberg found a powerful ally in Pa’lSzalay, a high-ranking officer in the police force and an Arrow Cross member. In the second week of January 1945, Wallenberg discovered that Eichmann planned a massacre in the largest ghetto. General August Schmidthuber, commander in chief of the German troops in Hungary, was the only person who could stop the bloodbath.

21. Wallenberg sent Szalay with a note to General Schmidthuber explaining that he, Raoul Wallenberg, would see that the general would be held personally responsible for the massacre if it took place and he would be hanged as a war criminal after the war. Thanks to Wallenberg’s action, the Germans did not massacre the Jews in the ghetto. Two days later, the Russians arrived and found 97,000 Jews still alive in Budapest’s two Jewish ghettos. Approximately 120,000 Jews survived the Nazi extermination in Hungary. According to Per Anger, Wallenberg’s friend and colleague, Raoul Wallenberg must be credited with saving at least 100,000 Jews.

22. On January 13, 1945, an advancing Soviet troop saw a man standing and waiting for them in front of a house with a large Swedish flag above the door. In fluent Russian, Raoul Wallenberg explained to a surprised Russian sergeant that he was Swedish charge de’affaires for the Russian-liberated parts of Hungary.

23. Wallenberg requested, and was given permission to visit the Soviet military headquarters in the city of Debrecen east of Budapest

24. Wallenberg thought it was necessary for him to visit the Russian in Debrecen because in November 1944 he had established a section of his department to make a detailed financial support plan for the surviving Jews. He felt that it was necessary for him his rescue operation to the skeptical Russians. For their part, the Russians probably believed that Wallenberg had another reason for his rescue efforts. They probably suspected him of being an American spy and were certainly skeptical of Wallenberg’s contact with the Germans.

25. On his way out of Budapest on January 17, 1945 with a Russian escort, Wallenberg and his driver stopped at the Swedish houses to say goodbye to his friends. He told his colleage Dr. ErnoPeto that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be the Russian’s guest or their prisoner. He estimated that he would be back within eight days. Raoul Wallenberg has been missing since January 17, 1945. It is unclear whether he is dead or alive. The Russians claim that he died in Russian captivity on July 17, 1947.

26. Raoul Wallenberg and his driver VilmosLangfelder never returned from Debrecen. According to reliable testimonies they were arrested and sent to Moscow. The NKVD which later changed its name to KGB placed Wallenberg and Langfelder in separate cells in the Lubjanka prison, according to eye witnesses.

27. It took the authorities in Stockholm a long time to become concerned about Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance. When Raoul did not come home, his mother, Maj von Dardel, contacted the Russian ambassador in Stockholm. The ambassador told her that her son was being well treated in Russian and the Swedish foreign minister’s wife said that it would be best for Wallenberg if the Swedish government kept quiet about Wallenberg.

28. On March 8, 1945, the Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Raoul Wallenberg had been murdered on his way to Debrecen, probably by Hungarian Nazis or Gestapo agents. Foreign Minister OstenUnden and Sweden’s ambassador in the Soviet Union assumed that Wallenberg was dead. Other people in other countries did not believe the radio message. Between 1947 and 1951 nothing new occurred in the Wallenberg case, but in the 1960s when foreign prisoners stated to be released from Russian jails many testimonies came regarding Raoul Wallenberg’s fate after January 1945.

29. In April 1956, Prime Minister TageErlander traveled with Domestic Minister Gunnar Hedlund to Moscow where they met the Soviet representatives Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin and Vyacheslav Molotov,. They promised re-investigate the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.

30. On February 6, 1957, the Russians announced that they had made extensive investigations and found a document about Raoul Wallenberg. The handwritten document stated that “prisoner Wallenberg passed away this night in his cell.” The document was dated July 17, 1949, and signed Smoltsov, head of the Lubjanka prison infirmary. The document was addressed to Viktor Abakumov, the minister for state security in the Soviet Union.

31. The Russians expressed regret in their letter to the Swedes that Smoltsov died in May 1953 and that Abakumov had been executed in a security police purge. The Swedes were skeptical about this document, but the Russians endorse it to this day. Testimonies from different prisoners in Russian jails after January 1945 report seeing Raoul Wallenberg alive and that he was imprisoned throughout the 1950s. In 1965, the Swedish government published an official report on the Wallenberg case, stating that Erlander had done everything in his power to find out the truth about Raoul Wallenberg.

32. Years passed and the Wallenberg case faded from public view. The stream of war prisoners from the Soviet Union decreased and so did the testimonies about Raoul Wallenberg. The case did not resurface until the end of the 1970s. According to the Swedish foreign department two intriguing testimonies were the basis for a note to Moscow requesting that the case be reopened. The Kremlin replied that Raoul Wallenberg had died in 1947. At the beginning of the 1980s, Swedish Foreign Minister Ola Ullsten sent a request to the Russian chief of government Aleksei Kosygin to consider the Wallenberg case. The reply was the same as usual-Raoul Wallenberg had died in 1947.

33. During the 1980s, interest in Wallenberg revived around the world. In 1981, he became an honorary citizen of the United States, in 1985 in Canada, and in 1986 in Israel. Many people worldwide thought that Wallenberg was still alive and demanded that he be released from his Russian captivity. In Sweden and other countries, especially the United States, Raoul Wallenberg associations worked tirelessly to discover what happened to him. In November 2000, Alexander Yakovlev, the head of a presidential commission investigating Wallenberg’s fate, announced that the diplomat had been executed in 1947 in the KGB’s Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.

34. He said Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former Soviet secret police chief, told him of the shooting in a private conversation. The Russians released another statement in December admitting that Wallenberg was wrongfully arrested on espionage charges in 1945 and held in Soviet prison for 2 ½ years until he died. The statement did not explain why Wallenberg was killed or why the government lied about his death for 55 years, claiming from 1957 to 1991 that he died of a heart attack while under Soviet protection. (Washington Post, December 23, 2000.)

35. On January 12, 2001, a joint Russian-Swedish panel released a report that did not reach any conclusion as to Wallenberg’s fate. The Russians reverted to the claim that he died of a heart attack in prison in 1947, while the Swede’s said they were not sure if Wallenberg was dead or alive. The report did unearth evidence that the reason the Soviets arrested Wallenberg was the suspicion that he was a spy for the United States. (Washington Post, January 12, 2001.)

36. The last known picture taken of Raoul Wallenberg.

37. Wallenberg monument in New York City

38. Raoul Wallenberg monument in Montreal.

39. Additional Reading John Bierman. Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust. Penguin, 1996. Alan Gersten. A Conspiracy of Indifference: The Raoul Wallenberg Story. Xlibris, 2000 Sharon Zinnea. Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death. Jewish Publication society of America, 1994.

40. A Put It In Your Pocket Historical Horizons Book