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Raoul Wallenberg |
| Raoul Gustav Wallenberg | |
 Wallenberg passport photo from June 1944
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| Born | August 4, 1912 Lidingö Municipality, Sweden |
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| Died | presumed July 17, 1947 (aged 34) presumed Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
| Parents | Raoul Oscar Wallenberg Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising |
Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 17, 1947?)123 was a Swedish humanitarian of the prominent Swedish Wallenberg family who worked in Budapest, Hungary during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Between July and December of 1944 he issued protective passports and housed several thousand Jews, saving tens of thousands lives.4
His death has since long been a source of dispute. On January 17, 1945, he was arrested by Soviets, and was reported to have died in March. In 1957, the Soviets announced that Wallenberg had actually died of a heart attack in 1947. In 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov was assigned by the Russian government to find out the truth, concluding that Wallenberg did indeed die in 1947, but by execution. However, a 2001 Swedish report said: "There is no fully reliable proof of what happened to Raoul Wallenberg". 5
Wallenberg has been honored by having streets and monuments named after him throughout the world, and he had been made an honorary citizen in the United States, Israel, Canada and Hungary. A Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States, est. 1981, was created to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg" and gives out the Raoul Wallenberg Award to further its purpose.
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Wallenberg was born in Walpole, Lidingö (near Stockholm, Sweden) to Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). Raoul Oscar Wallenberg died of cancer three months before his son was born.6 In 1918, his mother married Fredrik von Dardel, and Raoul had a half-brother, Guy von Dardel.7 Raoul Wallenberg also had a maternal half-sister, Nina Lagergren. Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan.38
In 1931, Wallenberg went to study architecture in the United States at the University of Michigan. In college, he learned to speak English, German and French.9 He used his vacations to explore America. Although he came from a wealthy family, during his free time, he worked at odd jobs, including at a World's Fair.
He returned to Sweden, but he was unable to find a job 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.8 Between 1935 and 1936, he was employed in a minor position at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa.8 He returned to Sweden in 1936 and got a job with the help of his uncle, Jacob Wallenberg, at the Central European Trading Company, an export-import company trading in Europe10 owned by the Hungarian-Jew Kálmán Lauer.
In 1938, Hungary under the regency of Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures that restricted their professions, reduced the number of Jews in government jobs, and prohibited intermarriage. Lauer found it increasingly difficult to travel to Hungary, and Wallenberg became his trusted representative. Wallenberg soon learnt Hungarian, and from 1941 made frequent travels to Budapest.11 Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the international director of the company.8
In April and May 1944, when the loss of the war was a foregone conclusion, the Germans and their Hungarian accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews, at the rate of 12,000 per day.12 The persecution of the Jews in Hungary soon became well known abroad, unlike the full extent of the Holocaust. In late spring 1944, George Mantello publicized what has now been called the Wetzler-Vrba Report. World leaders Churchill, Roosevelt and others worked to assist Horthy in stopping the deportations.13
In spring 1944, President Roosevelt sent Iver Olsen to Stockholm as an official representative of the American War Refugee Board. He was looking for someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue-program for the Jews.14 Olsen believed that Wallenberg was the right man.9
On July 9, 1944, Wallenberg travelled to Budapest as the First Secretary to the Swedish legation in Budapest. Together with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger15 he issued "protective passports" (German: Schutz-Pass), which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and prevented their deportation. Although not legally valid, these documents looked official and were generally accepted by German and Hungarian authorities, who sometimes were also bribed.11 The Swedish legation in Budapest also succeeded in negotiating with the Germans that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow Star of David on their chests.8
With the money raised by the board, Wallenberg rented thirty-two buildings in Budapest, and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as "The Swedish Library" and "The Swedish Research Institute" on their doors and hung oversize Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people.9
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.16
At the height of the program, over 350 people were involved in the rescue of Jews.17 Sister Sara Salkahazi 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.18
Wallenberg started sleeping in a different house each night, to avoid being captured or killed by Arrow Cross Party members or by Eichmann.19 Two days before the Russians occupied Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Eichmann and General Gerhard Schmidthuber, the commander of the German army in Hungary. Wallenberg bribed Arrow Cross Party member Pál Szalai to deliver a note in which Wallenberg persuaded them to cancel a final effort to organize a death march of the remaining Jews in Budapest by threatening to have them prosecuted for war crimes once the war was over.811
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.20
The Soviet Red Army closed in on Budapest in early 1945, and on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg was called to Marshal Rodion Malinovsky's headquarter in Debrecen on suspicion of being a spy for the United States and that the War Refugee Board was engaged in espionage.212223 Wallenberg's last recorded words were: "I'm going to Malinovsky's ... whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet."24 In 2003, a review of wartime Soviet correspondences indicated Vilmos Böhm may have provided Wallenberg's name to Stalin as a person to detain.25
Information about Wallenberg after his detention is mostly speculative, as there were many witnesses who claim to have met him during his imprisonment.26
Wallenberg was transported by train from Debrecen through Romania to Moscow.23 The Soviets may have moved him to their capital in hopes of exchanging him for defectors in Sweden.27 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, a police attaché at the German embassy in Romania. Richter testified in Sweden in 1955 that Wallenberg was interrogated once for about an hour and a half, in early February of 1945. On March 1, 1945, Richter was moved from his cell and never saw Wallenberg again.2829
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.8 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.9 Söderblom met with 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.3031
On February 6, 1957, the Soviets released a document dated July 17, 1947 which stated "I report that the prisoner Wallenberg [sic] who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Walenberg [sic] under my care, I request approval to make an autopsy with a view to establishing cause of death... I have personally notified the minister and it has been ordered that the body be cremated without autopsy."32 The document was signed by Smoltsov, then the head of the Lubyanka prison infirmary, and addressed to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, the Soviet minister of state security.228 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.3334
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.2135 Pavel Sudoplatov claimed that Raoul Wallenberg was poisoned by Grigory Mairanovsky.36 In 2000, Russian prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov signed a verdict posthumously rehabilitating Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, as "victims of political repression".37 A number of files pertinent to Wallenberg were turned over to the chief rabbi of Russia by the Russian government in September 2007.38 They will be housed at the Museum of Tolerance in Moscow, scheduled to open in 2008.38
Several former prisoners have claimed to have seen Wallenberg after his reported death in 1947.39 In February 1949, former German Colonel Theodor von Dufving, as a prisoner of war, provided evidentiary statements concerning Wallenberg. While en route to Vorkuta, in the transit camp in Kirov, 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."32
Efim Moshinsky claims to have seen Raoul Wallenberg on Wrangel Island in 1962. An eyewitness asserted that she had seen Wallenberg in the 1960s in a Soviet prison.40 The last reported sightings of Wallenberg were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November of 1987.41
A Swedish-Russian working group was set up in 1991 on Guy von Dardel's initiative42 to search 11 separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg's fate.234344
Raoul Wallenberg's brother, Professor Guy von Dardel,45 a well known physicist, retired from CERN, is dedicated to finding out his brother's fate.46 He travelled to the Soviet Union about fifty times for discussions and research, including an examination of the Vladmir prison records.47 Many, including Professor von Dardel and his daughters Louise and Marie, do not accept the various versions of Wallenberg's death and continue to request that the archives in Russia, Sweden and Hungary be opened to impartial researchers.48 In the family today, Wallenberg's niece, Ms. Louise von Dardel, is the main activist and dedicates much of her time speaking about Wallenberg and to lobbying various countries to help uncover information about her uncle.48
In 1953 the Hungarian State Protection Authority (Hungarian: Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH) initiated a show trial to prove that Wallenberg had not been dragged off in 1945 to the Soviet Union, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists. This was part of Stalin's anti-Zionist campaign.
In April 1952, Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler, three leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest, were kidnapped by ÁVH officials to extract confessions.49 Two purported eyewitnesses – Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó – were also arrested and interrogated using torture.
The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist leader Ernő Gerő, which is shown by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi.50 The show trial was to be held in Moscow. However, after the death of Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, the preparations for the trial were stopped and the prisoners were released. Miksa Domonkos spent a week in hospital and died at home shortly afterwards, mainly due to the torture to which he had been subjected.4951
Wallenberg was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1948 by more than 50 qualified nominators52 and in 1949 by a single nominator.53 The prize could be awarded posthumously up to 1974.54
He was made an Honorary Citizen of the United States in 1981, the second person to be so honored, after Winston Churchill, and the first who did not have an American parent. (Churchill's mother's family were New Yorkers.) In 1985, the portion of 15th Street, SW, in Washington, D.C., on which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum sits, was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place by Act of Congress.5556
The United States Postal Service issued a stamp to honor him in 1997. Representative Tom Lantos, one of those saved by Wallenberg's actions, said: "It is most appropriate that we honor [him] with a U.S. stamp. In this age devoid of heroes, Wallenberg is the archetype of a hero – one who risked his life day in and day out, to save the lives of tens of thousands of people he did not know whose religion he did not share."57
The Raoul Wallenberg Monument is located on Raoul Wallenberg Walk in Manhattan, across from the headquarters of the United Nations. It was commissioned by the Swedish consulate and was designed by Swedish sculptor Gustav Graitz. Graitz’s piece, Hope, is a replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, a sphere, five pillars of black granite, and paving stones which once were used on the streets of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest.58
Several other places are named after him. New Jersey Transit named Trenton, New Jersey's train station for him; and the Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco is named after him.
Wallenberg was granted honorary citizenship by Israel in 1986 and was honored at the Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, recognizing non-Jews who saved Jews from the Holocaust.59 There are many tributes to Wallenberg in Israel, such as at least five streets.60 Along one such street in Tel Aviv, there is since 2002 a statue identical to one in Budapest (see below), made by sculptor Imre Varga. 61
In 2001, a memorial was created in Stockholm to honour Wallenberg. It was unveiled by King Carl XVI Gustaf, at a ceremony attended by the UN Secretary General at the time Kofi Annan and his wife, Wallenberg's niece. It is an abstract memorial depicting people rising from the concrete, accompanied by a bronze replica of Wallenberg's signature.62 At the unveiling, King Carl XVI Gustaf said Wallenberg is "a great example to those of us who want to live as fellow humans."63 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."64
In Canada, Wallenberg became the first Honorary Citizen of Canada in 1985;65 and January 17, the day he disappeared, was declared Raoul Wallenberg Day in Canada.66 Numerous memorials, parks, and monuments honouring Wallenberg can be found across Canada, These include Raoul Wallenberg Corner in Calgary, Raoul Wallenberg Park in Saskatoon, Parc Raoul Wallenberg in Nepean, 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.
A Jewish highschool in Toronto is named after him.
In Budapest, where Wallenberg worked, Wallenberg was made an honorary citizen in 2003. There are a number of sites honoring him, among them are 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 1945.67
There is a Raoul Wallenberg memorial at Great Cumberland Place in London, and a Raoul Wallenberg memorial is situated near the Welsh National War Memorial in Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff.
In Germany, streets are named after Wallenberg in both east and west Berlin. Wallenberg Strasse (named in 1967) is in the western district of Wilmersdorf, while Raoul-Wallenberg-Strasse (named in 1992) is in the eastern district of Marzahn.
 Statue of Raoul Wallenberg, Wallenberg st., Tel-Aviv, Israel. |
 Place Raoul Wallenberg, Montreal |
 USPS stamp, 1997 |
 Memorial at Great Cumberland Place, London |
 Sign commemorating Wallenberg in Budapest |
 Monument in Stockholm |
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."68
The Wallenberg Endowment at the University of Michigan awards the Wallenberg Medal and Lecture to outstanding humanitarians. The university's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning also awards Wallenberg Scholarships to exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, many of which are given to enable students to broaden their study of architecture to include work in distant locations.69
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wallenberg, Raoul |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Diplomat |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 4, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | (presumed) July 16, 1947 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | (presumed)Soviet Union |
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