Wallenberg, Raoul

Wallenberg, Raoul (1912–47),Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives after the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944 and Eichmann began deporting the Jewish population to Auschwitz.

Prompted by the US War Refugee Board, Sweden's neutral government sent Wallenberg to Budapest to organize, under diplomatic cover, the rescue of as many Jews as possible. He arrived on 9 July 1944, by which time 437,402 provincial Jews had already been deported leaving 230,000 in Budapest. Soon after his arrival, the deportations were suspended by Hungary's regent, Admiral Horthy, and Wallenberg then co-ordinated the work of the neutral nations, the Papal nunciature, and the International Red Cross Committee in giving succour to those who remained. In October 1944, after Horthy's removal from power, the remaining Jews were herded into two Budapest ghettos and the deportations resumed. Wallenberg, it has been estimated, saved between 30,000 and 100,000 from certain death by issuing special passports, bribing guards and officials, interceding wherever possible, and often simply by bluffing.

On 17 January 1945, after the Soviet Army had entered Budapest, Wallenberg went to Debrecen in eastern Hungary to meet the Soviet commander, Marshal Malinovsky. He was not heard from again. At first the Soviet government denied any knowledge of him but in 1957, after several ex-inmates of the GUlag prison system had claimed meeting him or his driver, it announced that he had died of natural causes in July 1947. Rumours persisted that he was still alive but in 1991 a Soviet historian, leading an investigation into Wallenberg's disappearance, announced that, although the final documentary evidence was missing, Wallenberg had been shot in Moscow's Lubianka prison on 17 July 1947. See also Final Solution.

Bibliography

Bierman, J. , Righteous Gentile (New York, 1981).