Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg 1912-47, Swedish diplomat and businessman. In 1944, he was assigned to Sweden's legation in Budapest, where he helped save approximately 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi extermination. He issued Swedish passports to approximately 20,000 Jews and sheltered others in houses he bought or rented. Adolf Eichmann , heading the transport of Jews to concentration camps, demanded that Wallenberg stop these activities and ordered his assassination, but the attempt failed. In 1945, the Soviets, who had just entered Budapest, imprisoned him, possibly because of work he was doing for the U.S. secret service. In 1957 the Soviet government announced that he had died in prison of a heart attack in 1947, but he was reported seen at later dates. In 1991 Soviet authorities released KGB records that, although they did not contain proof that Wallenberg was dead, appeared to confirm that he had died in 1947, most likely by execution. He was made an honorary U.S. citizen in 1981.

Bibliography: See J. Bierman, Righteous Gentile (1981), K. Marton, Wallenberg: Missing Hero (1982, repr. 1995).

Wallenberg, Raoul (1912–47) Swedish diplomat. While working as a businessman in Budapest in 1944, he was entrusted by the Swedish government with the protection of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. Wallenberg helped some 95,000 Jews to escape death by issuing them with Swedish passports. When Soviet forces took control of Budapest in 1945 he was arrested, taken to Moscow, and imprisoned. Although the Soviet authorities stated that Wallenberg had died in prison in 1947, his fate remains uncertain and there were claims that he was still alive in the 1970s.