74 years ago today (January 17,
1945) Raoul Wallenberg, a 32 year old Swedish diplomat, was arrested by the
Soviets in Hungary, sent to the Soviet Union and was never heard from again. From
July until December 1944 he voluntarily served as Sweden's special envoy (Sweden
was neutral during World War 2) first in a Budapest controlled by Hungarian
collaborators with Germany (the Arrow Cross) and later in German-occupied
Budapest.
Wallenberg was officially allowed
(by the Hungarians and the Germans) to issue 4,500 protective passports which
identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus
prevented their deportation to the death camps. In reality he issued close to
20,000 protective passports and even went to the train station and handed the
passes to Jews already on the cattle cars or on death marches – thus saving
them from certain death. He sheltered Jews in 32 buildings (with 2 hospitals
and a soup kitchen) in Budapest designated as neutral Swedish territory. He also convinced the Hungarians and the
Germans not to destroy the Budapest Ghetto saving the 70,000 Jews imprisoned
there.
After the Siege of Budapest,
Soviet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky (under orders from then Deputy Commissar for
Defense, and future Soviet Premier, Nikolai Bulganin) arrested Wallenberg as a
spy. He was then sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow on January 21, 1945. The last known surviving foreign prisoner held
with Wallenberg left his cell on March 1, 1945. His whereabouts afterwards are
not known. Throughout the decades since his disappearance the Soviet, and later
the Russian, authorities have made numerous claims about his fate (many that
contradict each other) and all have been deemed to be fabrications. Some
witnesses state they were with Wallenberg in different Soviet Gulags up until
the 1960s.
He was made an honorary citizen
of: the US (in 1981), of Canada (in 1985), of Israel (in 1986) and of Australia
(in 2013.)
In October 2016 Wallenberg was
declared dead by the Swedish Tax Agency, which registers birth and deaths. His
official date of death is July 31, 1952, a date that is purely formal since the
authority must choose a date at least five years after his disappearance.
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