Wallenberg, Raoul

(1912–?47)

   Swedish rescuer of Hungarian Jews. A businessman with diplomatic affiliations, Wallenberg was sent in July 1944 as an attaché to the Swedish Embassy in Budapest, with the special mission of saving Jews who had Swedish nationality or connexions. He distributed to such persons several thousand Swedish certificates of protection, which were known as ‘Wallenberg passports’.

   He then showed extraordinary zeal and courage in his efforts to rescue Jews. He organized an ‘international ghetto’ where about 33,000 Jews were housed under neutral flags, seven thousand of them under Swedish protection. In Budapest he formed ‘international labour detachments’ and a guards unit composed of Aryan-looking Jews dressed in Nazi uniforms. He also established hospitals and soup kitchens. At one stage three hundred Jews were employed in his department of the Swedish Embassy. When thousands of Budapest Jews were forced into the ‘death march’ of November 1944, Wallenberg accompanied them with trucks dispensing food and medicine, and managed to rescue and bring back hundreds of them.

   In January 1945 the advancing Soviet troops entered Budapest. Wallenberg was seen going off with a Russian officer, then disappeared. There is reason to believe that he died some years later in a Soviet prison camp - though why the Russians should have arrested him remains a mystery. Wallenberg’s name is commemorated in the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles at the Yad ve-Shem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.