Stockholm – Researchers: Wallenberg Budapest Mission No Fluke

    2

    Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Linköping SwedenStockholm – World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg’s appointment for a mission to rescue Hungarian Jews from the Nazis may not have been as random as previously thought, researchers said Monday.

    Join our WhatsApp group

    Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email


    U.S.-based Wallenberg researchers Susanne Berger and Vadim Birstein said they have obtained new material that suggests the Swede was well-connected with Swedish decision-makers and Hungary’s resistance movement before he was sent to Budapest in 1944.

    “He was not some green, naive guy who started from scratch when he was in Budapest,” Berger told The Associated Press. “There was a very strong push for him from numerous quarters it now seems.”

    Wallenberg is credited with saving thousands of Jews in Budapest by distributing false Swedish passports or giving shelter in diplomatic enclaves. He vanished after being arrested in Budapest by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, but the Russians have never explained why they detained the Swedish diplomat.

    Below related video of efforts to award Wallenberg with Congressional Award in Washington March 14, 2012

    It’s well known that Wallenberg’s work as a Swedish diplomat in Budapest was a cover for his true mission as secret emissary of the U.S. War Refugee Board, created by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a belated attempt to stem the annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

    But Berger and Birstein said diary notes and other documents they obtained last year from the daughter of Hungarian diplomat Antal Ullein-Reviczky, a key figure in Hungary’s resistance movement who was linked to U.S. and British intelligence officials, challenges the widely held belief that the choice of Wallenberg for the assignment in 1944 was largely accidental.

    Ullein-Reviczky’s guest lists and notes from dinner parties and other social events, in both Stockholm and Budapest between 1943 and 1944, show that Wallenberg frequently socialized with influential people that would make his appointment possible, the researchers said.

    Among them were Sweden’s Foreign Minister Christian Gunther and senior Foreign Ministry official Erik Boheman. Wallenberg also met with senior politicians, business executives and others within Hungary’s social elite who Berger described as “the core group of anti-Nazi sentiment.”

    “All that would have caught Soviet attention,” the researchers said in a statement, noting that many of Ullein-Reviczky’s acquaintances have been found in Wallenberg’s contact book.

    “It is very likely that Soviet intelligence representatives in Stockholm and Hungary reported to Moscow in some detail about Raoul Wallenberg’s activities in the years 1943-1945,” they said.
    Leon Goldenberg, William Nussen, Peter Rebenwurzel, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Sidney Greenberger, Erol User speak out in support of wallenberg award in Washington Mar 14 2012
    Ingrid Carlberg, a Swedish journalist who will publish a book on Wallenberg this year, called the new information “very interesting.”

    “I knew Wallenberg and Ullein-Reviczky were in contact, but not to this extent,” she said.

    Carlberg said the findings support her own theory that Wallenberg’s contacts with figures linked to Western intelligence services “triggered Stalin’s irritation” and helps explain why Moscow would have viewed him with suspicion.

    The Soviets initially denied Wallenberg was in their custody, but then said in 1957 that he died of a heart attack in prison on July 17, 1947.

    After the Soviet collapse, that version of events was challenged by Alexander Yakovlev, the one-time chairman of a presidential panel investigating the fate of repression victims. In 2000, Yakovlev said he had been told by a former KGB chief that Wallenberg was killed in Lubyanka prison. The Russian government, however, has never formally retracted the initial Soviet version.

    Michael Neiman, Abe Biderman, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Sindey Greenberger, Leon Goldenberg, Ben Hoffman, Senator Carl Levin, Erol User, Senator John Barrasso, Peter Rebenwurzel, William Nussen, Ezra Friedlander, David Moskovits speak out in support of wallenberg award in Washington Mar 14 2012


    Listen to the VINnews podcast on:

    iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podbean | Amazon

    Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates


    Connect with VINnews

    Join our WhatsApp group


    2 Comments
    Most Voted
    Newest Oldest
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    12 years ago

    So it’s true some people did try to save some Jews during WW2.

    bigwheeel
    bigwheeel
    12 years ago

    I don’t know about the location of this monument in tribute to Raoul Wallenberg. But the language of the inscription is definitely not Swedish. It’s in Hungarian. That fact makes me doubt if the location (given as Sweden) is correct.