Stockholm, Sweden – Researchers say new evidence from Russian archives suggests that a Swedish diplomat credited with rescuing thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust was alive after the Soviets reported his death in prison.
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The fate of Raoul Wallenberg, whom the Soviet army arrested in Budapest in January 1945, has remained one of the great mysteries of World War II.
The Soviets claimed he was executed in 1947 but never produced a reliable death certificate or his remains. Witnesses claim he was seen in Soviet prisons or labor camps many years later.
The archives of the Russian Security Services now say a man identified only as Prisoner No. 7, who was interrogated six days after the diplomat’s reported death, was “with great likelihood” Wallenber.
What did Russia have against Wallenberg? Why would they want to torture and kill him?
supposedly the advancing red army mistakenly arrested walenberg as he was leaving hungary to go home. the communists would do anything to avoid public embarrassment,including admitting that they arrested an innocent man, a diplomat from an allied country so they decided to keep him hidden in the gulag.
To # 1. Yes it has remained one of the great mysteries of World War II. But it is a fact that after the war the Soviets arrested many young people in Budapest as suspects of German solders, between them a lot of Jews it took years until they got free.
#1 – Not that the Russians ever needed a reason for torture – He was suspected suspicion of being a spy for the United States and that the War Refugee Board which he was part of was engaged in espionage.
I bet the Ruskis thought Wallenberg was a US Agent. The cold war had just begun. Could they trust a Diplomat who saved Yidden? Who would do such a thing? Only a principled person. Of course the Ruskis would want him dead.
Once they’d reported him dead, and once they’d squeezed whatever information they could out of him, why would they keep him alive? It’s not as if they could ever release him. So if by some chance he was discovered still alive, he shortly wouldn’t be. This is why I never believed the rumours that he was alive in the ’70s.
I walk past his house in Ann Arbor Michigan, from when he went to school there, to shul often. His house has a plaque from the city historical register.