Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish humanitarian who worked in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Between July and December 1944, he issued protective passports (Schutzpasses) and housed Jews in buildings established as Swedish territory, saving tens of thousands of lives.
Unfortunately, his life after the war is a bit of a mystery. He was captured by the Soviet Union in January 1945 under suspicion of espionage on behalf of the Americans. He was later reported to have died in detention in March 1945. However in 1957 after pressure from the Swedish Government, the Soviet Union released a document dated July 17, 1947, which stated “I report that the prisoner Wallenberg who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack or heart failure”. This was contradicted in a later report in 1991 which said that Wallenberg was executed in 1947 in Lubyanka prison. Despite this there have been many sightings of Wallenberg after this date, with the last reported sighting in prison in 1987. Wallenberg’s niece is still working to uncover the truth of what actually happened to her uncle.
Raoul Wallenberg is remembered all around the World for his humanitarian work. There are monuments and memorials on every continent. The picture above is from the memorial in London, which stands outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. Many honours have been bestowed on Wallenberg, with the most important being at the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
As a result of the good work that Raoul Wallenberg carried out in 1944, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden was established, as an international educational center dedicated to a single mission, “to foster and promote humanitarian thought and action”.
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