Gerald Clark on Raoul Wallenberg
"In 1944, Raoul Wallenberg, a Christian & a member of the wealth &
powerful family often called the Rockefellers of Sweden,
left the sanctuary of Stockholm to rescue Jews in Budapest. Wallenberg's
plan was to provide temporary citizenship papers....
The Schutzpasse looked impressive & claimed the bearer
was a ward of the King of Sweden.
For the most part (the Nazi program led by Adolf Eichmann)...
was efficient & ruthless, often ignoring the Swedish flag,
loading hundreds of Jewish men & women on cattle cars destined
for Auschwitz & other death camps.
When he knew of such a movement, Wallenberg would arrive at the railway station
with long lists of holders of protective passes, demanding in an authoritative tone,
that they be turned over to him. Early in January 1945....
about 70,000 Jews had been moved to a sealed ghetto, & the Nazis planned to
blow it up & machine gun the survivors.
When Wallenberg learned of this plot he warned the German commander that
if the plan were carried out, he, Wallenberg, would personally see to it that the
commander would hang as a war criminal.
Obviously shaken, the commander halted the operation.
It may also have been Wallenberg's downfall.
After the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, Wallenberg insisted on staying
in the section of Budapest where the majority of the Jewish population lived.
He continued to work for the safety of Hungarian Jews.
Then, without warning, Wallenberg vanished.
Six days after his disappearance, on January 16 1945,
a deputy Soviet minister sent word to the Swedish minister
that Wallenberg had been placed under Soviet protection.
Perhaps he was mistaken for a spy.
The Soviets claimed that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in prison in 1947.
But former Soviet prisoners reported seeing him alive many years after that date.
The mystery of Wallenberg's disappearance may never be solved,
but one thing is clear....
One man in six months saved between 20,000 to 25,000 Jews.....
more if one includes his role in preventing the Budapest ghetto,
with its 70,000 Jews, from being destroyed.
Says one whose family Wallenberg saved from the death camps,
"He was the Moses of the 20th century.
The world in its history has known few Wallenbergs."
