RAOUL WALLENBERG, A THIRTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD Swedish businessman, volunteered to go to Nazi-controlled Hungary during World War II as a diplomat in order to help rescue Jews. When he arrived in Budapest in June of 1944 he learned that the Nazis had already deported four hundred thousand Jewish men, women, and children to the death camps. With daring, courage, and ingenuity, Wallenberg tirelessly dogged the Nazis, pressuring them to accept the Swedish identification papers he created, snatching Jews from deportation trains and death marches, and providing food and shelter in “safe houses” under the protection of the Swedish flag. He is thought to have saved as many as one hundred thousand Jews who remained in Budapest.
When the Soviet army arrived to liberate Hungary, Wallenberg and his driver left Budapest on January 17, 1945, to visit the Soviet military headquarters, telling friends he planned to return in about a week. He and his driver have been missing ever since.
According to the Russians, Raoul Wallenberg died of a heart attack in a Soviet prison on July 17, 1947. But to his family and to the thousands of Jews who consider him a hero, a satisfactory explanation for his arrest and disappearance has never been given. The government of Israel designated Raoul Wallenberg as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.”