Who Is Raoul Wallenberg?

Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat in Nazi-occupied Hungary who led an extensive and successful mission to save the lives of nearly 100,000 Hungarian Jews. Though his efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust is one of the most treasured aspects of that time, his fate and ultimate death is unknown still to this day.
- Early Life & Education
- Professional Life During Hitler's Rise
- The Holocaust Hits Hungary
- Swedish Efforts to Save Jews
- Wallenberg's Arrival in Hungary
- Wallenberg's Diplomacy
- "Swedish Houses" & Other Saving Efforts
- "Death Marches," Deportation, & Last-Ditch Efforts
- Russian Liberation of Hungary
- Wallenberg's Arrest & Disappearance
- Investigations into Wallenberg's Fate
Early Life & Education
Raoul Wallenberg was born August 4, 1912, three months after his father's death and six years before his mother, Maj Wising Wallenberg, became remarried to Fredrik von Dardel in 1918.
Raoul belonged to one of the most famous families in Sweden, the large Wallenberg family. It was a family that contributed to Sweden bankers, diplomats and politicians during several generations in the country. Raoul's father, Raoul Oscar Wallenberg, was an officer in the navy, and his cousins Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg were two of Sweden's most famous bankers and industrialists.
Raoul's grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, took care of Raoul's education. The plan was for him to continue the family tradition and become a banker, but he was more interested in architecture and trade.
In 1930, Wallenberg graduated with top grades in Russian and drawing. After his army service he traveled to the USA in 1931 to study architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Wallenberg's personal letters reveal that he enjoyed his studies and that he spent most of his free time in studying. Still, he thoroughly enjoyed his time in Ann Arbor - he wrote to his grandfather, "When I now look back upon the last school year, I find I have had a completely wonderful time."
Wallenberg graduated with honors in only three and a half years and won a university medal that went to the student with the most impressive academic
record.
Professional Life During the Rise of Hitler
In 1935, he received his bachelor degree of Science in Architecture and returned to Sweden. But the market for architects was small in Sweden, so his grandfather sent him to Cape Town, South Africa, where he practiced at a Swedish firm selling building materials. After six months, his grandfather arranged a new job for him at a Dutch bank office in Haifa, Palestine (now Israel).
It was in Palestine he first met Jews that had escaped Hitler's Germany.
Their stories of the Nazi persecutions affected him deeply. Perhaps because he had a very humane attitude to life and because he owned a drop of Jewish blood (Raoul's grandmother's grandfather was a Jew by the name of Benedicks whom arrived to Sweden by the end of the 18th century). Wallenberg returned to Sweden from Haifa in 1936 and resumed his old interest for business.
Through his cousin Jacobs' good contacts in the business world, Raoul was eventually brought together with Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew, who was the director of a Swedish based import and export company specializing in food and delicacies. Thanks to Raoul's excellent language skills and his greater freedom of movement through Europe (Jews were not allowed to travel extensively after the rise of Hitler), he was a perfect business partner for Lauer. Within eight months, Wallenberg was a joint owner and international director of the Mid-European Trading Company.
Through his trips in Nazi-occupied France and in Germany itself, Raoul quickly learned how the German bureaucracy functioned. He also made several trips to Hungary and Budapest, where he visited Lauer's family. At that time, Hungary was still a relatively safe place in a hostile
surrounding.
The Holocaust Hits Hungary
During the spring of 1944 the world had mostly awoken to realize what Hitler's "final solution to the Jewish problem" actually meant. In May 1944, the first authentic eye witness report of what was happening in the Auschwitz extermination camp finally reached the western world . It came from two Jews who had managed to escape the gas chambers and Nazi Germany all together.
Hitler's plans for the extermination of European Jewry were now known. At the beginning of 1944, there still lived an estimated 700,000 Jews in Hungary, a country which had joined Germany in the war against the Soviet Union already in 1941.
When the Germans lost the battle of Stalingrad in 1943, Hungary wanted to follow Italy's example and demand a separate peace. Hitler called the Hungarian head of state, Miklós Horthy, and demanded that he display continued solidarity with Germany. When Horthy refused to meet these demands, an angered Hitler had the German army invade Hungary in March 1944. Following soon thereafter, the deportations of Hungarian Jews to the concentration camps began. For the vast majority of these Jews, the lone destination was Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland - a ride that brought with it almost certain death.
Though the Germans began by deporting Jews from the Hungarian country side, the Jewish citizens of Budapest knew that their hour of fate was also soon to come. In desperation they sought help from embassies of the neutral countries where provisional identity passes were issued for Jews with special connections to these countries.
Efforts at Saving Jews from Persecution
The Swedish legation in Budapest succeeded in negotiating with the Germans that the bearers of these protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and exempt from wearing the yellow Star of David on their chest. It was Per Anger, a young diplomat at the legation in Budapest, who initiated the first of these Swedish protective passes. (In 1982, Per Anger was awarded the honor of"Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem for his heroic actions to save Jews during the war.)
In a short period of time the Swedish legation issued 700 passes, though this represented a mere drop in the ocean compared to the enormous number of Jews being threatened by Hitler. To deal with the great number of Jews looking for help, the legation requested immediate staff reinforcements from the foreign department in Stockholm.
In 1944, the United States established The War Refugee Board (WRB), an organization created with the mission of saving Jews from Nazi persecution. The WRB soon realized that serious attempts were being made from the Swedish side to rescue the Jewish population in Hungary. The WRB's representative in Stockholm called a committee with prominent Swedish Jews to discuss suitable persons to lead a mission in Budapest for an extensive rescue operation. Among the participants was Raoul Wallenberg's business partner Koloman Lauer, chosen as an expert on Hungary.
The committee's first choice was Folke Bernadotte, chairman of the Swedish Red Cross and a relative of the Swedish king. After Bernadotte was disapproved by the Hungarian government, Koloman Lauer suggested that his business partner - Raoul Wallenberg - be asked to lead the mission, emphasizing Wallenberg's familiarity with Hungary from the many trips he had made there while working for their joint company. Raoul was considered too young and inexperienced, but Lauer was persistent in his belief that Wallenberg was the right man — a quick thinker, energetic, brave and compassionate. And he had a famous name.
Soon the committee approved Wallenberg and by the end of June 1944, he was appointed first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest with the mission to start a rescue operation for the Jews.
Raoul was very excited to go to Hungary, but first he wrote a memo to the Swedish foreign department. He was determined not to get caught in the protocol and paperwork bureaucracy of diplomacy. He demanded full authorization to deal with whom he wanted without having to contact the ambassador first. He also wanted to have the right to send diplomatic couriers beyond the usual channels. The memo was so unusual that it was sent all the way to Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, who consulted the king before he announced that the demands had been approved.