Raoul Wallenberg

Diplomat, architect

• Born: August 4, 1912
• Place of Birth: Stockholm, Sweden
• Died: July 31, 1952
• Place of Death: Unknown

• Education: University of Michigan
• Significance: Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat and architect who helped save the lives of tens of thousands of Jewish people from the Nazis during World War II (1939–1945). Wallenberg was employed by the American War Refugee Board and sent to Budapest to protect Jewish Hungarians. Wallenberg issued special passports and housed Jews in diplomatically protected housing complexes to prevent Germans from deporting them to death camps. Following the Nazi defeat, Wallenberg was taken into Russian custody and reportedly sent to a Soviet prison. His family and friends never saw him again.

Background

Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden. The Wallenbergs were a well-known family throughout Sweden, producing a number of notable diplomats, bankers, and clergymen. His father was an officer in the Swedish navy, and his paternal grandfather was the Swedish ambassador to Japan. His mother also hailed from a prestigious family. Wallenberg never knew his father, who died of cancer three months before his son was born.

Wallenberg's mother remarried in 1918 and later gave birth to two children, Guy and Nina. He had a very happy childhood, with his paternal grandfather serving as his greatest friend and mentor. His grandfather encouraged him to resist the narrow-minded habits of Swedish society and open his mind to the world. He also saw to the young Wallenberg's education. In secondary school, Wallenberg excelled in the subjects of Russian and drawing. After graduating in 1930, he spent nine months completing his mandatory military training. His grandfather then sent him to France to polish his French language skills at the University of Poitiers.

In 1931, Wallenberg moved to the United States to attend the University of Michigan, where he pursued a degree in architecture. He completed his bachelor's degree in 1936, graduating with honors and the American Institute of Architects silver medal.

Life's Work

Wallenberg left Michigan after college and eventually took an apprenticeship in Palestine with a Jewish banker who knew his grandfather. He stayed at a Jewish boarding house in Palestine and became acquainted with many Jewish refugees from Germany. The refugees were seeking haven from Nazi Germany's newly installed Nuremberg laws, which were anti-Semitic laws that took away a number of rights from Jewish people. His experience in Palestine made a big impression on the comparatively privileged Swede.

In 1937, Wallenberg's grandfather died. The loss devastated him, and it greatly affected his ability to function in the real world. His career floundered over the next few years. His American architecture degree could not secure him a job in Sweden. He attempted to start two of his own businesses, but both failed. During this period, he kept in touch with many of the Jewish refugees he met in Palestine and often sent food subsidies to his friends.

Wallenberg relocated to Stockholm in 1941 to work for an export-import firm owned by a Jewish friend of his uncle's. His boss was having trouble traveling to Hungary due to his Jewish ancestry, so Wallenberg began traveling there in his place. In the city of Budapest, he witnessed the oppression the Nazis had set upon the Jewish Hungarians. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was ordering the execution of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews on a daily basis.

The American government attempted to infiltrate the Nazi regime with the creation of the American War Refugee Board. The goal was to save as many Hungarian Jews as possible. When members of the board arrived in Stockholm in 1944 looking for recruits who spoke Hungarian and German, Wallenberg's boss recommended him. Wallenberg traveled to Hungary and began employing Jewish volunteers to run his office. He instructed them to remove their yellow Stars of David and handed out special Swedish passports he invented. The document granted its holder immunity from death camp deportation. The passport worked and was credited with saving the lives of 20,000 Jews.

Alongside his passports, Wallenberg also had a number of low-income housing complexes declared under the protection of Swedish diplomatic immunity. These structures housed around 35,000 Jews and saved many of them from Nazi clutches. The Nazis did raid the complexes at times and rounded up Jews to take down to the Danube River, where they were tied together and shot or thrown into the river. When Wallenberg heard this news, he organized a rescue party to jump into the river and save people. His actions made him a target of the Nazis, and at one point, his car was blown up in an assassination attempt. Wallenberg persisted, however, and regularly bribed and intimidated Nazi soldiers into helping his cause.

As the war came to an end, Wallenberg single-handedly persuaded a Nazi commander to stop a planned massacre of Budapest Jews, threatening the officer with charges of war crimes. Aware that Hitler was about to be defeated, the commander called off the attack, and the lives of some 70,000 Jews were saved. Hungary remained a country in turmoil for some time after the Germans fled. Within a few months, Soviet troops arrived from Russia. Troops came to Wallenberg's door in January of 1945 and escorted him to their headquarters. The next morning, he returned to his apartment with a Russian escort, gathered his belongings, and told his friends he would be back soon. His family and friends never saw or heard from him again.

Impact

Over the next few decades, several inquiries were made into Wallenberg's whereabouts. Despite a few leads and compelling evidence demonstrating Wallenberg was alive for some time after his abduction, lack of cooperation from the Russian government left his fate unknown. The Swedish government declared Wallenberg dead on October 26, 2016, listing his death date as July 31, 1952, five years after the last piece of credible evidence suggesting he was alive was received. Wallenberg's actions were not forgotten, however. For his courage, he was named an honorary citizen of the United States in 1981. He was also posthumously awarded many honors from countries all over the world, including a Congressional Gold Medal from the United States in 2012 and honorary Canadian citizenship. Numerous organizations bearing his name carry on his legacy of fighting for human rights. Annual commemorations of the day he disappeared continued to be held into the twenty-first century.

Personal Life

During his time in the United States in the 1930s, Wallenberg made many friends who admired the young Swede's good humor and liveliness. During his summers off, Wallenberg hitchhiked across the United States as well as Canada and Mexico.

Bibliography

Brown, Rob. "The Swedish Schindler Who Disappeared." BBC, 1 Feb. 2015, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30934452. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

"H.R.3001 - Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Act." Library of Congress, www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/3001/text. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

"Raoul Wallenberg." Jewish Virtual Library, 2024, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/raoul-wallenberg-3. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

"Raoul Wallenberg." University of Michigan, wallenberg.umich.edu/raoul-wallenberg/the-story-of-raoul-wallenberg/disappearance-and-unknown-fate/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

"Raoul Wallenberg and the Rescue of Jews in Budapest." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/raoul-wallenberg-and-the-rescue-of-jews-in-budapest. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024