Who is raoul wallenberg

But he disappeared into the labyrinth of the Soviet prison camps and was rewarded with an anonymous death that remains a mystery to this day. Wallenberg lived in boarding houses on Haven, Hill and Madison. He had daily breakfast in the Union. He sat in Michigan Stadium to watch football and canoed on the Huron.

He attended concerts at Hill Auditorium and rode his bike everywhere. He was a talented artist with a gift for languages. During his summers Wallenberg hitchhiked across the U.

In December , the Soviet military began a siege of Budapest. On January 17, , Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, began a journey to Debrecen, located miles east of Budapest, where the Soviets and a provisional Hungarian government were headquartered. The exact purpose of the trip is unknown, although one possibility is that Wallenberg wanted to discuss how to protect the Jews from pro-Nazi Hungarian thugs once the Red Army left the country.

However, along the way to the meeting, Wallenberg and his driver were taken into custody by Soviet forces. What happened to the two men next remains a mystery, as they were never seen or heard from again by the outside world. In , Andrei Vyshinsky , the Soviet deputy foreign minister, announced that Wallenberg was not in the Soviet Union and suggested he had possibly died during the Russian effort to seize Budapest. The paperwork never was handed over to the Swedish authorities, nor was any explanation given as to why Wallenberg had been incarcerated.

Some experts suggested that the Soviets might have believed Wallenberg was a spy for Western nations. Believing him to still be living, some humanitarian organizations and individuals, including many whose lives were spared because of his valor, spearheaded a movement to have him released by the Russians and relocated to the U. In the meantime, Wallenberg was showered with worldwide tributes. In , U. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation naming Wallenberg an honorary American citizen, a mark of distinction that until that time had been earned only by Winston Churchill In , Boris Yeltsin , the Russian president, formed a commission to investigate the Wallenberg case.

No new evidence was unearthed. Four years later, a bust of Wallenberg was displayed in the rotunda of the U. In , the U. Postal Service honored Wallenberg by issuing a stamp featuring his likeness. The two men were in Hungary on opposing missions: Wallenberg was there to rescue Jews; Eichmann was there to kill them. Their conversation was barbed. The war was almost over, Wallenberg pointed out. Why didn't Eichmann give up his task? Eichmann replied that he would do his job until the very end so that when he walked to the gallows he would know he had successfully carried out his assignment.

The Nazi added that Wallenberg wasn't immune from danger, even a neutral diplomat, he warned, could meet with an accident. But before the Nazi could execute his threat, the Russians entered Budapest, arrested the Swede and he disappeared forever into the Soviet Gulag.

In June of , the year-old Wallenberg, a businessman and a member of one of the wealthiest and most illustrious families in Sweden, had volunteered to go to Budapest to help save Hungarian Jews. War Refugee Board. Its mission was to rescue as many of the remaining European Jews as possible.

And the largest community of surviving Jews was in Hungary. Until March of , Hungary had been a relatively safe haven for Jews, but on March 19th, Hitler, frustrated by the Hungarian government's refusal to deport Jews, sent in occupying forces.

Eichmann soon began rounding up Jews in the provinces and by May 15, he began sending Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July. Wallenberg was last seen in the company of Soviet officials on January 17, , as the Red Army besieged Budapest. He was presumably detained on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared. A Soviet government report in suggested that Wallenberg had died on July 17, , while imprisoned by Soviet authorities at the infamous Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.

Subsequent eyewitness sightings of Wallenberg in the Soviet penal system after have called this statement into question. In October , 71 years after his disappearance, Swedish officials formally declared Wallenberg legally dead. We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. Wise — International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.