Wallenberg, Raoul (1912-1952?), a Swedish businessman and diplomat, helped save about 100,000 Hungarian Jews from being killed by the Nazis in 1944, during World War II. He often risked his life, and later won worldwide admiration for his heroic efforts. In 1981, the United States Congress made Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen.
Wallenberg was born on Aug. 4, 1912, in Lidingö, near Stockholm. He was a member of a prominent family of bankers and industrialists. He visited Hungary on business in the early 1940’s, during World War II. Wallenberg became increasingly disturbed by the campaign of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to kill all the Jews of Europe. In 1944, Wallenberg came to the attention of the World Jewish Congress and the American War Refugee Board. He accepted their invitation to head a program in Hungary to save the remaining Jews there.
The Swedish government appointed Wallenberg to serve as a diplomat in Budapest, Hungary’s capital. He issued Swedish passports to about 20,000 Jews, allowing them to claim the protection of the neutral Swedish government. He also sheltered Jews in houses he bought or rented with his own money or money from the groups that had sent him. Wallenberg, a Lutheran, was assisted by Roman Catholic and other non-Jewish leaders.
Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official who directed the sending of Jews to concentration camps, ordered Wallenberg to stop interfering with German plans for the Jews. Wallenberg refused. Eichmann tried to have Wallenberg assassinated, but the attempt failed. In the final days before the liberation of Budapest by Soviet soldiers, Wallenberg persuaded the Nazis to cancel a plan to kill 70,000 Jews who were forced to live in a ghetto (segregated area) of the city.
In January 1945, Soviet forces took Wallenberg into custody. They apparently believed he was an American spy. In 1957, the Soviet government reported that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in prison in 1947. Later inquiries failed to clarify the circumstances of his death.
In 2016, Swedish authorities declared that Wallenberg’s official death date would be considered July 31, 1952. Swedish law dictates that the official death date for a person who has gone missing is five years to the day after they disappeared. Swedish authorities had officially considered Wallenberg to have disappeared on July 31, 1947.
