Raoul Wallenberg: The ‘Swedish Schindler’ who saved thousands
The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg helped save thousands from the Holocaust, but is it true that he died in Soviet captivity after his wartime heroics?
Image: Raoul Wallenberg | Public Domain
History is littered with examples of mysterious disappearances. You get entire books, podcasts and online forums all striving to get closer to the truth of what really happened. Perhaps the most bizarre and tragic ‘missing person’ case from World War II, however, is that of the ‘Swedish Schindler’, Raoul Wallenberg.
Like the industrialist Oskar Schindler portrayed by Liam Neeson in the 1993 film Schindler's List, Wallenberg is credited with saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In Wallenberg’s case, Hungarian Jews set to be dispatched to Nazi concentration camps were handed fake passports exempting them from deportation.
Sky HISTORY’s World War II with Tom Hanks reveals the true scale of the Holocaust and the horror this genocide unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. So, what happened to Wallenberg after he was seized by Soviet forces in January 1945? That’s what we at Sky HISTORY have been trying to find out…
Who was Raoul Wallenberg?
Raoul Wallenberg was born into a well-off Swedish family on 4th August 1912, three months after his naval officer father died of cancer. In the early 1930s, the young Raoul went to the United States to study architecture at the University of Michigan. However, after graduating in 1935, he struggled to find work as an architect in his native Sweden.
A career detour was in order, and Wallenberg found it by taking up a new role in banking. During a stint of several months in Haifa (at that time part of Palestine), Wallenberg came into contact with Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. In the late 1930s, Wallenberg returned home to Sweden, where he joined an export-import company serving central European markets.
As Wallenberg’s new boss was Jewish, he could not safely travel to Hungary, where antisemitic legislation was rolling out. So, Wallenberg agreed to go in his place. In Budapest, he saw first-hand the hardships experienced by Hungarian Jews, hardening his determination to alleviate their struggles. He got the opportunity in the summer of 1944, when the Swedish government tasked him with diplomatic duties in Budapest.
What did Raoul Wallenberg do to save Jews?
Earlier in 1944, US president Franklin D Roosevelt had formed the War Refugee Board to rescue Jews at risk of perishing in the then-ongoing Holocaust. Within months, the WRB had sent Raoul Wallenberg on a new humanitarian mission. It couldn’t have come at a more urgent time. In the weeks before Wallenberg’s arrival in Budapest, Nazi authorities had already deported more than 400,000 Jews from Hungarian soil.
Many would be killed in Nazi-run concentration camps, including Auschwitz. However, as late as July 1944, thousands of Jews were still in Hungary. In Budapest, Raoul quickly set up diplomatic buildings that would serve as sanctuaries for as many of these Jews as possible. Some would be employed as security guards or even disguise themselves in uniforms of the ‘Arrow Cross’, the far-right Hungarian party complicit in Nazi atrocities.
At Wallenberg’s behest, other Hungarian Jews were given passports identifying them as Swedish subjects. This would grant them safe passage to Sweden, officially a neutral country during World War II. Wallenberg even went as far as distributing the passports on a train set to transport Jews to Auschwitz. Nazi officials were none the wiser that the documents had actually been fabricated.
In all, how many Jews did Raoul Wallenberg play a major part in rescuing? The number is not certain, but estimated to have reached the thousands – potentially even, according to some sources, as many as 100,000.
What happened to Raoul Wallenberg after the war?
In the dying months of 1944, the Soviet Union’s Red Army closed in on Budapest. Hungary was finally set to be liberated from the Nazi yoke. That’s what must have been running through Raoul Wallenberg’s mind when he agreed to meet with Soviet officials in Debrecen in January 1945. However, the Soviets took him prisoner, apparently suspecting him of waging espionage against their own interests.
For years after the war ended, the Soviets denied knowing of Wallenberg’s whereabouts. Only in 1957 did the Soviets finally open up, claiming that the captive Wallenberg had died of a probable heart attack in July 1947. Nonetheless, his grave has never been found. However, former Soviet prisoners also claimed to have crossed paths with Wallenberg in the decades after his supposed death.
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