Wallenberg, Raoul

(1913–1947?)

   As a Swedish diplomat, Wallenberg saved thousands of Hungarian Jews caught between the Nazi authorities in Budapest and the advancing Red Army. He was able to document many Jews as citizens of neutral states, and on more than one occasion was able to remove Jews from trains that were bound for the death camps. Following the Red Army’s conquest of Hungary, Wallenberg was arrested by Smersh on 17 January 1945 and shipped to Moscow on suspicion of being an American intelligence agent. For the next two years, he was interrogated in Lubyanka prison. In July 1947 the head of the Lubyanka hospital reported to Viktor Abakumov that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack. He was cremated without an autopsy, and the Swedish government was not informed of his fate. He had been murdered by poison, apparently at Abakumov’s orders.

   Wallenberg’s death has never been satisfactorily documented for his family or supporters. The Swedish government and international human rights organizations tried for decades to ascertain his fate, and many believed until the fall of the Soviet Union that he was held in a gulag. However, recent memoirs by KGB officers establish that he was poisoned—a tragic fate for a great hero.