Official Swedish agency declares Wallenberg dead
A Swedish government agency has declared Raoul Wallenberg – the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi gas chambers – is dead.
The Swedish Tax Authority, which registers births and deaths in Sweden, confirmed to the Associated Press that a report in the Expressen newspaper on Monday that Wallenberg had been declared dead, was accurate. The decision was made last week following a request last November for a ruling from the trustee of Wallenberg’s estate to Swedish authorities.
The date of death was set as July 31, 1952, chosen under a Swedish law that rules a missing person who is presumed to have died should be declared dead five years after his disappearance, according to the AP.
According to the diaries of Ivan Serov, who ran the Soviet KGB from 1954 to 1958, Wallenberg was executed in a Soviet prison in 1947. The diaries were published in August and contain references to several previously unknown documents referring to Wallenberg, including one that noted his cremation.
Wallenberg was posted to Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II, where he issued protective passports to some 20,000 Hungarian Jews in the final months of the Holocaust. He disappeared in 1945 after he was seen being surrounded by Soviet officers in Budapest. The Soviets later claimed Wallenberg died in prison of heart failure.
The diplomat’s parents both reportedly committed suicide in 1979 in despair over their son’s disappearance. (JTA)