‘SWEDISH SCHINDLER’ FINALLY DECLARED DEAD BY HIS HOMELAND
STOCKHOLM— Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during World War II, was finally declared dead by his homeland on Monday over 70 years after disappearing into the hands of the Soviet Union.
The announcement brings only a partial closure to one of the greatest mysteries of the Cold War—the fate of the socalled “Swedish Schindler”—as his body was never returned to his family.
Months before the war ended, the Soviets invaded Budapest and summoned the Swede to their headquarters in January 1945.
“The official date of his death is July 31, 1952,” said Pia Gustafsson, an official from Sweden’s tax authority.
Wallenberg was sent as a special envoy to the capital of Nazi-controlled Hungary in 1944, and by early 1945, he had issued Swedish papers to thousands of Jews, allowing them to flee.
The Swedish diplomat, who was 32 when he disappeared, also acquired buildings to house as many Jews as possible.
He organized the Budapest rescue mission which, according to some estimates, saved 100,000 people from persecution.
Wallenberg’s efforts earned him the nickname “Swedish Schindler” in reference to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who rescued Polish Jews.
In 1957, the Soviet Union released a document saying Wallenberg had been jailed in the Lubyanka prison, where the KGB security services were headquartered, and that he died of heart failure on July 17, 1947.
But his family refused to accept that version. In 2000, the head of a Russian commission of investigation conceded Wallenberg had been shot and killed by KGB agents in Lubyanka in 1947 for political reasons.