80 Friday, April 3, 1981
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Swedish Envoy Documents Wallenberg's Efforts
to Save Thousands of Hungarians in the Holocaust
Thirty-six years after the
abduction of one of the
greatest heroes of World
War II by the Russians, and
their denial that he is still
alive, the world movement
for the freeing of Raoul Wal-
lenberg has gained momen-
tum.
Committees laboring for
the rescue of Wallenberg,
who is believed still to be in
a Russian prison, have been
formed. His family is in the
front ranks of the activists
laboring for his freedom and
for action by the Swedish
government. -His step-
father, Fredrik von Dardel,
wrote a book listing the
facts about his fate, giving
credence to the testimony
by impartial observers who
say they had seen Wallen-
berg in Butyrki prison in
1951, in Vladimir prison
during the 1950s and in a
mental hospital in the
Soviet Union in 1961.
The renewed action in
behalf of Wallenberg is re-
ceiving greatest impetus in
the Schocken Holocaust Li-
brary series' "With Raoul
Wallenberg in Budapest,"
by Per Anger. It is the most
authoritative volume with
the background of Wallen-
berg's heroic labors as a re-
sult of which tens of
thousands of Jews were re-
scued from the gas cham-
bers to which they were as-
signed by the Nazis who at-
tempted to round them up in
Hungary.
Per Anger was in Hun-
gary, serving in the
Swedish foreign legation
preceding Wallenberg's
arrival there. When he
was the Swedish ambas-
sador to Ottawa in recent
years he told this re-
viewer that upon leaving
the Swedish foreign serv-
ice he will tell the story of
the great hero. Was he
handicapped by pro-
tocol? His book relates of
hesitancies which are at
last developing into ac-
tion.
The Anger record is very
important. He was born in
Goteborg, Sweden in 1913.
Upon graduating from Up-
psala University in 1939 he
entered the 'diplomatic serv-
ice and was assigned to the
Swedish Foreign Office in
Stockholm. His first foreign
assignment was in 1940
when he joined the staff of
the Swedish Embassy in
Berlin.
He was transferred to
Budapest in 1942. There as
an attache in the embassy
he became involved in the
rescue of the persecuted
Hungarian Jews then being
carried on by several neut-
PER ANGER
ral governments and by the
International Red Cross.
In July 1944, Raoul Wal-
lenberg arrived in Budapest
and Per Anger became his
close and devoted col-
laborator in the noble
humanitarian mission of
saving Hungarian Jews
from deportation to the-gas
chambers of Auschwitz.
Raoul Wallenberg
saved about 25,000 Jews
directly and another
70,000 indirectly. In a
tense, dramatic account
Per Anger relates their-
experiences in Budapest
during those fateful
years 1944-1945. He re-
counts his association
with-Raoul Wallenberg in
his rescue work and tells
of Wallenberg's tragic
fate after his arrest by the
Russians.
After the war Per Anger
was assigned to the Swedish
embassies in Cairo, Addis
Ababa, Paris, and the con-
sulate general in San Fran-
cisco. His most recent as-
signment was as Sweden's
ambassador to Ottawa. He
retired in December 1979
after 40 years of distin-
guished diplomatic service
to his country.
Schocken Books has to its
credit an immense
achievement with the pub-
lication of the many books
forming , the Holocaust Li-
brary. This newest addition
to that bookshelf is among
the very great contributions
to the battle for justice and
for the spreading of truth
about the Nazi terror and
the greatest of all heroes in
the anti-Nazi struggle.
Anger enters into great
detail in relating the Wal-
lenberg story.
Anger's thorough ac-
count of what had oc-
curred, the details of
events that transpired in
Hungary, the Nazi inva-
sion and the eventual
domination of the col:
laborating murderous
gangs belonging to the
Arrow Cross exposes the
most bestial of inhuman
movements in the anti-
Semitic ranks that served
as the tools of the bar-
baric Nazis. Most impor-
tant in the Anger book is
the chapter entitled
"Wallenberg's Last Acts,
His Unique Achieve-
ment." While the entire
book is an historic docu-
ment, this chapter em-
phasizes the heroism of a
great man who gave up
career and wealth to
serve a great cause —
that of rescuing Jews at
his own peril. In that
chapter Anger relates:
"Wallenberg's words, the
last time we saw each other,
were typical of him and of
the seriousness with which
he took his assignment. 'I'd
never be able to go back to
Stockholm without know-
ing inside myself I'd done all
a man could do to save as
many Jews as possible.' And
he did all that a man could,
to the very last.
"He was tireless in his ef-
forts to save Jews from de-
portation. Many are the
stories of how he could pop
up on the most unexpected
occasions and succeed in
preventing the removal of
Jews with protective
passports, or stop the Arrow
Crossmen from forcing their
way into the Swedish
houses. He swamped the
Arrow Cross authorities
with written petitions for
relief for his charges. It was
often he who was the prime
mover in the neutral lega-
tions' protests, through
joint memoranda, to the
Arrow Cross regime,
against the inhuman
treatment of the Jews.
"Even if the mass depor-
tations to Auschwitz by rail
had stopped, the Germans
made sporadic attempts to
ship groups of Jews off by
train.
"Wallenberg always
had people on watch who
could warn him in time to
get to the station before
the train's departure. On
one occasion, he arrived
with several long lists of
the holders of protective
passports and demanded
in an authoritative tone
to check whether any
such persons had by mis-
take been taken aboard.
"The Germans were
taken by surprise and, right
under their noses, Wallen-
berg pulled out a large
number of Jews. Many of
them had no passport at all,
only various papers in the
Hungarian language —
drivers licenses, vaccina-
tion records or tax receipts
— that the Germans did not
understand. The bluff suc-
ceeded.
"Another time, - when I
was there, the Germans
tried to stop us with guns.
But we stood our ground,
showed our Swedish dip-
lomatic passports, and were
able to leave with our
charges.
"One day when Wallen-
berg was elsewhere, I
rushed out to a station from
which a trainload of Jews
was about to depart. There
was no time to debate with -
the Germans. I explained
that a terrible mistake had
been made, since appar-
ently they were about to de-
port Jews who had Swedish
protective passports.
Should they not be released
immediately, I would make
sure that Veesenmayer was
informed.
"The reaction to this
proved to be the same as
on the 10th of October,
when we were sending
home the group of
Swedish women and
children. The German
train commander did not
dare to risk being re-
ported to the dreaded
Veesenmayer.
"I went into the cars to
call the roll, but found only
two Jews with protective
passports. However, with
the help of the Hungarian
police officer there, Batiz-
falvy (who secretly cooper-
ated with Raoul Wallenberg
and me), I succeeded, de-
spite the SS commandant's
orders, in freeing 150 Jews
from the station even
though 148 had no protec-
tive passports.
"Wallenberg sometimes
arranged for special expedi-
tions in which Jews who
looked Aryan, dressed in
Arrow Cross uniforms,
raided camps and prisons
and on several occasions
succeeded in freeing a large
number of Jews on the pre-
text that they were being
taken away to deportation.
"How many persons did
Wallenberg save? To that
question, a clear-cut answer
can hardly be given.
"I witnessed his stopping
the deportation of a total of
several thousand Jews at
train stations, from the
Swedish houses, and during
the death march to the Au-
strian border.
"It was through these acts
that the rumor was spread
of his almost superhuman
ability, in seemingly hope-
less situations, to snatch
victims from the Nazi
executioners. He became
hated but feared by the
Arrow Crossmen. He be-
came the Budapest Jews'
hope of rescue from the final
liquidation.
"Yet it was not through
the kind of personal in-
tervention just described
that he made his greatest
contribution. It was as a
negotiator that he
achieved his greatest re-
sults. He was the driving
force behind the agree-
ments entered into with
the Arrow Cross regime
concerning their respect-
ing not .only the 5,000
protective
Swedish
passports but also corre-
sponding documents of
the other neutral lega-
tions.
"Wallenberg was always
conscious of the fact that
saving as many persons as
possible was what mat-
tered. 'You know yourself,'
he remarked on one occa-
sion, 'how we're besieged
every day by people who
plead for a job at the lega-
tion, for asylum or for a pro-
tective passport for them-
selves and their relations.
When they can't come
themselves, they send their
Aryan friends to ask for
them. All of them want to
meet me personally. I've got
to be firm. Time doesn't
allow me to devote myself to
single cases when it's a
question of life or death for
Budapest's entire Jewish
population.'
"Wallenberg held to this
line rigorously.
"To accomplish his ends,
he applied every means. He
bribed Arrow Cross offi-
Sometimes he
cials.
execution.
threatened
Other times he promised
pardon after the arrival of
the Russians. He used
Foreign Minister Kemeny's
wife ( who was of Jewish de-
scent and greatly admired
him) to influence her hus-
band to approve the protec-
tive passports and so on.
"As I mentioned earlier,
RAOUL WALLENBERG
after the war had ended, it
was established that 50,000
Jews who lived in the
foreign houses, the interna-
tional ghetto, had survived.
They were generally equip-
ped with protective
passports or similar docu-
ments issued by the neutral
legations and the Interna-
tional Red Cross. Of these,
Wallenberg had protected
nearly half, around 20 to
25,000.
"But Wallenberg's con-
tribution extended even
further. Besides his ef-
forts for the international
ghetto, toward the end he
also worked to protect
the inhabitants of
Budapest's general or
so-called sealed ghetto,
where around 70,000 had
been forced together. He
could sometimes arrange
for food deliveries to the
starving, and he man-
aged on several occa-
sions to forestall the
Arrow Crossmen's ram-
pages in the ghetto.
"But the Arrow Crossmen
had, in their fanatical
hatred of the Jews, decided
to commit mass murder in
the ghetto at the last min-
ute. When Wallenberg got
wind of this, he demanded
that the German comman-
der, General Schmidthuber,
prevent the killing. Other-
wise, Wallenberg would
make sure that Schmid-
thuber would swing on the
gallows when the Russians
came.
"Schmidthuber was sha-
ken by Wallenberg's words
and stopped the planned op-
eration against the ghetto
"Thus Wallenberg con=
tributed to saving still an-
other 70,000 lives.
"Jeno Levai, in his
book, 'Raoul Wallenberg
— Hero of Budapest,'
praises Wallenberg's ef-
forts for the Jews in the
sealed ghetto. He adds: 'It
is of the utmost impor-
_ azis and
tance that the N
the Arrow Crossmen
were not able to ravage
unhindered — they were
compelled to see that
every step they took was
being watched and fol-
lowed by the young
Swedish diplomat. From
Wallenberg they could
keep no secrets. The
Arrow Crossmen could
not trick him. They could
not operate freely, they
were held responsible for
the lives of the perse-
cuted and the con-
demned. Wallenberg was
the world's observing
eye, the one who contin-
ually called the criminals
to account.
" 'That is the great impor- .
tance of Wallenberg's
struggle in Budapest.' "
The movement in behalf
of Wallenberg made little
progress for many years. In
the last 15 years a number
of those in the ranks of the
tens of thousands he had re-
scued emerged to demand
that he be freed from the
Russian agonies. Annette
Lantos, whose husband, Dr.
Tom Lantos, is now a
member of Congress from
California, is a leader in
that movement.
In Sweden there was
lethargy. Now there is an
awakening. Per Anger as-
serts that "it has come to be
a question of decency to find
out what happened to a man
who, on an official Swedish
assignment, rendered such
unique service to mankind."
Anger states:
"Under the skillful
leadership of Undersec-
retary Leif Leifland, the
Foreign Office continues
to pursue the new leads
that turn up. With great
seriousness, Leifland set
to work on the testimony
of Abraham Kalinski at
the end of 1978, accord-
ing to which Wallenberg
was seen in various
Soviet prisons during the
'50s, '60s and '70s, that is,
after the year 1947 when,
according to the Soviet
authorities, he is sup-
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