k 12 Friday, December 9, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Moral evil is its own curse. Family's Debt to Wallenberg Is Re-Called The GLATT KOSHER s Air ConditWord and Hosted By MAURICE SAMUELSON HOREC130 Howl 6 Cabana Club LONDON (JTA) — The Hanuka candles in a Lon- don home this week re- minded a Jewish family of its debt to Raoul Wallen- berg, the legendary Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in wartime Hungary and then disappeared in the Soviet Union. For Rabbi Leo Fischer, Hanuka is always associ- ated with the rescue of his brother, Arthur Fischer, from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Al- though Arthur himself died nearly three years ago, his debt to the Swedish hero is cherished by his brother, Now Offering! 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December 1944 marked the blackest period of the war for the Jews in the Hungarian capital who had escaped deportation earlier in the year. With the city bombarded by the Soviet army, the bloodthirsty Arrow Cross fascists and the Nazi SS were trying to murder as many Jews as possible before meeting their own fate at the hands of the Russians. Arthur Fischer, his wife and two baby boys were among hundreds of Jews sheltering in an apartment block designed as Swedish property by Wallenberg. All had been furnished with Swedish provisional passports in a bid to safeguard them against death or deportation. On Dec. 10, Arthur rashly ventured outside the build- ing and was arrested, in spite of his Swedish docu- ments, by Arrow Cross thugs. Together with about 15 other Jews he was locked up in a factory on an island in the Danube. At that time, Jews were being murdered wholesale and Arthur and his comrades feared the worst. The following day was the first night of Hanuka. As darkness fell, one of the Jews found a candle in the factory. The prisoner kin- dled it, recited the tradi- tional blessings, and quietly intoned the Hanuka an- them, Maoz Tsur, recalling the miraculous deliv- erances of old. Arthur later described what happened: "The following day, we suddenly heard people arguing outside the fac- tory. The door opened and in came Raoul Wal- lenberg. He recognized me as a Swedish pass- holder and took all of us back to the Swedish houses." Wallenberg had already saved Fischer once before. Together with two cousins, who also held Swedish pap- ers, Arthur had been put on a train for the Polish death camps. Wallenberg had in- tercepted it before it reached the border, and se- cured the release of several people, including the Fis- chers. As if that was not enough, Wallenberg came to the family's aid a third time, on Jan. 6, 1945, shortly before the eastern sector of Budapest fell to the Rus- sians. On that day the Nazis and their Hungarian ac- complices were driving Jews from the Swedish houses to the general ghetto, where conditions were much more perilous. Wallenberg turned up too late to stop the transfer of Arthur Fischer's family and elderly parents, and one of the two Fischer infants was to die in the general ghetto. However, Wallenberg man- aged to prevent the evacua- tion of other members of the family who remained in the Swedish houses until the liberation. Arthur's brother, Leo, who has preserved this account of their family's debt to Wallenberg, also played an important part in making it possible. As a refugee from Nazi Ger- many, Leo Fischer had obtained Swedish citi- zenship just before the war, thus ensuring that his family, living in Hun- gary, were among the first to receive Swedish papers when the Nazis took power there in March 1944. Although their father was originally from Hun- gary, the two Fischer brothers were born in Fuerth, Germany, and went to the same Jewish school as Henry Kissinger, the future American Secretary_ of State. In 1933, while Arthur and the other Fischers left for Hungary, Leo went to Swe- den where he served as a rabbi in a small town on the Baltic in 1934. He joined his parents in Budapest, from where he planned to proceed to Palestine. For various reasons this plan fell through and Leo returned a year later to Sweden, be- coming a Swedish citizen in 1938. By 1944, Rabbi Fischer had settled down and mar- ried in Malmo, on Sweden's coast. In March of that year, when Adolf Eichmann began dispatching Hunga- rian Jews to Auschwitz, Fischer appealed to the Swedish authorities to pro- tect his relatives. In July, when Wallen- berg expanded the Swedish rescue. mission, Leo Fischer began "adopting" scores of other Hungarian Jews with whom he had no family connection but whose plight he under- stood all too well. After the war, Arthur and Food Research REHOVOT — The Brody Center for Food Services was dedicated recently at the Rehovot campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. other members of the family joined Leo in Sweden and recounted their wartime experiences to him. In 1949, Arthur Fischer, his wife and their surviving son moved to the new state of Israel. He himself died in 1981, in Germany. His brother Leo now lives in Golders Green, London where he recounted this story of a modern Hanuka miracle and his family's debt to Wallenberg, the hero who never came back. Actor Ron Moody, who appeared in the movie "O- liver," was born Ron Mood- nick. JUNKETS! JUNKETS! FOR QUALIFIED PLAYERS VEGAS, TAHOE, AR. CITY, ETC. RYKE TRAVEL 356-8400 , KOSHER , VACATIO. 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