I BEHIND THE HEADLINES Now Even Soviets Want Answer To Wallenberg HELEN DAVIS Foreign Correspondent F October 20 & 21 FRIDAY SATURDAY Vii141 a viteeOnd ' tot' 2 in the APPle:tvi t4evi ,forw COUrte" Northwes t 'T rabvsi en r S • VA elBr ave Northwestern Highway between 12 & 13 Mile Roads 30% OFF ALL SUEDE BAGS FUR BAGS SKIN BAGS Oriental Rugs Today's Pleasure Tomorrow's Treasure 251 Merrill Birmingham (313) 644-7311 50% OFF SELECT GROUP OF WALLETS & GLOVES 29815 NORTHWESTERN HIGHWAY IN APPLEGATE SQUARE • 20 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1989 fit 2915 Breton Grand Rapids (1-800422-RUGS) CLASSIFIEDS GET RESULTS! Call The Jewish News 357-1800 OPEN THURSDAY TILL 8 P.M. 354.6060 our elderly Swedes flew to Moscow this week for a series of meetings with Soviet politi- cians and senior KGB offi- cials in a final, desperate at- tempt to resolve one of the most enduring enigmas of World War II. The Swedes, all in their 70s, were united by a single, unshakeable belief: that Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who dis- appeared mysteriously into the darkness of Stalin's Russia after saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi- a occupied Hungary, is still alive. Wallenberg, scion of a wealthy Swedish family, was 32 years old when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. Backed by the World Jewish Congress, the Joint Distribution Committee, the U.S. State Department and President Roosevelt's War Refugee Board, the young envoy successfully appealed to King Gustav to be posted to the Swedish mission in Budapest. Hungary presented the Nazis with the last substan- tial urban Jewish communi- ty under their control, and Adolf Eichmann, the chief administrator of the Holocaust, set about his murderous task of destruc- tion with all the vigor and efficiency at his command. At the peak as many as five trains a day, each carry- . ing up to 4,000 souls, were leaving Budapest for Auschwitz. Later, when roll- ing stock was not available, Eichmann organized a pro- gram of deportations by foot — death marches — to an ex- termination center 120 miles away, across the Austrian border. For seven turbulent mon- ths in 1944, Walleitberg ap- plied himself with single- minded determination to the task of subverting the Nazi plans and saving Hungarian Jews. Operating in open defiance of the Gestapo — ignoring threats and often attempts on his life — the envoy from neutral Sweden cajoled, bribed and bullied officials who tried to stop him from extending his personal pro- tection to anyone in danger of being caught up in Hitler's death machine. Raoul Wallenberg: Fate hot topic. He established a substan- tial network of safe houses for Jews, handed out Swedish passports to those in imminent danger, and, when his supply of passports ran out, he produced citizen- ship papers as fast as his primitive duplicating machine could print them and as fast as he could sign them. Wherever Wallenberg found Jews in danger — at the Budapest railroad station where they were herded into railcars bound for Auschwitz, or along the road, where they were force- marched in pitiful columns toward the Austrian border — he thrust his precious scraps of paper at them, almost literally snatching them from the jaws of death. According to Gideon Hausner, chief state pros- ecutor at the 1961 trial of Eichmann and later Israel's attorney general, Wallenberg saved some 30,000 Hungarians from the Nazi death camps. Others put the figure as high as 100,000. On Jan. 17, 1945, with the Red Army on the outskirts of Budapest, the young Swedish envoy made his way through the lines and presented himself to the Soviet commander with the intention of informing him of his activities. Raoul Wallenberg was never seen again by his family, his col- leagues or his friends. For 12 years after the war, the Soviet authorities denied any knowledge of Wallenberg's existence. It was not until 1957, after persistent inquiries by Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander, that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister .