I BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Let's
Make
Magic!
Join us for the
Auction for
Hillel Day School
Saturday, October 28, 1989
32200 Middlebelt Road
Farmington Hills
Silent Auctions
Disappearing Act: 8:00 to 9:30
Super Silent: 8:00 to 9:45
Live Action Auction
10:00, with magical entertainment and
David Hermelin, Enchanting Auctioneer
Look for these great items:
Judaica • Windsurfer • Trips • Microwave • Toys and Gifts • Events • CD Player
Fax/Answering Machine • TVs • Gas BBQ • Experiences • Dinners & Parties
Jewelry • Gift Certificates • Tickets • Freestyle Bike • Home Furnishings • Art
50/50 Raffle Drawing:
Tickets:
$20 each
11:30
Dairy Dessert Buffet
Valet Parking
for information, call:
Hillel Day School at 851-2394
UNIVERSAL WATCH REPAIR
GOT A QUESTION? —
Je wish Information Servi ce
Why Monkey Around? Trust Your Watchmaker!
Regular Watch
$ 19"
Clean
Regular Quartz Watch
$1100
Reg. Watch Battery
With Coupon
Expires Nov. 1, 1989
2 095
Clean
WE DO REPAIRS FOR OVER 120 JEWELERS
Don't throw away your old
watch ... let us convert it to quartz
559.5329 ADVANCE BLDG. 9 Mile & Greenfield
22
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1989
Call 967 - HELP
Parts not
incl.
St #358
Monday-Friday
9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
ImImmum
Wallenberg
Continued from preceding page
the Soviets lied once when
they denied any knowledge
of Wallenberg's existence,
they could lie again to save
themselves the embarrass-
ment of having to admit that
they incarcerated a war hero
for more than 40 years.
The conviction that
Wallenberg is still alive has
been further fostered over
the years — indeed, well into
the 1980s by a steady
stream of highly credible
reports, including some from
Jewish emigres, who claim-
ed that they had en-
countered a Swede resembl-
ing Wallenberg in the
prisons, labor camps and
mental hospitals of the
Soviet gulag.
That Swede, however, may
well have been Einar Mar-
cus, a Balt of Swedish des-
cent who recently was
released from a Soviet prison
camp. The existence of Mar-
cus — who claims to have
lived in Nazi-occupied
Czechoslovakia and, like
Wallenberg, to have saved
Jews from death camps
—was discovered by Dr. An-
dre Sakharov during his own
investigation into the affair.
Sakharov, the prominent
Soviet physicist, former
dissident, Nobel Peace Prize
laureate and now a member
of the Soviet parliament, is
nevertheless among those
who are convinced that
Wallenberg is still alive.
According to Swedish For-
eign Ministry sources, he
told Anders Wijkman,
former head of the Swedish
Red Cross, that he believed
Wallenberg was being held
at the Tarzhok prison camp,
some 150 miles northwest of
Moscow.
He said he understood that
many of the inmates, in-
cluding Poles who had been
held since the war, had died
during a severe flu epidemic
in 1987, but that Wallenberg
had survived. Sakharov has
visited the camp twice, but
found no trace of either
Wallenberg or the Poles. He
is now demanding an in-
dependent international in-
quiry to examine the fate of
Wallenberg.
In an age of glasnost, with
Moscow anxious to win the
trust and confidence of the
West, the Wallenberg issue
is as embarrassing for the
Soviet Union as it is painful
for his supporters. For, while
Wallenberg came to sym-
bolize heroism during World
War II, he came to symbolize
Soviet duplicity and brutal-
ity during the Cold War — a
period that the Gorbachev
regime is anxious to roll
back as quickly as possible.
This summer, in an at-
tempt to deal decisively with
the affair, the Soviet dele-
gate to the International
Human Rights Conference
in Paris said that
Wallenberg's fate, like that
of thousands of others, is
unknown.
But he added: "Rumors
floated in the West that he is
still alive are not true. We
deeply regret the death of
this noble person. If we knew
any more we would let the
world know."
When this pronouncement
still failed to remove the
question mark over
Wallenberg's fate, the Soviet
Ambassador in Stockholm,
Boris Pankin, hinted in
August that Moscow would
cooperate in an investiga-
tion into Wallenberg's fate.
The Soviet Union, he said,
wanted "to turn the search
for Raoul Wallenberg into a
mark of honor for his
memory."
While the ambassador con-
tinued to insist that the
Swedish diplomat had died
during the Stalin years, he
acknowledged that many
would find it difficult to ac-
cept the Soviet version:
"Who believes you," he ask-
ed, "if you have lied before?"
Foremost among those
who refuse to accept the
word of the Soviets are the
four Swedes who traveled to
Moscow this week. They in-
clude Nina Lagergren,
Wallenberg's half-sister;
Professor Guy von Dardel,
his half-brother; Per Anger,
a retired Swedish diplomat
who worked with
Wallenberg in Budapest;
and Sonja Sonnenfeld, secre-
tary of the Raoul
Wallenberg Association.
"Yes, of course he is still
alive," said Lagergren short-
ly before she left for Moscow.
"We are hoping for his
release."
Now, finally, the Soviet
authorities appear to be
sincere in their determina-
tion to uncover the facts
about Wallenberg.
A recent edition of the
popular Soviet television
show, Do i Posle Polinochi,
flashed a photograph of
Wallenberg onto screen with
the caption: "This is a pic-
ture of the Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg. It was
taken in the 1940s. Today he
would be 77. Have you seen
him?"
Almost 45 years after his
capture and almost five
years after glasnost became
the guiding policy of the
Soviet Union, it seems in-
creasingly unlikely that
Raoul Wallenberg is still
alive. And the Soviets tried to
prove it again this week. ❑