PURELY COMMENTARY
8 | JANUARY 5 • 2023
A
lumni and fans
of the University
of Michigan will
do a lot of cheering this
holiday season, whatever
the football team’s fate in
the national playoffs. For a
quasi-interested
observer,
who roots for
another Big Ten
team, it’s rather
easy to mark
when moments
of ecstasy fully
grip the U-M
faithful: they are always
punctuated by the stirring
brass of “Hail to the Victors.”
It’s a great fight song,
maybe the best in college
football, but I had never read
the lyrics before setting out to
write this piece. Yeah, I knew
there were a lot of “hails”
in it, but the song always
seemed opaque, perhaps
caused by the Latinate
construction of the opening
verse: “Hail! to the victors
valiant.” I should also declare
that massive crowds of people
shouting “Hail!” in unison
make me rather uneasy.
But I’m glad to learn finally
the phrase “victors valiant,”
because unlike the song’s
second line, with its emphasis
on conquest — “Hail! to the
conqur’ing heroes”— the first
invites thoughts beyond the
gridiron. Valor may be most
often ascribed to soldiers in
combat, but the word has
wider implications, conveying
in Webster’s terms a “strength
of mind or spirit that enables
a person to encounter danger
with firmness.”
Throughout the six hours
of The U.S. and the Holocaust
Ken Burns and company
brought a host of villains
before us. Hitler, of course,
but also such Americans as
Breckenridge Long, the State
Department obstructionist,
Father Charles Coughlin, the
mad dog radio priest from
Royal Oak, and perhaps worst
of all, Charles Lindbergh, the
famed aviator whose support
for isolationism made him
seem a Nazi dupe, if not an
outright antisemite.
Although I am wary of
attempts to seek optimism
amidst Holocaust despair,
the sentiment too often
ascribed to Anne Frank, a
search for the valiant, those
who confronted Nazi evil
yet remained steadfast, is a
precious part of this history.
The reality of life during
the Nazi terror is that Jews
who survived were, in nearly
all cases, helped by someone,
somewhere, at some crucial
point. And while the Burns
documentary perhaps focuses
a bit too much on what
Americans did not do, it does
include segments on rescuers
like Varian Fry and John
Pehle, though neither man
put himself in harm’s way.
Diplomats, emissaries and
government officials seldom
do.
Which makes the story
of Raoul Wallenberg all the
more inspiring.
His rescue efforts as
a Swedish diplomat, the
subject of many books and
films, brought numerous
posthumous honors. The
street next to the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial
Museum was renamed
Raoul Wallenberg Plaza. A
dozen years
earlier in 1981, Congress
awarded him honorary
American citizenship, only
the second recipient in its
history, joining him with
Winston Churchill. Yet how
many among the 100,000
who fill the Big House on
Saturdays in October could
name this exemplary man
as a University of Michigan
alumnus? Or know that there
is a Wallenberg Endowment
to support University of
Michigan students inspired
by this great humanitarian?
(You can donate via this
link: https://leadersandbest.
umich.edu/find/#!/good/
wallenberg.)
He graduated with honors
in 1935, earning a degree in
architecture. Though from a
wealthy family, Wallenberg
resisted the trappings of
his privilege; indeed, he
chose Michigan over Ivy
League institutions because
of its place as a major public
university. During his years
attending the university, he
lived in modest apartments,
ate breakfast each day at
the Union, and even spent
vacations hitchhiking across
the United States and Mexico.
I would be the last to argue
that a university education
made Wallenberg the person
he became. There were too
many Nazi murderers with
PhDs, MDs, and JDs for me
to ever have complete faith in
higher education’s ennobling
influences. But I’m tempted
to believe that Wallenberg’s
encounter with ordinary
Americans during the
Great Depression, whether
in Ann Arbor or on the
nation’s highways, must have
strengthened the empathy
that was fundamental to his
character.
You can read about Raoul
Wallenberg on your own, or
perhaps watch the 1990 film
Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg,
and learn how in Budapest
he saved at least 4,000 Jews
through a combination of
courage and what can only
be termed chutzpah. With
almost no authority to do so,
Wallenberg issued thousands
of official looking papers that
declared the holders under
the protection of the Swedish
government. He housed these
Jews in apartments that he
then claimed as Swedish
territory.
Rob
Franciosi
guest column
A ‘Victor Valiant’
continued on page 9
COURTESY OF WALLENBERG CENTER SITE AT U OF M.
Wallenberg’s
student ID card
Raoul
Wallenberg