Category: News

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Raoul Wallenberg’s extraordinary courage and humanitarianism during World War II transcend the passage of time, earning him a place among history’s most revered figures. Born into a distinguished Swedish family on August 4, 1912, Wallenberg inherited a legacy of compassion and altruism that would shape his destiny.

As the specter of Nazism cast its shadow over Europe, Wallenberg found himself thrust into a pivotal role as a Swedish diplomat in Budapest, Hungary. In the summer of 1944, with the Holocaust reaching its apogee and the Jewish population of Hungary facing imminent annihilation, Wallenberg embarked on a mission of unprecedented daring and selflessness.

Upon his arrival in Budapest, Wallenberg encountered a city teeming with despair and terror. The Jewish community, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, faced systematic persecution and deportation to the death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Undeterred by the enormity of the task before him, Wallenberg resolved to act with unwavering determination and ingenuity.

His first act of defiance against the Nazis came in the form of protective passports. By leveraging his diplomatic status and forging documents, Wallenberg granted Swedish citizenship to thousands of Hungarian Jews, affording them a lifeline of protection against deportation and certain death. The sight of these blue and yellow passports became a symbol of hope amid the darkness, a tangible expression of Wallenberg’s commitment to preserving human dignity in the face of unspeakable evil.

Yet Wallenberg’s heroism extended far beyond the realm of paperwork. Recognizing the urgent need for safe havens, he established a network of safe houses and diplomatic shelters throughout Budapest, providing refuge for Jews on the run from the Gestapo and Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists. These safe houses, adorned with the Swedish flag and bearing the sign “Swedish Library,” became sanctuaries of freedom and defiance in a city gripped by fear and oppression.

Wallenberg’s efforts to thwart the Nazis were not limited to clandestine operations. Armed with nothing but his courage and charisma, he confronted Nazi officials and Hungarian collaborators, demanding the cessation of deportations and the release of Jewish prisoners. His boldness in the face of danger and his unyielding commitment to justice helped sway the course of events, delaying the implementation of the Final Solution in Hungary and saving countless lives in the process.

One of the defining moments of Wallenberg’s heroism occurred in the closing stages of the war. In January 1945, as the Red Army advanced towards Budapest, he embarked on a daring mission to prevent the massacre of Jews in the city’s ghettoes. Risking his own safety, he confronted German officers and negotiated with the Hungarian authorities, securing a temporary reprieve for the besieged Jewish population. His actions saved thousands from certain death, earning him the undying gratitude of those he rescued.

Tragically, Wallenberg’s courageous journey came to an abrupt and mysterious end. In January 1945, as the Soviet Army liberated Budapest from Nazi occupation, Wallenberg was detained by Soviet forces and never seen again. Despite decades of speculation and inquiry, his ultimate fate remains shrouded in mystery, and he is presumed to have perished in Soviet custody. Yet even in death, his legacy endures as a beacon of hope and righteousness, inspiring future generations to stand up against tyranny and injustice.

In recognition of his extraordinary bravery and selflessness, Raoul Wallenberg has been posthumously honored around the world. Countless memorials, monuments, and institutions bear his name, ensuring that his memory will never fade. He has been awarded numerous honors, including being named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

Raoul Wallenberg’s life serves as a testament to the power of individual action in the face of overwhelming evil. His unwavering commitment to justice, his willingness to risk everything for the sake of others, and his refusal to remain silent in the face of oppression make him a shining example of human decency and compassion. As we reflect on his remarkable legacy, let us reaffirm our own dedication to the timeless values of tolerance, empathy, and solidarity.

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The Raoul Wallenberg International Foundation , has awarded Milan the title of honorary member. Eduardo Eurnekian president of the Foundation, and Baruch Tenembaum its founder, sent the Municipality of Milan a request to join the Foundation. This award is particularly relevant, considering the bestseller The Wallenberg Dossier, a novel internationally recognized about the life of Raoul Wallenberg, was written by a milanese author and first published in Milan.

Milan is once again committed to help keep alive the memory of all those who have contributed to rescuing men, women and children from the horror of the Nazi-fascist extermination camps and all those who strive to keep alive the truth and the memory of people and facts that have marked the history.

Raoul Wallenberg day is celebrated every 5th October in the United States. The purpose of the memorial day is to promote peace and the values ​​that come from humanitarianism and personal commitment, just like Raoul Wallenberg did.

The Wallenberg Foundation has the support of over 300 heads of state, royal families, Nobel Prize winners, governors and mayors. Among its honorary members also the Supreme Pontiff, Pope Francis.

Hero, in ancient Greece was a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability. Heroes are indeed legendary figures who believe in what they are doing and set the pace of times, inspiring others with their behavior.
However, heroes are rare gems and while we tend to abuse this term today, there are very few in modern times as there have been very few at any time in history. Raoul Wallenberg was undoubtedly one of these heroes of modern times. And The Wallenberg Dossier is a novel that catches the beams of light of heroism, decoding its characteristics, its behaviours, its style.

Wealthy (coming from one of the wealthiest families in his country), uninvolved (he was Swedish, a notably neutral country at the time of the facts), distant (he studied in the United States, lived in Sweden and had nothing to do with Hungary in eastern Europe), Raoul Wallenberg could very well have lived his life without being involved in World War II except maybe reading about it in newspapers.

However, Raoul Wallenberg was more than involved, putting in place one of the most dramatic and risky rescue operations of World War II. The whole operation was Wallenberg’s idea and responsibility. He went all the way, risking his life several times.

Wallenberg faced and directly challenged personalities like Eichmann, the most infamous Nazi commander known for planning the Final Solution, and Wallenberg’s actions kept the entire apparatus of allied intelligence services, primarily the CIA, awaiting action. of him. His ideas, the famous “schutz-pass” fake passports he handed over to the Jews in Budapest, his authority in confronting Nazi commanders alongside the deportation trains, his audacity in intervening in countless situations in which he risked life, they made Raoul Wallenberg a hero and we are talking about one of those heroes who not only act heroically in a dramatic situation to save others but we are talking about one of those heroes who lives a whole heroic life, as Wallenberg did for more than a year in and out of inconceivable risks.

Of course this hasn’t gone unnoticed. The famous Wallenberg Dossier is filled with notes from Nazi intelligence officials who have traced Wallenberg’s movements during his heroic deeds. And, of course, here is revealed the true story of Raoul Wallenberg, that puzzling story of a man trying to save people and trying to save one person in particular with them, the woman he loved. That same woman who, after Wallenberg’s arrest and his mysterious disappearance and declaration of death, will continue to believe him still alive and will organize, with the help of the American, Israeli and British secret services, the dramatic rescue of him, who had been more than anybody else the rescuer.

What was never before said about Raoul Wallenberg, is what you will find in this exceptional novel The Wallenberg Dossier. The whole story of this incredible hero is there to read, for the first time with all the available details, including the latest information acquired with the Freedom of Information Act – and following Amendments, the joint Russian and Swedish probe, and many other previously unreleased documents.

Below you can view part of the 2012 Op-Ed by the New York Times written by Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the time she was the U.S. secretary of state and Carl Bildt, at the time foreign minister of Sweden. The original and full article can be read here.

“Tuesday begins a yearlong celebration of the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who chose not to be indifferent when faced with great evil.

Raoul Wallenberg was born 100 years ago into a family of great wealth and influence. He could have remained safely in neutral Sweden during World War II. Instead, as first secretary at the Swedish Legation in Budapest in the summer of 1944, Wallenberg acted. Without concern for his own safety, he worked tirelessly to save thousands from certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

By the summer of 1944, more than 400,000 Jewish Hungarians had been put in trains and sent away, most to their deaths. Wallenberg began issuing Swedish “protective passports” to the remaining population of Jewish Hungarians. His inventiveness and determination to provide protection to as many Jews as possible are credited with saving the lives of some 100,000 people.

Of course, Wallenberg was not alone in taking such action. Others chose to risk their careers, and their lives, to defy official protocols and repressive laws to rescue Jews. Many were censured, punished or killed for their acts of courage.

As a result, at Israel’s Holocaust memorial site, Yad Vashem, you will find today planted along the Avenue of the Righteous not only Raoul Wallenberg’s tree, but also the trees of 2,000 others, as well as 18,000 names engraved in the walls in remembrance of those who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.

Why did they do it? All of these heroes seemed to have shared the sentiment of the martyred Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. … Not to act is to act.”

Raoul Wallenberg’s mission was an example of American-Swedish cooperation for the common good. His work in Budapest was partly financed by the United States.

In 1981, to honor that work, the United States awarded Wallenberg honorary American citizenship. Wallenberg fought for values cherished in both Sweden and the United States. Together, we have long cooperated to protect and promote human rights at home and abroad.

Perhaps the most important part of Wallenberg’s legacy lies in its lessons for the generations to come. It is incumbent on us to pass on his story to those who come after us not as part of a distant heroic myth, but as an example of the values that should inform the way we live our lives…”

With these words, on January 17, 2022, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau payed tribute to Raoul Wallenberg:

“Today, we pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, a remarkable hero and humanitarian who put his life in jeopardy to save some hundred thousand Hungarian Jews from persecution and death during the Holocaust.

“Working as a Swedish diplomat in Budapest, Mr. Wallenberg conducted one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Second World War. Shortly after his arrival in Hungary in July 1944, he issued special protective passports – Schutz-Passes – to thousands of Jews, giving them diplomatic immunity and saving them from deportation to death camps. Under increasingly dangerous circumstances, Mr. Wallenberg also established dozens of safe houses that served as hideouts for Jews fleeing persecution, which were operating under the protection of the Swedish flag. His commitment to this humanitarian cause did not end there – he went on to organize a network of hospitals, soup kitchens, and orphanages that provided Jews with safety and security in Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944 and the beginning of 1945.

“Over the course of six months, Mr. Wallenberg saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any other individual, group, or government. Tragically, he disappeared in 1945, following his arrest by Soviet forces toward the end of the war. While his fate remains unknown, Mr. Wallenberg’s legacy lives on through the stories of survivors and lives saved, and the several monuments, institutions, awards, and honours around the world that now bear his name. In 1985, the Government of Canada named Mr. Wallenberg its first honorary citizen, and in 2001, designated January 17 – the day of his disappearance in 1945 – as Raoul Wallenberg Day to ensure that his personal example of heroism, courage, and decency is always remembered. In addition, at the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism on October 13, 2021, the Government of Canada pledged to use the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg as an inspirational role model to educate and raise awareness about the Holocaust and antisemitism in Canada.

“Mr. Wallenberg’s work served as a beacon of light during the darkest days of the Second World War. The Government of Canada will always continue to fight – and reject – antisemitism, hatred, and racism in all of their forms. This past November, we reappointed the Honourable Irwin Cotler as Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. The government will also keep honouring Mr. Wallenberg, as well as the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, by defending our core principles of peace, freedom, democracy, and human rights when they are threatened.

“On this day, I encourage all Canadians to find inspiration in Mr. Wallenberg’s legacy. His undeniable bravery serves as a reminder to us all to protect our most vulnerable and fight against discrimination as we work to build a more just, inclusive, and compassionate society – here at home and around the world.”

On November 26, 1963, Yad Vashem recognized Raoul Wallenberg as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Righteous Among the Nations, honored by Yad Vashem, are non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.

Extract from the Yad Vashem’s website page dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg https://www.yadvashem.org
“Wallenberg arrived in the Hungarian capital on 9 July 1944 with a list of Jews whom he was to help and 650 protective passports for Jews who had some connection with Sweden. However he soon widened the scope of his work and began to issue thousands of protective letters and to purchase houses which he put under the Swedish flag thus making them ex-territorial, and where he housed Jews for extra protection. The protective letter authorized its holder to travel to Sweden or to any of the other country Sweden represented. About 4,500 Jews had these papers, which protected them from forced labor and exempted them from wearing the yellow star.

In October 1944, the situation in Budapest took a turn for the worse. Although the Red Army was already approaching, the fascist “Arrow Cross” seized power and established a reign of terror. Jews were being killed in the streets; others were dragged to the Danube river where they were shot or drowned in the freezing water. The number of Jews with protective papers quickly rose. Wallenberg used unconventional methods, including bribery and blackmail, in order to finance and run his huge rescue operation. He soon employed approximately 340 people in his office. In view of the grave situation, he began to issue protective papers without distinction, and had 32 buildings protected by Sweden, with 2 hospitals, and a soup kitchen. Wallenberg together with other legations and international organizations set up the international ghetto, protected by the neutral countries. Jewish youngsters who looked “Aryan” served as guards; some of them were especially bold and wore “Arrow Cross” uniforms.

With the establishment of the Arrow Cross rule, Eichmann returned to Budapest on 17 October 1944, and immediately ordered the deportation of the city’s Jews. The protective letters were declared null and void. After protests by Wallenberg and his colleagues, they were reinstated, although it should be noted that the Arrow Cross regime had little respect for documents and legalities. The plan to deport the Jews to the camps was paralyzed for other reasons – the railway lines were too close to the front. Not wanting to give up, Adolf Eichmann ordered a “death march” of tens of thousands of persons to the Austrian border. Wallenberg and representatives of other neutral countries followed the marchers in their vehicles, and distributed food, clothing and medications. He was able to extricate many Jews from the death march by claiming that they were his “protected” Jews. He continued to distribute passes even when the Arrow Cross guards threatened him with their guns.

Wallenberg’s bold methods put him in great danger, but he never thought of stopping. He remained in the city during the Soviet siege of Budapest with the “protected” Jews and threatened the German commander and the Arrow Cross leader not to go through with the idea to harm the remaining Jews. Before the Soviets entered the city, he told Per Anger, his colleague in the Swedish legation: “I’ve taken on this assignment, and I will never be able to go back to Stockholm without knowing inside myself that I’d done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible”.”

Raoul Wallenberg was awarded In 1987 honorary Israeli citizenship and later also honorary American citizenship by the United States Congress. This motion was promoted by Congressman Tom Lantos, whose life was saved by Wallenberg. In his address, delivered by his daughter at the UN Holocaust remembrance events in January 2008, Lantos paid tribute to Wallenberg: “During the Nazi occupation, this heroic young diplomat left behind the comfort and safety of Stockholm to rescue his fellow human beings in the hell that was wartime Budapest. He had little in common with them: he was a Lutheran, they were Jewish; he was a Swede, they were Hungarians. And yet with inspired courage and creativity he saved the lives of tens of thousands of men, women and children by placing them under the protection of the Swedish crown.”

‘Long after the sound and fury of the twentieth century have been relegated to the garbage heaps of history, the ideals and the memory of Raoul Wallenberg will live on. He will live on to teach future generations what I think is the single most important lesson of human history – that in order to survive, in order to create more livable conditions in this world, we must accept the responsibility of becoming our brother’s and our sister’s keepers. This is the meaning of Wallenberg’s legacy and this is the meaning of our struggle for human rights across the globe.’

Tom Lantos, former member of the United States Congress

Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912, in Sweden. Raoul’s family was one of Sweden’s most prominent, having given the country several generations of leading bankers, diplomats and statesmen. Raoul’s father, Oscar Wallenberg, was a naval officer and died three months before the child was born. Ever since Raoul’s paternal grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, took charge of his education. In 1931 Raoul attended the faculty of Architecture at the University of Michigan in the United States of America. In 1935 he received a Bachelor of Science degree and returned to Sweden. Raoul then worked for his grandfather in Cape Town, South Africa, for a company specialized in building materials. He then moved to Haifa, in what is now Israel, to work for a Dutch bank and came into contact for the first time with Jews who had fled from Hitler’s Germany. 

     In January 1944 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board. The aim of this executive agency was to aid civilian victims of Nazism and it was created under the pressure of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and several Jewish organizations. Following this decision action was taken to support Jewish citizens throughout Europe. Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, Hungary, in July 1944. The situation was already dramatic: under the direction of Adolf Eichmann the Nazis had deported more than 400,000 Jewish men, women and children. Raoul Wallenberg was assigned to the Swedish Legation in Budapest with the official assignment of a humanitarian mission. Throughout 1944 he organized and participated to several extraordinary rescue actions that saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest. In particular, Raoul Wallenberg had the intuition to release, and often personally deliver in extreme situations, fake Swedish protective passports, called ‘Schutz-pass Wallenberg’ or ‘Wallenberg passports’, which identified those who owned them as Swedish citizens and therefore prevented them from deportation. Passports allowed tens of thousands of Jewish families to flee Hungary and escape. Although these documents were not legal, they managed to deceive the Nazi authorities for several months. 

     At the beginning of 1945, when the Red Army defeated the Nazis and entered Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg was arrested by Russian authorities under suspicion of being a spy. He was brought to Moscow and there he was repeatedly interrogated by authorities regarding his activities in Budapest. In 1947 Raoul Wallenberg was declared dead by Soviet authorities. However, the documents that report Wallenberg’s imprisonment and fate are still today secret and the few that could be accessed and verified, are incomplete and full of anomalies and alterations. It wasn’t uncommon, at the end of the Second world war and beginning of the Cold war, that officials or spies of both sides arrested during war operations were held captive for several months or years, waiting to be used for exchanges. In such cases, documents and reports were often altered so that only high-ranking officials were aware of the real identities. Swedish authorities attempted several times without success to collect information regarding Raoul Wallenberg’s uncertain fate. The report of the Swedish-Russian working group released in the year 2000 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden accounts for several eyewitnesses throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s of Raoul Wallenberg alive, as well as several uncomplete or modified documents in the Russian archives. Recent historical research – as also stated in a letter by Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky, daughter of Dr. Antal Ullein-Reviczky, a well-known opponent of Nazism and a key figure in the Hungarian resistance movement – demonstrates that Raoul Wallenberg had strong bonds with Antal Ullein-Reviczky, the War Refugee Board, the American Office of Strategic Services (former CIA) and several Jewish organizations trying to help Jews escape from the horrors of Nazism. 

     In 1996, as a consequence of the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA released thousands of documents concerning Raoul Wallenberg which confirm that he was an agent of the Allies, operating in Hungary. 

     There is a possibility that Raoul Wallenberg was liberated as part of a spy exchange program in the 1950s and lived thereafter under a cover name. There is a possibility that the people he met and the things he saw during his operative years, and above all what he felt during that time, made him take the dramatic decision to never reveal his identity for the rest of his life.

     In 2016 Raoul Wallenberg was officially declared dead by the Swedish authorities. In Jerusalem there is a memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Second world war. It is called Yad Vashem and it was erected in 1953. A street called ‘Avenue of the Righteous’ runs through the area. Some six hundred trees line the street in straight rows, and they were all planted to honor the memory of non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jewish children, women and men from the Nazi executioners. One of these trees bears the name of Raoul Wallenberg. A steady breeze blows through the leaves.

Each month we are used to see a new bestseller list pop up. Each list has its favourites and they range from classic evergreens to recent novels that, frankly, we don’t understand how they ended up in the favourite bestsellers list of the moment.
However, now and then, a true masterpiece enters the scene. I don’t mean one of those books that entertain you with the same speed with which you forget it, I mean one of those books that take you by the hand, lead you somewhere and remain in your bookshelf for a lifetime. One of these books is The Wallenberg Dossier.

Maybe because this book is based on a true story, maybe because it touches chords that other books don’t even come close to, maybe because it goes beyond the boundaries of the thriller genre, The Wallenberg Dossier is one of those books that you will read, that you will miss once you’ve finished reading, that will stay with you for a long long time.