I became familiar with the name Raoul Wallenberg after
studying various modules at university covering The Holocaust. The Swede is one
of the few individuals upheld by history who able to save many Jewish lives
from the Nazi persecution.
On a recent visit to Budapest I went to the House of Terror,
a building previously used to detain and interrogate people during the Soviet
regime in Hungary. The building has now been converted into an excellent museum
which provides a detailed history on the years in Hungary following the Second
World War.
Each room of the museum provides an insight to different
parts of the regime, and its victims and perpetrators, with a sheet of
information to read as you walk through the exhibitions. While reading I was
shocked to learn that Raoul Wallenberg was named as one of the victims of the
Soviet regime.
Wanting to learn more about I brought Kati Marton’s
biography of the Swedish diplomat at the museum shop.
“Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of The Man Who Saved
The Jews Of Budapest” is a well written and researched account of Wallenberg’s family
history and work in Budapest, and gives a speculative insight into the years of
his imprisonment and isolation using testimony from fellow inmates.
The biography has been revised in the years 1982, 1995, and
2011, following revelations of new information concerning Wallenberg’s unlawful
imprisonment.
Starting out with a detailed biography of the family name
Wallenberg, who are revered family in Swedish society, Marton describes the
birth and early upbringing of Raoul.
Born after his father’s death, Raoul was mentored by his
grandfather. The foreign ambassador hoped to endow his young grandson with
important life experiences to help him forge a successful career in the future.
Marton provides an interesting account of Wallenberg’s time
in American during his youth. When choosing to send his young protégée off on
the “American Experience”, a Wallenberg family tradition, his grandfather shun
the destinations of Ivy League universities and chose the University of
Michigan, wishing to expose Raoul to a wider sphere.
In between semester dates, Raoul worked various odd jobs
while hitchhiking up and down the West Coast. Here Marton relates a story of a
run-in with danger which seems to foreshadow Wallenberg’s ability in handling
fearful situations in the coming years.
While hitchhiking back from the World Fair Wallenberg was
robbed at gunpoint. The group of men stole his earnings from the World’s Fair
and left the somewhat bemused son of multimillionaires by the roadside.
“In the future I’ll be a bit smarter” he wrote to his
grandfather “I don’t think I used good psychology…”
By providing an early picture of Walleberg’s life, Marton
evokes an image of a young ambitious man who had the skills in diplomacy to
deal with unpleasant and dangerous situations many would be afraid of even
approaching.
In 1944 Wallenberg was recruited by the War Refugee
Department and assigned to their legation in Budapest with the task of saving
as many of the Jewish community as possible. During his time as a Swedish
diplomat in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg routinely around the clock to save the
lives of 100,000 Jewish inhabitants during the Nazi occupation.
The work he carried out had never been attempted before and
in many cases Wallenberg was alone and had to rely on his own initiative.
By
wining and dining important contacts, exploiting the Swedish
immunity in the war, and in many cases by the use of sheer fortitude and luck,
Wallenberg was able to save many families from the clutches of Nazi
persecution.
A key aspect to Wallenberg’s campaign was the issuing and
forging of protective Swedish passports. If a link was established between a
Jewish person and a Swede then Wallenberg could issue papers asserting the
person’s immunity. Letters were written to names found in the Swedish directory
urging strangers to relate some evidence of familiarity to Hungarian Jews they
had never met.
As a consequence the protected Jew did not have to wear the
yellow star badge as required by many.
Wallenberg’s idea of protective housing for Jewish
communities also played a major role.
Wallenberg established rented houses, villas and
apartments in Pest as diplomatic
buildings by flying the Swedish flag, and at the end of the war tens of thousands were sheltered in these
buildings.
However, throughout the campaign and particularly towards
the end of the war these protective measures were ignored and the presence of
Wallenberg himself was the only thing which could save the condemned.
An evocative picture is given of Wallenberg shouting at Nazi
officers to give back “his people” at the station of the deportation
train. At many times Wallenberg was
called to intervene and save groups from firing squads at
the last minute.
The question as to
why such a prolific campaigner for human justice could suffer a fate is sensitively
approached by Kari Marton.
The writer gives extensive information referring to
the ongoing campaigning by Wallenberg’s mother for answers and testimony
provided by former prisoners of the Soviet regime.
The hypnosis provided by Marton is that Wallenberg was
arrested and detained indefinitely for being a spy because the Soviets could
not understand why a man who was a Christian and a Capitalist would risk his
own life to save Jews.
Kari Marton’s biography is an informative and eye grabbing account of
the injustices suffered by the Hungarian nation during and after the war, as
well as a provoking picture of one of the few hero’s in history’s darkest
chapter.
At times Marton, by providing a linear historical narrative
as the backdrop to Wallenberg’s work, does ignore the complexities of historical arguments
surrounding events of the Second World War. Also the opening rhetoric of
Wallenberg as a hero before the relation of events can at times be considered overly
sentimental.
However after reading
eyewitnesses’ accounts of the bravery and self-confidence Wallenberg projected when he was
alone and when so many lives depended of him, the only conclusion that can be draw
is that his actions were nothing but “incredible”.
