by Alex Kershaw
A few hours later, soldiers returned with two senior Soviet officers. Wallenberg told the Jews in the house, “I’m going to accompany them, but I don’t think I shall be away for the night.”
Later that day, Wallenberg visited the office of his Section C, where he met with the publisher, Karl Muller, who had introduced him that fall to Baroness Kemeny. Muller, a decorated Jewish veteran of the Great War, had forged a close relationship with Wallenberg over the last six months. He told Wallenberg that he had just narrowly escaped the Arrow Cross, and had that day returned from Buda where, he said, conditions were as terrible as ever for the surviving Jews.
Wallenberg told Muller that he would go to Buda to see for himself and do what he could to help. Muller advised against this, saying that Arrow Cross units in Buda had been given photos of Wallenberg. Now more than ever he was a marked man, having recorded Nazi and Arrow Cross atrocities.
Wallenberg seemed undeterred.
“My life is one life,” he told Muller, “but this is a matter of saving thousands of lives.”48
Over the next two days, the Red Army apparently questioned Wallenberg several times. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, also interrogated him. Repeatedly, Wallenberg asked to meet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Red Army commander whose troops had now liberated much of Pest. He hoped with his help to organize the supply of medicine and food to the Jews still living in Pest. Gabiella Zekany, a secretary to Major General Leonid I. Brezhnev, commander of the Special Political branch of Russia’s 18th Army, later claimed to have witnessed an interrogation of Wallenberg. “At the beginning, the Soviet officer was rather cordial,” she alleged, “but at some point in the interview, he began to suspect that Wallenberg, who after all did speak excellent German, was really a German, perhaps a spy. At this point, the officer dismissed me and said that he had to check Wallenberg’s identity.”49
On January 16, Wallenberg made what was probably his last intervention on behalf of Hungary’s surviving Jews, arriving just in time to save Mrs. Janos Kandor and around fifty other people who had found refuge in a Swedish Embassy building at 20 Revai Street.
A police guard had been posted at the entrance, but he was no match for the group of Arrow Cross who had stormed the building. “They collected all wedding rings, small chains, all remaining food and forced us into one corner of the courtyard,” recalled Kandor. “Then we were lined up in front of a machine gun.”
Kandor stood with her husband, eleven-year-old son, and seven-year-old daughter.
Three Arrow Cross men stood by the machine gun, yelling obscenities. “You vermin—while we’re protecting the country, you’re hiding here. Now we’ll take care of you.”
Kandor waited to die with her family, listening to the whistle and roar of bombs falling nearby. Then she saw a group of people rush into the courtyard. They were led by Wallenberg. “He seemed to me like an angel of mercy,” recalled Kandor. “He was shouting that this was an extraterritorial building. Little by little the shouting ceased, the Arrow Cross picked themselves up and left without taking what they gathered, the food, the rings. We could not believe our own eyes. He was victorious again, with his belief and his willpower. Then he left quietly.”50
A few hours later, Wallenberg packed extra supplies of food and fuel in his Studebaker and made other final preparations for a journey to the Soviet military headquarters in Debrecen. He intended to make the trip with his driver, the young engineer Vilmos Langfelder, and another Jewish assistant, Gyorgy Szollos. According to Szollos, the men had hidden “a great quantity of gold and jewels in the car’s fuel tank.” In a briefcase, along with important documents, he carried “a very large amount of money.”51
Wallenberg apparently believed it would be useful should he need to bribe any Russians en route.
THERE WERE SEVERAL EYEWITNESSES to Wallenberg’s last hours in Budapest.
On the morning of January 17, 1945, Wallenberg visited a Hungarian Jew who ran a safe house protected by the Swiss. Wallenberg said he was heading for the Russian headquarters in Debrecen, 125 miles to the east. “I seem to have formed a good relationship with the Russian military,” added Wallenberg.
Wallenberg and Langfelder then drove back to the Benczur Street safe house, where Wallenberg checked on the well-being of the Jews he had saved. Laszlo Peto, who worked as Wallenberg’s liaison officer with the Jewish Council, later said he begged Wallenberg not to leave so soon because of snipers and ferocious room-to-room fighting in nearby buildings. According to Peto, Wallenberg pointed through a window. His car was parked in the street below. Two heavily armed Red Army soldiers were sitting on motorcycles beside it. “They have been ordered especially for me,” said Wallenberg.52
Wallenberg then left with the escort. His next stop was the Swedish-protected hospital in Pest that he had kept supplied with medicines throughout the siege. At the entrance to the hospital, Wallenberg slipped on a patch of ice. As he picked himself up, he spotted three Jewish men leaving the hospital. Free at last, they still wore yellow stars on their overcoats. Wallenberg smiled. “I am happy to see that my work has not been completely in vain.”53
Then Wallenberg visited the Swiss Legation on Szabodsay Square. He located Miklos Krausz, who had worked closely with him and other neutral diplomats, and told him he was going to drive to Debrecen to talk to General Malinovsky. Krausz later recalled telling Wallenberg that it was unwise to do so and that he should stay in Budapest. “We now have 150 armed policemen guarding the ghetto,” said Krausz. “And anyway, why do you want to leave just now, at the very moment the Russians are liberating the city?”
“Debrecen is where the Russians and Hungarians have their headquarters,” Wallenberg replied. “I think I’m the best person to explain the Swedish houses and passes to them as well as to persuade them not to mistrust the liberated Jews.”
This seemed foolhardy to Krausz. He had always thought Wallenberg was a little naïve. He asked Wallenberg how he was going to convince the Russians to do what he wanted. Wallenberg pointed out that the Swedes had been responsible for protecting Russian property in Hungary throughout the war. He was certain that the Russians would “respect the suggestions” of a Swedish diplomat.
“I think it’s a waste of time,” said Krausz, “and dangerous, too. You’ll be traveling on open roads and there’s still a great deal of fighting everywhere.”
Wallenberg could not be dissuaded.
“If Buda is liberated before I return from Debrecen, please tell [Swedish Ambassador] Danielsson where I’ve gone.”54
Laszlo Peto, the young volunteer for Wallenberg’s Section C, remembered Wallenberg being in a “great mood, a brilliant mood.”55 Peto joined Wallenberg and Langfelder for a short trip to a Swedish-protected house on Tatra Street, which had been freed the night before by the Soviets. The Russian escort stayed in the street. Peto and Wallenberg met with a man called Rezso Muller, who was responsible for the occupants of the house. Wallenberg handed Muller 100,000 pengos and told him to use it to buy food and whatever was needed for housing the Jewish occupants. He’d be back from Debrecen in about a week. Wallenberg then left with Langfelder and Peto in the Studebaker, headed for Debrecen, escorted by a Soviet officer on a motorbike with a sidecar. But they had only gone a few streets when Langfelder made an uncharacteristic error and crashed into a truck carrying tense Soviet soldiers.
One of them jumped down and pointed a gun at Langfelder and Wallenberg. According to Peto: “[The] Soviet soldiers were probably being taken to the front, as we heard the sound of a fierce battle from the direction of the inner city. After the collision, the soldiers jumped from the truck, shouting loudly. They surrounded our car and started abusing Langfelder . . . They wanted to take him along, but a Russian captain explained that he was escorting a foreign diplomat, and thus Langfelder was released. We noticed that only the mudguard of our car had suffered damage.”56
Peto then decided at the last moment to stay in Budapest and try to find his parents.57 �
�Wallenberg understood,” recalled Peto. “He drove me to the corner of Arena Street and Benczur Street. There, after a warm farewell, I wished him all the best for his trip, which under the circumstances appeared extremely hazardous.”58
Peto watched the Studebaker until it disappeared from his sight.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, the Red Army arrived at the edge of the central ghetto, smashed down fencing, and walked through its squalid streets. Some soldiers told survivors that they should leave their hiding places, for now they were safe. Starved and dirty figures slowly staggered into the daylight after weeks in dark and dingy cellars. At the sight of them, some Soviet soldiers, veterans of slaughter on the Eastern Front, burst into tears, and then ripped the yellow stars off some of the Jews’ coats.59
“Now you are free!”60
RAOUL WALLENBERG HAD RISKED HIS LIFE to save Hungary’s last Jews. But he was not in Budapest to celebrate their survival with them. Instead, he and Langfelder were being escorted under Soviet guard toward Debrecen. At a checkpoint on the outskirts of Budapest, NKVD officers wearing green uniforms with red shoulder boards allegedly arrested them and hustled them into a Soviet car.
Langfelder and Wallenberg were then placed, reportedly with four armed guards, on a train bound for Moscow. They passed through Romania, where they were permitted to exit the train and eat at a restaurant, the Luther, in the small town of Iasi. As the train then rumbled toward Moscow—the journey took several days—Wallenberg filled his time writing a detective story. He and Langfelder were apparently told that they were in protective custody and did not yet consider themselves to be prisoners as such, although Wallenberg would soon be registered with the Soviets as a “prisoner of war.”61
THE RED ARMY FOUND 97,000 Jews alive in Budapest’s two Jewish ghettos. In total, it has been estimated that around 124,000 Hungarian Jews in the city had survived the Nazi extermination effort. According to the Swedish diplomat Per Anger, Wallenberg saved at least 100,000 of them. Others say far more conservatively that he can be credited with perhaps 20,000, and even this figure was achieved through working with many others at the Swedish embassy, although it should be remembered that he was the central figure, the driving force of its rescue efforts.
Wallenberg did not act alone in Budapest, and that has tended to be forgotten in some of the hagiographic accounts of his activities. Other than the formidable Charles Lutz (whom some claim saved more lives), those who worked alongside him in Budapest and have since been proclaimed “righteous among nations” include Friedrich Born of the Swiss Red Cross; Giorgio Perlasca, charge d’affaires of the Spanish Legation; Monsignor Angelo Rotta, the Papal Nuncio in Budapest; and Peter Zurcher and Dr. Harald Feller of the Swiss Embassy. But of all the neutral diplomats, Wallenberg was the one who had placed himself in the most danger, directly in the firing line, in the crosshairs of the SS and Arrow Cross.62
Part Four
THE COLD WAR
15
Liberation
THEY WERE NOW LIVING like hunted animals, hiding in their basement, listening to the ever-louder sounds of war reverberating through the brick walls. As Raoul Wallenberg left Hungary by train with a Soviet escort, thirteen-year-old Vera Herman still huddled beside her parents in the freezing cellar of their Swedish-protected house in Pest, close to the Russian front lines. One day that January of 1945, she watched in amazement as sewer covers in the cellar started to move and then rose into the air. “All of a sudden, we saw these men in their white Siberian uniforms, happy and handsome,” recalled Vera. “We had made it! There was a lot of screaming, carrying on, embracing of the soldiers. They were kind, wonderful. They spent the night playing the balalaika and singing to us. They gave us kids chocolate. We were lulled into a false sense of security.”1
Not far away, the Soviets finally arrived on Ulloi Street, where Wallenberg’s main office and three protected houses were situated. Marianne Lowy, her husband, Pista, and almost three hundred protected Jews were crowded into a central courtyard, listening to the German batteries firing at the Soviets at close range to try to halt their advance. Retreating German soldiers dropped hand grenades into a nearby cellar full of Jews as a final “farewell.”
Marianne saw Russians appear in the building. Then the Germans returned, and a savage battle for the building began. “In the midst of it,” one report later confirmed, “crouching and crawling under tables and straw mats, there were three hundred protected Jews, including pregnant women and lactating mothers. Their bodies were pressed close together. They were covered with gunpowder and smoke, from the grenades used in the battle.”2
Marianne and the other Jews tried to get to safety, but it wasn’t until they had endured several hours of brutal combat, with bullets flying over their heads and ricocheting off walls, that they managed to escape across the Russian lines by crawling backwards on all fours to a large cellar at 22 Ulloi Street. There, the Russians treated those who were wounded and provided bread and food.
ENTIRE BLOCKS OF PEST had disappeared into fields of broken bricks and rubble. Conditions throughout the city were horrific. The cold and damp had penetrated everywhere.3 There was no food and water. The dead were too numerous to bury. “The stiff dead bodies, partly covered by snow, were stacked up like so many timbers,” recalled Erwin Koranyi, “often the last-minute horror frozen onto their motionless faces and cold, open mouths. Fine ice crystals gathered on the eyelashes, rendering them statue-like, as if they had never been alive. At least they had been spared the lengthy nocturnal walk in their underwear to the shore of the Danube.”4
The water, far from being blue, was ice cold and a dirty brown. The dark currents carried frozen blocks of ice, some still stained with blood, and floating bodies, hands tied behind their backs with cord or wire. No one will ever know the exact number, but it has been estimated that the Hungarian Arrow Cross murdered at least twenty thousand people along the banks of the Danube in the less than three months that they held power.5 Almost all were Jews.
Someone had recently told Erwin that they had seen the “shadow of death” on his face. Now, when he looked around, he could see it on others’ faces, but he dared not tell them. “Survival was such a fragile plight,” he remembered.
Alice and Erwin spent each night now in the basement of 1 Jokai Street. Erwin had managed to scrounge some bread and they were given meat cut from a dead horse. One evening, Erwin climbed to the bombed-out upper floors so he could smoke. He looked out onto Revai Street. A German Tiger tank stood nearby.6
Erwin found some shelter by a wall and fell asleep. The next thing he knew, dawn was breaking and the tank was gone. He could see the horizon flaring with orange artillery bursts. Erwin then saw two men in the street. One was a Hungarian officer walking with his arms in the air, in front of a small man, dressed in a Soviet uniform. The Soviet was wearing an olive-green jacket and a hat with earflaps over his ears, the hammer and sickle clearly visible on his uniform. He was pointing a submachine gun at the Hungarian and shouting at him.
The Soviets had arrived at last.
Then another soldier was standing beside Erwin.7
The Soviet soldier stuck a gun in Erwin’s ribs.
“Give me watch!”8
The man already had four watches but wanted another. Erwin did not have a watch, and so the man moved on. Then Erwin found Alice and told her that the Soviets had arrived. “We were liberated from death itself,” he remembered. “It was as if life had begun again after a vicious, bad dream.”9
They decided to move farther into Soviet-held territory, scared that the Germans might retake the neighborhood. In one street, they came across a soldier holding a basket full of bottles of champagne. “Good friend,” said the soldier, as he gave Erwin one of the bottles. Erwin stood there in the whistling wind, unshaven, a rope holding the remnants of his winter coat closed at the waist, shoeless in the snow, and holding a bottle of expensive French champagne. Then another Soviet soldier appeared nearby, swearing at him and brandishing a r
evolver.
Erwin handed over the champagne. “It was a surrealistic experience,” remembered Erwin. “But the liberation was a miraculous joy, a flurry of delight. Later in my life, I always associated it with the melody of the New World Symphony—the drums imitating the bombardment and the main motif expressing the hope.”
Where next? Erwin and Alice started out for Jokai Street, where they hoped to find his relatives. To their great joy, they discovered that Erwin’s parents and sister, Marta, had survived. “Our immediate family was one of the very rare ones,” recalled Erwin, “in which both parents and children survived.”10 Then Alice’s brother, George, emerged from somewhere in the ghetto, terribly emaciated but alive. But he had no news about any of Alice’s other relatives.
MANY OF THE BRUTALIZED SOVIET SOLDIERS who had liberated parts of Budapest now wreaked vengeance on the city and its women. “There are enough women and they don’t speak a word of Russian,” wrote a Soviet soldier in a letter. “So much the better: We don’t have to try and persuade them—we just point the pistol at them, the order ‘lie down’ settles the matter, and we can move on.”11
The rape and pillage would last until the spring in some parts of Buda. It seemed that every female was to be automatically seized as Soviet booty, to be defiled at will, and all bourgeois objects, such as antique carpets, were to be defaced and defecated upon. There were rumors that Malinovsky had given his men a free reign in Budapest for three days as a reward. Whatever the truth behind their rampage, its result was indisputable—a lifelong loathing of all things Russian among many Hungarian women. Those who resisted the drunken Soviet embrace or the more common pistol to the head were often raped with extreme violence and then killed.
