The Envoy: The Epic Rescue of the Last Jews of Europe in the Desperate Closing Months of World War II

by Alex Kershaw

  As the Soviets fought ever closer to the center of Berlin, Eichmann gathered his closest advisers—Krumey, Wisliceny, Dannecker, and others—in his office on the heavily bombed Kurfursten Street and said a gloomy goodbye to them. “If it has to be,” he told them, “I will gladly jump into my grave in the knowledge that five million enemies of the Reich [Jews] have already died like animals.”8

  Then, in early April, Eichmann was ordered to report to Heinrich Himmler, who told Eichmann that he was planning to negotiate with the Western Allies. He wanted Eichmann to ship all the “prominent Jews” from Theresienstadt to a safe place in the Tyrol as quickly as possible, so he could use them as hostages in his negotiations.

  On what would prove to be his last visit to Theresienstadt, Eichmann met with the camp’s Jewish Council. “Let me tell you something,” Eichmann allegedly told the Council. “Jewish death lists are my favorite reading matter before I go to sleep.” With that, Eichmann is said to have picked up several lists of inmates from a table and walked out of the meeting.9

  Now that Germany’s defeat was inevitable, Eichmann and all those who had carried out the Final Solution were toxic. Association with him was potentially fatal as Allied military police and counterintelligence began to scour Germany for those guilty of war crimes.

  “They’ll be searching for you as a war criminal, not us,” the commandant of Theresienstadt, Anton Burger, warned Eichmann. “You’ll be doing your colleagues a great service if you make yourself scarce.”10

  Eichmann took Burger’s advice, heading toward Austria. On April 17, 1945, he was almost killed when a squadron of enemy planes dropped bombs on a village as he passed through. “The explosions were so bad I stuck my nose in the ground and kept it there,” recalled Eichmann. “My driver and I took advantage of a brief pause between the two waves. It was a miracle. The car started right up, we didn’t even have a flat tire. We made it.”11

  Eichmann continued south. The Austrian Alps soon loomed in the distance. There, near the village of Altausee, high in the mountains, he planned to make a last stand with other Gestapo and SS stalwarts, fighting to the very end. En route, he stopped at his home in Linz, where he said goodbye to his plump, dark-haired Czech wife, Vera, and his three sons: Klaus, nine, Horst, five, and Dieter, aged three. Eichmann reportedly handed Vera four cyanide capsules and a stash of cash. “If the Russians arrive and discover who you are, you have no alternative; you must commit suicide,” he told her. “If the French arrive first, use your own judgment, but if the British or Americans arrive, first throw the capsules away.”12 He would not speak to her again for seven years.13

  In Altausee, Eichmann found slab-faced Ernst Kaltenbrunner in a log cabin high in the mountains. Kaltenbrunner was nonchalantly sipping cognac as he played solitaire.

  “I was just carrying out the Fuhrer’s orders when I sent Jewish transports to concentration camps for extermination,” Eichmann told Kaltenbrunner.

  “That was your big mistake,” Kaltenbrunner answered. “You, the executor of those orders, will have to give your life for them.”14

  Kaltenbrunner than asked: “What are you going to do now?”

  Eichmann said he was going to lead resistance in the mountains.

  “That’s good,” replied Kaltenbrunner. “An Eichmann in the mountains will never surrender—because he can’t.” The implication was clear: If Eichmann gave himself up, he might be shot on the spot, as many SS men were by enraged Allied soldiers now aware of the unparalleled inhumanity of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, and so many other Nazi camps that had been recently liberated.15

  Kaltenbrunner laid out another card.

  “The game is up.”16

  Among the motley crew of SS men loitering around the village of Altausee was Eichmann’s former colleague Wilhelm Hottl. Hottl later recalled meeting Eichmann and some of his aides at the Donner bridge near Altausee. The gray limestone Loser Mountain towered six thousand feet above them. “Eichmann was a nervous wreck and was supporting himself with a stick. He complained that Kaltenbrunner had asked his adjutant to hand over a wad of British banknotes to him. He was furious. ‘To hell with that. I don’t need money. I’ve got my own. I want orders! I want to know what we do now!’”

  Eichmann told Hottl he was going to try to reach a remote village called Bad Ischl on foot because the route there by road was blocked by retreating Wehrmacht units. Hottl never saw Eichmann in person again.17 “Somehow the air became cleaner when he left,” recalled Hottl.18

  Not long after, according to Eichmann, he received orders “to prepare a line of resistance in the Totes Gebirge [mountains] and convert to partisan activity.” For Eichmann it was “a worthwhile job,” and he went about it with his characteristic enthusiasm. “Anybody else would have refused, but I had known those mountains well in my youth, and besides, I saw possibilities of survival because it’s a region with enormous amounts of game and lots of cattle in the summer.” But his enthusiasm soon wilted. “I received a message from Kaltenbrunner by courier: ‘Reichsfuhrer’s orders: No one is to fire on Englishmen and Americans.’ That was the end.”19

  Eichmann apparently gathered his men, pulled out a large stash of cash, and handed over five thousand reichsmarks to each of his most trusted aides, making them sign receipts for the money, ever the efficient bureaucrat. Then, with a colleague whom he had known since the early thirties, Rudolf Janisch, he headed toward Salzburg. “We were in scruffy civilian clothes,” Janisch recalled. “No sooner were we back on German soil than we ran straight into an American patrol. The blood group tattoos underneath our arms gave us away as SS henchmen.”20

  It was early May 1945 when Eichmann was taken into custody, adopting the guise of SS Untersturmbannfuhrer Otto Eckmann, just one of countless German prisoners-of-war now filling huge camps that sprang up among the ruins of the Third Reich.

  It later emerged that an American lieutenant interrogated the “architect of the Final Solution.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Otto Eckmann,” said Eichmann.

  “Rank?”

  “Second lieutenant, 22nd Waffen-SS Cavalry Division.”

  “Born?”

  “March 19, 1905. Breslau.”21

  The year was one earlier than his true birth date, and Breslau was convenient because the Soviets had occupied it after massive bombing that would, Eichmann hoped, have destroyed local records.

  The lieutenant asked a few more routine questions, and then Eichmann returned to his work party.

  The following month, June 1945, Eichmann was moved to another camp. He was now one among several million German POWs, as yet unrecognized but terrified of being discovered. He later claimed that he wanted to inject himself with an overdose of morphine but didn’t because he couldn’t find a hypodermic needle.22 One thing was certain: Like his countrymen, Eichmann had reached rock bottom—Nullpunkt. His life no longer had any purpose. His mission to liquidate European Jewry had ended in rejection by his superiors and in humiliation. Raoul Wallenberg had been right in his prediction the previous November. Nazism had indeed been defeated, but at the cost of tens of millions of lives.

  17

  Lost Hero

  RAOUL WALLENBERG and Vilmos Langfelder’s train shunted into Moscow on January 31, 1945. Moscow was now the epicenter of a nation that was utterly committed to waging total war and that had lost more than ten million men on the Eastern Front alone. Many Red Army soldiers and Muscovites worshipped Stalin as never before now that victory was finally in sight. Red banners and flags hung everywhere. Stalin’s face was emblazoned on huge posters, gazing down on the weary civilians and men in olive green Red Army uniforms who trudged through snow-filled streets.

  Wallenberg and Langfelder were given a tour of Moscow’s magnificent underground system, a true marvel of Stalinist proportions, and then escorted on foot to a large, floodlit building at the center of the city—the infamous Lubianka prison, headquarters of the NKVD. Inmates had a dark joke about its roo
ftop enjoying the best view in Moscow because it stretched all the way to Siberia.

  The Hungarian and the Swede’s final destination must have come as a profound shock if the Soviets had not told the men where they were headed. Indeed, Wallenberg’s naivety about the Russians, if he still had any, must now have evaporated as he was registered in the prison and his few possessions placed in a manila envelope. He and Langfelder may have had a few seconds to wish each other luck and say goodbye. They had for many weeks been inseparable, sharing the darkest days and nights in Budapest’s history as they had desperately awaited the Soviets, who had now become their jailers. They would not set eyes on each other again. As with other new arrivals at Lubianka, they were made to take a cold bath before being led along dimly lit corridors toward cells whose walls were painted a gloomy dark green.

  Wallenberg was placed in cell 123 on the fifth floor of the prison. Two prisoners already occupied the cell: Otto Scheuer, an Austrian, and Gustav Richter, who had worked at the German Embassy in Bucharest. According to these two men’s subsequent testimony, Wallenberg was terribly concerned that his arrest would destroy his reputation, and by extension that of the Wallenbergs back in Sweden.

  “In the circumstances,” Richter reassured him, “it is certainly no cause for embarrassment. I don’t think it will damage your good name.”1

  Meanwhile, back in Sweden, Soviet sources indicated to Wallenberg’s family that he was alive and well in Moscow, just one of many Western diplomats who had been taken into protective custody as the Red Army swept inexorably toward Berlin. In February 1945, seventy-three-year-old Alexandra Kollontay, the Russian ambassador in Stockholm, told Maj von Dardel that her son was being held by the Soviets. Kollontay, the world’s first female ambassador (to Norway in 1923), was a wily veteran of the 1917 revolution and a favorite of Stalin’s, hence her survival of the Terror in the 1930s.

  Kollontay also allegedly told the wife of the Swedish foreign minister that it “would be best for Wallenberg if the Swedish government didn’t stir things up.” Possibly because of these two statements, Kollontay was then recalled to Russia.2 She was not dispatched to the gulag, like so many others exposed to the decadent West, but she did remain silent about Wallenberg from then until she died aged seventy-nine in 1952, a year before Stalin’s death.

  That February in Budapest, where fighting still raged in the hills of Buda, the NKVD interrogated Wallenberg’s associates, among them Paul Hegedus, who had worked closely with Wallenberg.

  Hegedus later gave a vivid account of his interrogation.

  “Who is Wallenberg, and what was he doing in Budapest?” he was asked.

  “He came here to save Jews,” replied Hegedus.

  “Lies! Raoul Wallenberg was a German spy. Why else would he have come here if he wasn’t in the pay of German espionage? All this so-called work to save Jews—that was just a cover for the spying that the Swedes were doing for the fascists. Wallenberg helped the fascists and the Arrow Cross by giving them protective passes.”

  “[Wallenberg] may have given a few passes to his enemies,” replied Hegedus, “if by doing so he could stop thousands of Jews being deported. In any case, the fascists could easily make their own passes by stealing them from Jews and changing the names.”

  During a later interrogation, a different intelligence officer told Hegedus: “It was not just Wallenberg; [Lars] Berg was a spy too, and the whole Swedish Legation. They were all German spies. Why else would they stay in Budapest after the Nazis and Arrow Cross came to power? Do you really think any sensible person would believe that people would stay in this town, under siege, just for ‘humanitarian purposes’ when they could have returned to their nice peaceful neutral country!”3

  Others who had worked with Wallenberg were also arrested and questioned at length about Wallenberg’s contacts and actions. Lars Berg himself was interrogated several times by the NKVD. They told him that they believed both he and Wallenberg had run a spy ring for the Germans in Budapest.4 According to another colleague, Gote Carlsson, the NKVD refused to accept that Wallenberg had been in Budapest for humanitarian reasons. Carlsson was told: “It is totally illogical for someone like Wallenberg to leave peaceful Sweden to come and risk his life in Budapest to save strangers.”5

  THE ORDER TO ARREST WALLENBERG had undoubtedly come from the top—if not Stalin then one of his inner circle who may have wanted to use Wallenberg and other neutral diplomats as bargaining chips in dealings with Western and neutral nations.

  The Swiss diplomats Harald Feller and Peter Zurcher, who had worked alongside Wallenberg in Budapest, were also incarcerated in Moscow at this time. Wisely, both vehemently denied dealing “in politics or intelligence work.” They eventually returned to Switzerland in exchange for Russians who were sent back to the motherland.6

  Wallenberg was in a more difficult position. A Soviet intelligence chief, General Alexander Belkin, later claimed that the Soviets had received information that Wallenberg was “an established asset” of the German, British, and American intelligence services.7 Wallenberg’s pocket diary, which was taken from him upon entry into Lubianka, may have been used to support Belkin’s assertion. In great detail, it listed Wallenberg’s appointments with Nazi and Arrow Cross officials in Budapest.

  In an address book, Wallenberg had also jotted in blue ink three contact numbers for Eichmann and his office address in Buda. That Wallenberg had deliberately curried favor with all parties in Budapest as part of his rescue efforts seems not to have occurred to the Soviets. Instead, they had already dismissed any notion that Wallenberg was in Budapest solely for humanitarian reasons, convinced that his rescue activities were simply a front.8

  ACCORDING TO THE Hungarian historian Christian Ungvary, Wallenberg’s imprisonment in Moscow may have had another explanation: He knew the truth behind one of the most closely guarded cover-ups of the twentieth century—the Katyn massacre of April 1940, when the NKVD secretly killed more than twenty thousand Poles. Around eight thousand were officers taken prisoner during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939; the majority were Poles arrested for being “intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials.”9 Each was shot in the back of the head, allegedly on Stalin’s direct orders. In spring 1943, the Germans found more than four thousand bodies in the Katyn forest. The Soviets denied any involvement, blaming the Germans; and in 1945, the Allies were inclined, for political reasons, to believe them.

  Wallenberg was apparently aware that a Hungarian forensic pathologist called Ferenc Orsos had inspected the scene of the massacre in 1943 and sent details to Budapest. His report and other documents pertaining to the most shameful Soviet atrocity in Poland were then kept in the Hungarian General Credit Bank. Wallenberg is said to have known of the documents, as did Bela Varga, president of the Hungarian National Assembly in 1945, and Zoltan Miko, a resistance leader.

  The NKVD also seized Varga and Miko. Miko would be executed on August 15, 1945. His assistant, Vilmos Bondor, was asked over and over during interrogations what he knew about certain documents. Bondor was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Varga escaped execution only after being warned by his interpreter, a Soviet colonel, to say that he knew nothing if asked about Katyn.10

  IN EARLY MARCH 1945, officials and staff such as Berg, Carlsson, and Per Anger at the Swedish embassy in Budapest were escorted to Moscow, where they met with the Swedish ambassador, Stefan Soderblom. Soderblom was anxious that the Swedes could damage Swedish-Soviet relations if they spoke out about the horrific Soviet rape and pillage that had swiftly followed the liberation of Budapest. According to Per Anger: “Soderblom displayed evident nervousness at our arrival. Had he feared that the Russians, instead of allowing us to travel to Sweden, would shunt our train onto the tracks to Siberia?”11

  Just before the diplomats were sent back to Sweden, Soderblom took Anger aside at a train station in Moscow.

  “Remember, when you get home,” Soderblom warned Anger, “
not one harsh word about the Russians!”12

  On March 8, 1945, Soviet-controlled radio in Hungary announced that Gestapo agents or the Arrow Cross had killed Wallenberg en route to Debrecen. Some officials in Sweden and Soderblom in Moscow were inclined to give the report some credence, even though on January 16, 1945, the day before Wallenberg had left Budapest, Vladimir Dekanozov, Soviet deputy commissar for foreign affairs, had informed the Swedish Embassy in Moscow that Raoul Wallenberg had been taken into Soviet custody.13

  Wallenberg was far from dead. That March, while his colleagues waited in Moscow to return home, he was moved to a new cell in Lubianka, where he met two prisoners: Wilhelm Roedel, who had worked at the German Embassy in Bucharest, and Hans Loyda, a Czech who had been an interpreter for the Wehrmacht. As soon as Wallenberg entered the cell, they knew who he was thanks to descriptions they had been given by Langfelder, with whom they had already shared a cell. Wallenberg was pleased to hear that Langfelder was still alive and apparently well, and he asked that his cigarette ration be given to him.

  Langfelder never received it. He was no longer in the prison. The Russians have never divulged his fate, but it is probable that he was shot like so many others—in the back of the head, NKVD-style—and his body cremated.14

  On April 12, the American ambassador in Moscow offered Soderblom assistance in finding and releasing Wallenberg. Soderblom declined the offer. In a report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on April 19, he then neglected to mention the American approach.15

  Had Soderblom and the Swedish government loudly demanded the release of Wallenberg at this point, he could perhaps have joined his fellow Swedes as they returned via Finland that April to Stockholm. But Soderblom and his colleagues did not. And for that, Wallenberg’s parents and immediate family would never forgive them. “It would seem natural that our government, who had sent him on a dangerous mission,” says his sister Nina Lagergren today, “should have stood behind [Raoul] at the most important time, after the war, but instead he was abandoned.”16