Finally, through the family banking and business network, Raoul was put in touch with another Jewish refugee, Koloman Lauer, who was director of a flourishing import-export business, dealing in speciality foodstuffs. Lauer needed a reliable Gentile employee who could travel freely in Europe, including the Nazi-occupied countries. Raoul, with his knowledge of languages, his energy and initiative, his negotiating skills, and his attractive personality, seemed ideal for the job. Within eight months he became a junior partner and director of the company, the Central European Trading Company, and had developed a personal friendship with Lauer.
The countries that Wallenberg visited on business for the firm included Nazi-occupied France, Germany – where he quickly acquired the knack, to be useful later, of dealing with the Nazi bureaucracy – and Hungary, ally of Germany. Lauer’s in-laws were living in Budapest, and whenever he went there, Wallenberg would look them up on Lauer’s behalf to see that all was well with them. Despite the anti-Semitic laws that curtailed their civil liberties, Hungary was still an island of comparative safety for Jews on the implacably hostile Continent. There was even a considerable traffic in illegal Jewish immigration from other countries in the Nazi sphere of influence. The Jews of Hungary were justifiably uneasy and frightened, but not in any immediate danger of their lives. It was a state of affairs that would soon take a dramatic change for the worse.
Between his business trips around Europe, Wallenberg lived a well-ordered bachelor life in some comfort and style. He had an apartment in the fashionable Lärkstad district of Stockholm and had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances of similar background to himself. Gustav von Platen (subsequently editor of the daily paper Svenska Dagbladet) recalls this period: ‘He was a very charming host, with the most fabulous wine cellar. He had inherited his grandfather’s claret, much of which was on the brink of becoming too old, so it had to be drunk. Some bottles were fantastic.’
Von Platen remembers Wallenberg ‘not as a particularly dashing type of person – more of a dreamer,’ and this is the recollection of everyone who knew him at the time. Nina Lagergren confirms this: ‘He was definitely not the square-jawed hero type, more an anti-hero, I should say. He detested competitive sports and team games, though he kept himself physically fit, and while he was not a military type he was considered a first-class officer in the Home Guard [Sweden’s reserve citizens’ army]. He had a great gift, too, for irony and self-mockery, behind which he used to hide his true feelings.’
Although of humane and liberal outlook, Wallenberg – like the rest of his crowd – was not a radical. He felt no need to overturn Sweden’s existing social order, merely to improve it here and there. As a boy he had sung in the church choir but he was not a believing Christian. ‘In the formal sense,’ says Nina, ‘he had no religion, though in a wider sense I would say he was a deeply religious person.’
Clearly, Wallenberg was dissatisfied with his work, though he did it irreproachably well. Above all, he was appalled by what the Nazis were doing in occupied Europe (though the worst had not yet been revealed) and frustrated at his inability, as a neutral, to do anything about it, apart from helping out in relief work for refugees from Denmark, Norway, and Finland who had found asylum in Sweden.
To the more perceptive of Wallenberg’s friends this frustration and disappointment showed. One among them, the economist Bertil af Klercker, thought ‘he seemed a little depressed at that time. I had the feeling he wanted to do something more worthwhile with his life.’ Occasionally, Wallenberg would open up to one or other of the girls who flitted in and out of his life. Viveca Lindfors, who later became a screen and stage actress of some international fame, remembers one night when he took her to his office after they had been out dancing: ‘He started to talk very intensely about the Jews and Germany and about the horrors he had apparently seen. I have this very strong picture of him in that old-fashioned, elegant office, talking to me about it. I was very young and I think I was rather frightened by the intensity with which he spoke and the subject he spoke about. I remember thinking, He’s just telling me all these things because he wants to get sympathy so that I will end up in his arms. That’s horrible to think of now, but that’s how I saw it then. I didn’t really believe anything he told me – probably because I didn’t want to be made aware of what was going on. In a way, that is a very Swedish thing; when things become too intense and painful we have a tendency to push them away. When I think about Raoul nowadays, I sometimes have this fantasy that we’re dancing together and I confess to him how stupid I was that night.’
Chapter 3
In the grim winter of 1942 Raoul Wallenberg spent an evening in the company of his half-sister at a private film show put on by the British embassy in Stockholm. The attraction was Pimpernel Smith, an updated version of Baroness Orczy’s classic novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. In it, the British star Leslie Howard* played an apparently effete and absent-minded university professor who nevertheless out-wits the Nazis and rescues dozens of prospective victims from their clutches.
Wallenberg identified strongly with Howard’s quiet, pipe-smoking Professor Smith, whom he physically resembled. ‘On the way home he told me that was just the kind of thing he would like to do,’ Nina Lagergren recalls. By an astonishing twist of fate, Wallenberg was to get his chance.
It came in the spring of 1944, after the Allied leaders could no longer ignore the evidence of what Hitler’s Final Solution really meant, and what was likely to happen to the 750,000 Jews of Hungary unless something were done to stop it. The first authentic eyewitness account of what was happening at Auschwitz, the biggest extermination camp, reached the West, via two Jews who had escaped. In the space of weeks the Hungarian regent, Horthy, was bombarded with appeals and warnings from, among others, Pope Pius XII, King Gustav V of Sweden, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, US secretary of state Cordell Hull, and International Red Cross president Karl Burckhardt. While the appeals were directed to the aristocratic Horthy’s sense of honour and Christian decency, the warnings threatened retribution to come, both immediately and after the war, should he assist or allow the Nazis to apply their Final Solution to the Jews of Hungary.
Earlier that year, President Roosevelt had belatedly set up, by executive order, the War Refugee Board (WRB), which had the task of saving Jews and other potential victims of Nazi persecution. After the partial Nazi occupation of Hungary on 19 March, Hungary became the WRB’s top priority. A WRB report published after the war tells how the board’s officials approached their task: ‘On the theory that the presence of foreigners in official or unofficial capacities would have a deterrent effect, the board late in March 1944 addressed a request to the International Red Cross (IRC) to send effective representation to Hungary in order to protect the well-being of groups there facing persecution.’
The IRC rejected this request ‘on the grounds that such a mission might be considered as inconsistent with its traditional functions,’ the WRB reported. The best the IRC would agree to do at that point was to relay to the WRB the substance of reports received from the Hungarian Red Cross.
On 24 March the WRB sent a copy of President Roosevelt’s statement to the apostolic delegate in Washington and asked him to urge the Holy See to take action. As a result, the papal nuncio in Budapest was instructed to make vigorous representations, and the pope’s appeal to Horthy followed. The WRB then turned its attentions to the neutral nations of Europe.
A cable from Cordell Hull in Washington to Herschel V. Johnson, the US minister in Stockholm, said:
Please represent to the Swedish Government that, according to persistent and seemingly authentic reports, systematic mass-extermination of Jews in Hungary has begun. The lives of 800,000 human beings in Hungary may well depend on the restraint that may result from the presence in that country of the largest possible number of foreign observers. To this end, please urge appropriate authorities in the interest of most elementary humanity to take immediate steps to increase to the largest possib
le extent the numbers of Swedish diplomatic and consular personnel in Hungary and to distribute them as widely as possible throughout the country. It is hoped, of course, that all such diplomatic and consular representatives will use all means available to them to persuade individuals and officials to desist from further barbarisms. Please inform Department forthwith of extent to which Swedish Government is cooperating in this matter.
Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey were also asked to expand their diplomatic and consular staffs in Hungary, but the Americans got dusty answers from all but the Swedes. The others declined to act, arguing that since the US government (unknown to the WRB) had already urged them not to recognize the new puppet government in Budapest, how could they now be expected to increase their representation?
The Swedes were more co-operative for a number of reasons. They may have felt guilty that in the early stages of the war, when country after country was falling before the Nazi onslaught, they had allowed the German armed forces transit rights across their territory to Norway and Finland. Now that it was clear the Germans were going to lose the war, the Swedes were less fearful of offending them. They were also conscious that they had a high reputation in humanitarian matters to be upheld. By the spring of 1944 they knew enough about Nazi atrocities – towards the Jews in particular – to be willing to stand up and be counted.
The WRB representative in Stockholm, Ivar C. Olsen, had got together an ad hoc committee of prominent Swedish Jews to advise him on the best means of helping their fellows in Hungary. Among this group were the World Jewish Congress representative in Stockholm, Norbert Masur; the Swedish chief rabbi, Dr Marcus Ehrenpreis; and Wallenberg’s partner, Koloman Lauer, co-opted as an expert on Hungary. The committee had before it a detailed plan, drawn up by Masur, which called for the recruitment of a suitable non-Jew to go to Budapest on a rescue mission. Obviously, such a person could not represent an official US organization in a state with which the United States was at war, so he should go under Swedish government auspices. He should have a diplomatic passport and plenty of money – half a million Swedish crowns to start with – and should be empowered to issue Swedish passports with a view to getting as many Jews as possible to Sweden.
Olsen liked the idea, though there is evidence that not all the members of his committee were enthusiastic about the last part of it. In a subsequent letter to his executive director, John W. Pehle, in Washington, D.C., Olsen wrote: ‘The following is for your information only, but it is only too true that the Swedish Jews don’t want any more Jews in Sweden. They are very comfortably situated here, have no anti-Semitic problems, and are very much afraid that an influx of Jews will not only be a burden to them but will create a Jewish problem in Sweden. Consequently, you will find them very interested in Jewish rescue problems, so long as they do not involve bringing them into Sweden.’*
The committee’s first choice for the mission to Budapest was Count Folke Bernadotte,† a relative of the king and president of the Swedish Red Cross. The Swedish government approved him but for reasons that remain obscure – perhaps a German veto – the Hungarian government declined to accept him. The search resumed, and this time Lauer put forward the name of his young business associate, Wallenberg. Rabbi Ehrenpreis was sceptical. He thought that Wallenberg was a lightweight, too young and inexperienced for such a mission. Lauer persisted: his junior partner was the right man. Added to his quick wits, energy, courage, and compassionate nature, he had the advantage of a famous name.
Olsen wanted to know more about Wallenberg before making up his mind. On 9 June Lauer arranged a meeting between them; they met at seven in the evening and talked right through until five the next morning. By that time Olsen’s mind was made up: he had found the man.
The next step was to gain the endorsement of Minister Johnson. He and Wallenberg met a few days later and, like Olsen, Johnson was impressed. Then the nomination was turned over to the Swedish government. They had agreed in principle to send a special envoy to Budapest with diplomatic cover, and Wallenberg was quite acceptable. On 13 June Wallenberg was summoned to a meeting at the Foreign Office, but the matter was not to be concluded quickly.
Despite the diplomatic tradition in his family, Wallenberg had learned to despise bureaucracy and conventional diplomatic methods. He was determined not to allow himself to be hamstrung by protocol or tied up by red tape. The Foreign Office mandarins to whom he made his feelings known were shocked; 130 years of neutrality had bred a particularly cautious and protocol-bound outlook among them. Although Wallenberg was keen to go, he felt it had to be under the right conditions. Fourteen days of intensive negotiations followed on a nine-point memorandum drawn up by Wallenberg.
It stipulated that: (1) he should have a free hand to use any methods he saw fit, including bribery; (2) if the need arose for personal consultations with the Foreign Office, he should be free to return to Stockholm without going through the lengthy procedure of getting permission; (3) if his financial resources proved insufficient, a propaganda campaign would be launched in Sweden to raise more money; (4) he should have adequate status to do the job, so he should be appointed first secretary at the legation with a salary of 2000 crowns a month; (5) he should have the right to contact any persons he wished in Budapest, including avowed enemies of the régime; (6) he should be empowered to deal directly with the prime minister or any other member of the Hungarian government without going through the ambassador; (7) he should be able to send dispatches direct to Stockholm via diplomatic courier, again without using normal channels; (8) he might officially seek an interview with the regent, Horthy, to ask for his intercession on behalf of the Jews; and (9) he should be authorized to give asylum in buildings belonging to the legation, to persons holding Swedish protective passes.
Wallenberg’s demands were so unusual that the matter was referred all the way up to the prime minister, who consulted the king before passing down the word, through the foreign minister, that Wallenberg’s conditions were to be accepted. By the end of June Wallenberg had been appointed. This time the Swedes had decided that if his visa were refused by the Hungarians they would retaliate by refusing to accept the new Hungarian chargé d’affaires. There was no such difficulty.
Maintaining the official fiction that Wallenberg’s appointment was an exclusively Swedish affair in which he and Olsen had played no part, Minister Johnson reported it to the US State Department, adding: ‘Olsen and I are of the opinion that the War Refugee Board should be considering ways and means of implementing this action of the Swedish Government, particularly with respect to financial support.’
In a further telegram to the State Department a few days later, Minister Johnson said:
We should emphasize that the Swedish Foreign Office, in making this assignment, feels it has cooperated fully in lending all possible facilities for the furtherance of the American program. It is not likely, however, that it will provide the newly appointed attaché with a concrete program, but instead will give him rather general instructions which will not be sufficiently specific to enable him to deal promptly and effectively with situations as they develop in Hungary.
The newly designated attaché, Raoul Wallenberg, feels however that he is in effect carrying out a humanitarian mission on behalf of the War Refugee Board. Consequently, he would like full instructions as to the line of activities he is authorized to carry out and assurances of adequate financial support for these activities, so that he will be in a position to develop fully all local possibilities.
Johnson added that he and Olsen were ‘very favorably impressed’ by Wallenberg and urged strongly that ‘appropriate instructions be forwarded as soon as possible.’
In a reply dated 7 July, by which time Wallenberg had already left for Budapest, Secretary of State Hull outlined at some length the ‘general approach’ Wallenberg might follow.
Since money and favorable post-war consideration may motivate action impeding, relaxing, or slowing down tempo of persecution and facil
itate escapes and concealments, it should be ascertained in what quarters such inducements may be effective.
In other words, bribery; Wallenberg had already thought of that. Hull continued:
If circumstances warrant, funds will be made available at neutral bank for post-war use or in part in local currency now…whenever a concrete proposal based on financial arrangements of substantial character or favorable post-war consideration is broached, the matter should be referred to the board for clearance, which will require evidence of effectiveness and good faith…In order to care for less substantial transactions a fund of 50,000 dollars will be placed at Olsen’s disposal which may be used at his discretion in addition to the fund already available to him for discretionary use.
The Hull telegram goes on to suggest that the problem should be tackled on various levels – high official, low official, unofficial, central, and local – and lists a number of organizations and individuals who might prove useful in this context. Wallenberg should take with him a copy of Roosevelt’s statement, warning against continued persecutions, a similar statement by the US Foreign Relations Committee, and also a ringing denunciation just made by the Roman Catholic Cardinal Spellman of New York.
‘These,’ said Hull, ‘he might on proper occasions call to the attention of appropriate persons, expressing the view, having just come from outside German-controlled territory, that there is no question of American determination to see to it that those who share the guilt will be punished, but that helpful conduct now may result in more favorable considerations than actions heretofore might warrant.’
Hull’s message stipulated that Wallenberg ‘cannot of course act as the board’s representative, nor purport to act in its name.’ However, he was free to communicate with Olsen in Stockholm ‘and lay before him specific proposals to help the Jews of Hungary.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 4
