Moser feels that Wallenberg was supremely happy during the brief period of his most intense activity. ‘It is not given to many men to live such a life, equipped with the spark of initiative, an irresistible personal radiance, and a tireless energy, and with these to be able to save thousands of one’s fellow-men.’
Sándor Ardai was sent by the Jewish underground to drive for Wallenberg after his personal driver, Vilmos Langfelder, was arrested by the Arrow Cross on 7 November. Ardai’s first impression was that Wallenberg didn’t look at all like a hero – ‘he seemed rather dreamy and soft.’ Ardai’s first mission was to drive Wallenberg to Arrow Cross headquarters on 9 November and wait outside ‘until he had got Langfelder back.
‘As he vanished with long strides into the Arrow Cross headquarters I thought to myself, He’ll never do it. How was it possible that the Arrow Cross would release a prisoner just because one man demanded it? But when I saw him come back down the stairs he had Langfelder with him. They jumped into the car and I drove them straight to the legation. Nobody commented on what had happened and I began to understand the extraordinary power that was in Raoul Wallenberg.
‘During the month and a half that Langfelder and I took turns to drive him I never heard him speak an unnecessary word, never a superfluous comment or a word of complaint, even though he often had only a few hours’ sleep over several days. Only once I saw him upset. It was when an Arrow Cross gang had occupied his office. He asked the government, without success, to have it returned. Then he led a small group of us straight back to the office and threw out the intruders. Once that was done, he sat down at his desk. We felt sure that there would be reprisals, but astonishingly nothing happened.’
Ardai tells how, one day in November, he drove Wallenberg to the Józsefváros Railway Station, where Wallenberg had learned that a trainload of Jews was about to leave for Auschwitz. The young SS officer supervising the transport ordered Wallenberg off the platform. Wallenberg brushed past him.
‘Then he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage.
‘After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to a caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don’t remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it!’
There are many eyewitness accounts of Wallenberg facing down German and Hungarian officers in this way. With the Germans, especially, his technique was to pull rank. ‘How dare you attempt to remove these people who are under the protection of the Royal Swedish legation?’ he once berated a young Nazi lieutenant in charge of a transport of Jews. ‘Don’t you realize that your government relies on my Foreign Ministry to protect its interests in many of the most important countries of the world? And this is how you protect our interests! Wait until word of this affair reaches your superiors. I shall complain direct to Berlin. I shall have your head on a platter!’
‘But I have my orders,’ replied the flustered lieutenant. ‘All the Jews on this list are to be transported.’
‘Your list cannot possibly include Jews who hold Swedish passports,’ snapped Wallenberg. ‘And if it does then someone has made a grievous mistake that he will pay for.’ Then he produced a list of his own, which he brandished in front of the intimidated young Nazi. In the end, he got ‘his’ Jews off the train.
There were times when Wallenberg elevated bluff to a fine art, such as the occasion when he got a group of Jewish deportees to win their freedom by producing all kinds of official-looking but irrelevant documents – like driving licences and tax receipts – which he showed to a German officer as evidence of their protected status, banking successfully on the likelihood that the Nazi could not read a word of Hungarian.
Using his well-tried methods of bribery, coercion, and occasionally outright blackmail, Wallenberg was able to build up an impressive private intelligence network that gave him lightning information about deportations, raids on protected houses, and new official anti-Jewish measures. Time after time he was able to turn up – often alone, except for his driver, always unarmed – in time to make a decisive intervention. Once, during the round-up of Jewish men for forced labour, Wallenberg went to a Swedish-protected house which had been forcibly entered by a detachment of Hungarian gendarmes. ‘This is Swedish territory,’ he told the officer in charge coldly. ‘You have no right to be on these premises.’ The officer replied that he had orders to take all the able-bodied men. ‘Nonsense,’ replied Wallenberg. ‘By agreement between the Royal Swedish government and the Royal Hungarian government, these men are specifically exempted from labour service.’
The Hungarian, though obviously discomfited by this calculated reference to not one but two ‘royal governments,’ nevertheless insisted. ‘I have my orders,’ he said. ‘I must take them.’ Wallenberg played his last card: ‘If you want to take them you will have to shoot me first.’ The officer faltered and gave in. He and his men left empty-handed.
For individual Jews saved by Wallenberg’s intervention the danger was by no means over. Miriam Herzog recalls the conditions she encountered in a Swedish protected house after her rescue from the column of death marchers at Hegyeshalom.
‘I was really ill, I felt I was dying. I had to lie on the cold stone floor in the cellar of this house, with scores of other women pressing around me. A Jewish doctor came to look at us and, as I found out later, he decided that if I was left on the floor I would probably die.
‘He had the house searched for something for me to lie on and, by some miracle, an old deck chair was found. The doctor said I was to have hot tea and sulfa – I was quite incapable of eating – and a boy about my own age was detailed to give me these every couple of hours. Very slowly I recovered and when, on the fifth day, I asked for a piece of soap and washed my hair in cold water, they knew I was going to live.’
Miriam was obviously an unusually spirited girl. Once she felt fit enough to sit up and take notice, she decided she would fend for herself. On the seventh day, she told the boy who had been bringing her tea that she was going to leave the house and find a Christian relative, an aunt by marriage, who lived in Buda on the other side of the river. He was amazed. ‘You must be mad! Don’t you know what’s going on out there? The Arrow Cross are killing every Jew they can lay their hands on. There are Jews hanging from all the lamp-posts – you won’t get more than a few hundred metres.’
But Miriam was determined to leave. ‘I don’t know why,’ she says, ‘but I was sure it was safer out on the street than packed in that house with hundreds of others, waiting for the Arrow Cross to slaughter us.’ So she slipped out, while the door guard was looking the other way.
‘I had long blond hair and didn’t look Jewish but I had no identification papers and that was very dangerous. Of course, I had removed the yellow star from my coat but it seemed to me that everyone could see the patch where it had been. Once when I was stopped by police and asked for my papers I said my home had been bombed and all our papers destroyed. It worked. I had tremendous chutzpah in those days and an absolute will to live. The most difficult thing was getting across the bridge and I can’t to this day remember exactly how I talked my way through. But I did and eventually I arrived at my aunt’s house.’
Miriam’s premonition that it was safer outside the house than inside turned out to be correct. Some time after the liberation she bumped into Motke, the youth who had tried to talk her out of leaving. ‘He threw his arms ar
ound me and kissed me, saying I had saved his life. When I asked what he meant he explained that after thinking things over he had decided to follow my example and break out. Three days after that the Arrow Cross had burst into the house and killed dozens of people.’
In the midst of all this chaos and frenetic life-saving activity, Wallenberg found time to write to his friend and partner in Stockholm, Koloman Lauer, to let him know about his wife’s family. ‘Your relatives are employed at the legation and are still quite well,’ he reported in a letter dated 8 December. ‘About other individuals I cannot give you any information…Because such dramatic events have taken place in the past few days I cannot deal with individual cases. I am so overworked that I am no longer able to look after the fate of individuals.’ Wallenberg went on to reveal that he was now employing 340 people in his C Section, while more than 700 people were living in the C Section offices as well. ‘The work is unbelievably absorbing,’ he wrote, but ‘the situation in the town is extremely hazardous. The bandits are chasing people in the streets, beating, killing, and torturing them. Even among my own staff I have had 40 cases where people were abducted and tortured.’ But in general, Wallenberg said, he was ‘in good spirits and eager for the fray.’
On the same day, Wallenberg wrote to his mother.
Dearest Mother,
I don’t know how to atone for my silence, and yet again today all you will receive from me are a few hurried lines via the diplomatic pouch.
The situation here is hectic, fraught with danger, and I am terribly snowed under with work…Night and day we hear the thunder of the approaching Russian guns. Since Szálasi came to power diplomatic activity has been very lively. I myself am almost the sole representative of our embassy in all government departments. So far I have been approximately ten times to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have seen the deputy premier twice, the minister of the interior twice, the minister of supply once, and the minister of finance once.
I was on pretty close terms with the wife of the foreign minister. Regrettably she has now left for Meran [sic].* There is an acute lack of food supplies in Budapest, but we managed to stockpile a fair amount in advance. I have the feeling that after the [Russian] occupation it will be difficult to get home and I assume that I will reach Stockholm only around Easter. But all that lies in the future. So far, nobody knows what the occupation will be like. In any event, I shall try to get home as soon as possible.
I had firmly believed I would spend Christmas with you. Now I am compelled to send you my Christmas greetings and New Year wishes by this means. I hope that the longed-for peace is not too distant…
The letter was typed in German by a secretary who could not take dictation in Swedish. At the bottom Wallenberg scrawled in his own language ‘Love to Nina and her little one.’
With the arrival of the next diplomatic pouch from Stockholm Wallenberg received a personal letter from War Refugee Board executive director Pehle commending him on ‘the difficult and important work’ he had been doing. ‘You have made a very great personal contribution…I wish to express our very deep appreciation for…the vigor and ingenuity which you brought to our common humanitarian undertaking.’
The effect of Wallenberg’s activities in this period was perhaps best summarized by Samu Stern after the war: ‘He never tired and was at work day and night. He saved human lives, travelled, bargained, threatened the interruption of diplomatic relations, was in consultation with the Hungarian government – in short, achieved something that makes him a sort of legendary figure.’
Wallenberg’s inventiveness was apparently as boundless as his energy. At a time when the Arrow Cross were attacking protected houses with alarming frequency he thought of a truly original deterrent. Barna Yaron, twenty-two years old and an escapee from a forced labour battalion, was living with his young bride, Judith, in a ‘Wallenberg house’ in Tatra Street, close to the river.
‘Late one night,’ he says, ‘I received a message asking me to go down to the street where Wallenberg was waiting in his car to see me. Wondering what he might want, I went down. As we sat together in the back of the car he told me he had hit on the idea of starting rumours of a typhus epidemic in the Swedish houses as a ruse to keep the Arrow Cross gangs from daring to enter. But to make it convincing, he said he needed a “genuine” typhus case to report to the city health authorities. Would I be it? I was mystified until he went on to explain that he wanted a volunteer to have an injection that would produce what would look like the symptoms of typhus. Well, I was young and strong in those days, and considered myself something of a daredevil, so I said “What the hell” and agreed, but I can tell you I was really scared. Anyway, we went along to the Jewish clinic for me to get my injection, but it seems that the doctor concerned got cold feet and decided that it really was too dangerous and he might start a real epidemic. So the whole idea was called off, but you can see how Wallenberg’s mind was working all the time.’
Wallenberg never forgot the importance of paper-work. He bombarded the Hungarian Foreign Ministry with protest notes every time he had evidence of the violation of a protective pass or the unauthorized entry of a protected house. Since such infringements were happening all the time he was sometimes sending two protests a day to the Foreign Ministry. In the first half of November he sent twenty. They had their effect. Ministry officials, worn down by this relentless paper assault, would plead with police, gendarmerie, and Arrow Cross officials to leave the Swedish-protected Jews alone.
Thanks to Wallenberg, it was even possible for some of the Jews to find something to laugh at in this situation. Edit Ernster recalls this grim humour: ‘It seems so strange, this country of super-Aryans – the Swedes – taking us under their wing. Often, when an Orthodox Jew went by, in his hat, beard, and sidelocks, we’d say: “Look, there goes another Swede.” ’
Overworked as he was, and concerned with the fate of thousands, Wallenberg nevertheless found time for acts of individual kindness. All hospitals were barred to Jews and conditions in the houses were atrociously overcrowded and insanitary. When Wallenberg heard that the wife of Tibor Vándor, a young Jew who was working on his C Section staff in a legation office in Tigris Street, was about to have a baby, he swiftly rounded up a doctor, taking him and the young couple to his flat in Ostrom Street. There, he turned his own bed over to Agnes, the young mother-to-be, and went out into the corridor to sleep. In the small hours of the morning he was awakened by the doctor, who told him that Agnes Vándor had given birth to a healthy baby girl. Wallenberg went in to inspect the new arrival and the Vándors begged him to be her godfather. He consented happily and the child was named Yvonne Maria Eva.
This episode had an extraordinary sequel thirty-five years later, when it was described in the course of a long article on Wallenberg in The Star, a Toronto daily. Mrs Yvonne Singer, who read the article, recognized the circumstances of her own birth and was greatly moved. But she phoned the newspaper to say they had made a mistake: her parents were not Jewish. But there was no mistake: it turned out that her mother and father, determined to blot out a legacy that had brought only suffering, had brought her up to believe they were a Christian family. So set were they on this course that when she grew up and fell in love with a Jew they forbade her to marry him. She defied them, converted to Judaism, and married the man of her choice. It was ironical to discover, through the article, that she was Jewish by birth.
To Eichmann, dedicated as he was to the idea that not a single Jew should escape, Wallenberg’s increasingly effective interference in his operation became intolerable – so much so that one day towards the end of November he completely lost control and, within the hearing of a Swedish Red Cross representative, shouted, ‘I will kill that Jewdog Wallenberg!’
This remark quickly got back to Carl Ivar Danielsson, the Swedish minister in Budapest and Wallenberg’s nominal chief, who lost no time in passing the story on to Stockholm. Within a few days, the Swedish ambassador in Berlin, Arvid Richert, calle
d on the Nazi Foreign Office to protest at this crude threat to the life of a Swedish diplomat. Gerhard von Erdmannsdorff, the German official who received the ambassador, tried to calm Swedish outrage by saying he felt sure the remark – if indeed it had been made at all – could hardly have been meant seriously. However, he said, Eichmann’s irritation might perhaps be partly justified: by all accounts, he said, Herr Wallenberg’s behaviour was somewhat unconventional, if not downright illegal.
A Foreign Ministry telegram to Veesenmayer in Budapest conveyed the Swedish complaint and it may be assumed that the word was passed to Eichmann that no matter how infuriating he might find Wallenberg’s activities, no attempts must be made on his life – at least, none that could possibly be traced back to the Germans; at this stage of the war, Germany could ill afford a serious difference with Sweden.
However, Eichmann was apparently responsible for at least one attempt on Wallenberg’s life. On an evening early in December 1944 Wallenberg’s diplomatic car was rammed by a heavy truck, which then sped off into the night. Though the car was almost a total wreck, Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, emerged shaken but unscathed.
According to Lars Berg, also a secretary at the Swedish legation, Wallenberg marched straight into Eichmann’s headquarters at the Hotel Majestic and protested. Eichmann deplored the ‘accident’ but, as Wallenberg left, he smiled and said, ‘I will try again.’
Berg and Göte Carlsson, another legation secretary, were fascinated witnesses of a memorable confrontation between Eichmann and Wallenberg shortly before this incident. Wallenberg had decided to invite Eichmann to dinner with his deputy Krumey; he wanted to meet the SS man face to face and try to find out what made him tick. Eichmann, no doubt inspired by a similar curiosity, accepted. On the day in question Wallenberg, having been called out on some urgent business concerning ‘his’ Jews, completely forgot the invitation he had offered and got home just in time to see an SS car drive up to his apartment block and disgorge Eichmann and Krumey. He had no food to speak of in the house and had given his manservant the night off. As Eichmann and Krumey came up the stairs, Wallenberg hurriedly telephoned Berg and Göte Carlsson, who were living nearby in a house rented from a nobleman who had fled the city. Could they help out? Wallenberg asked, and to his great relief they could. Berg’s description of the evening, as recounted in his memoirs, is worth quoting at length.
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 11
