Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust

by Bierman, John

  The main headings of the plan reveal its comprehensive and practical aspects: the search for missing persons and the reuniting of families; emergency food distribution; help with housing and the distribution of household essentials, such as furniture and bedding; medical care; orphans’ homes; an information service; the re-establishment of commercial and business life; the creation of employment opportunities. However, Wallenberg displayed an extraordinary lack of political nous if he thought the Soviets would allow a free-lance relief operation, funded from the United States, to operate in territory under their control. It was a brand of naïveté, of course, that was shared by many men of goodwill at that time. It was soon to cost Wallenberg his freedom.

  Wallenberg was determined to get his plan as soon as possible to the Hungarian Provisional Government that had been established, under the auspices of the Russians, in the eastern city of Debrecen, 120 miles away. He, therefore, again moved his living quarters in the final days of the siege so that he would be in the path of the fastest line of Soviet advance. Wallenberg had a further motive for getting to Debrecen quickly. He wanted to appeal to Marshal Malinovsky, the Soviet commander, for emergency food and medical supplies for the two ghettos. Accordingly, he and his driver, Langfelder, now installed themselves in a Red Cross house in Benczůr Street. On 13 January a platoon of Russian soldiers moved cautiously up the street, checking every house as they advanced. At number 16 they were puzzled to see the blue-and-yellow Swedish flag. To a somewhat bemused Russian sergeant Wallenberg explained – in his fluent Russian – that he was the Swedish chargé d’affaires for the liberated zone of Hungary.

  He asked to speak to a Russian officer and in due course a Major Dimitri Demchinkov arrived at the house. They had a long talk and eventually Demchinkov took Wallenberg and Langfelder to the headquarters of General Tchernishev, commander of the Zuglo District. Wallenberg explained there that he wanted to go to Debrecen to see Malinovsky and the Provisional Government. Tchernishev gave him the necessary permit and appointed Major Demchinkov to accompany him with a two-man escort.

  Early in the morning of 17 January Wallenberg and Langfelder returned to Benczůr Street, accompanied by Demchinkov and two soldiers on a motorcycle. Wallenberg collected his personal luggage – the faithful knapsack – and a briefcase one of his staff had been guarding. It contained the rest of his funds, totalling 222,000 pengös – an extremely large sum of money in those days.

  From Benczůr Street, Wallenberg drove to a Swedish house in Tatra Street to say good-bye to some of his closest collaborators. One of these, Dr Ernö Petö, rode beside him, with Langfelder at the wheel. Demchinkov followed in the sidecar of the Red Army motorcycle. Wallenberg seemed in good spirits. He told Petö the Russians had been looking after him well. Then, pointing out of the back window to his escort, he quipped prophetically: ‘I don’t know if they’re protecting me or watching me. I’m not sure if I’m their guest or their prisoner.’

  At number 6 Tatra Street, Wallenberg went upstairs and spoke to his Jewish assistants, while his Soviet escort waited out in the street. Wallenberg explained to Reszö Müller that he was going to Debrecen with his relief plan, then took 100,000 pengös out of his briefcase and handed them over, telling Müller to use the money for immediate expenses. Ödön Gergely, who was also present, recalls Wallenberg’s good mood and keenness to get to Debrecen. ‘He expected to be back at the most within eight days.’

  Dr Petö again accompanied Wallenberg and Langfelder when they left the house in Tatra Street, once again escorted by Demchinkov and his two men. A few blocks away they had a collision with a Red Army truck. According to Petö’s account, ‘the Russians were furious and dragged Langfelder out of the driver’s seat. God knows what might have happened, but just at that moment the motorcycle with the Russian major arrived and he put an end to the altercation.’

  Dr Petö adds, ‘At the corner of Benczůr Street, I got out, wished Wallenberg all the best on his adventurous trip, and that was the last I saw of him.’

  It is the last that anyone has ever seen of Raoul Wallenberg as a free man.

  PART TWO

  Gulag

  Chapter 12

  For the Jews of Budapest the nightmare was over. For Wallenberg it was just beginning. Soon after arriving at Marshal Malinovsky’s headquarters at Debrecen – perhaps even somewhere en route – Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, were handed over to the NKVD, as the KGB were then designated. By the first week of February 1945 they were in separate cells in Moscow’s Lubianka Prison, the principal interrogation centre of the Soviet secret police.

  It was a while before Wallenberg’s friends and associates in Budapest became concerned at his failure to return. Initially, his colleagues at Swedish legation headquarters in Buda did not even know he was gone. The fighting on that side of the river was to continue until the end of February. The Jewish leaders in Pest had expected him to be gone for a week or two, given the distance to Debrecen, the likelihood of bureaucratic delay, and the generally chaotic state of affairs in a country still at war. In any case, though freed from the fear of annihilation by the Nazis and the Arrow Cross, the Jews – like most others in Budapest – still had a struggle for self-preservation in the ‘liberated’ capital. The Soviet arrival did not bring with it a flood of food and medical supplies and the Red Army behaved loutishly. For everyone, but especially for the devitalized Jews, living conditions remained desperately difficult.

  In Stockholm, there seemed no cause for alarm. The Swedish ambassador in Moscow, Staffan Söderblom, had already informed his Foreign Office that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Dekanosov had notified him by letter on 16 January that Wallenberg was in Russian hands. ‘The Russian military authorities have taken measures to protect Raoul Wallenberg and his belongings,’ said the note. There was no reason to believe that he would not soon be home.

  During February, Wallenberg’s mother, Maj von Dardel, called on the Soviet ambassador to Stockholm, Mme Alexandra Kollontai, who told her not to worry: Raoul was safe in Russia and would be back soon. At about the same time Mme Kollontai gave similar information to the wife of the Swedish foreign minister, Christian Günther, adding that it would be better if the Swedish government made no fuss, since this might only delay Wallenberg’s return.

  In Hungary, on 8 March, the Jews of Budapest and others who had cause to care about his fate were shocked to hear on the Russian-controlled Kossuth Radio that Wallenberg had been murdered en route to Debrecen, probably by Hungarian Fascists or ‘agents of the Gestapo.’ The Swedish Foreign Office immediately cabled Ambassador Söderblom to seek more information from the Russians. Dekanosov promised him that urgent inquiries would be made about the radio report. Meanwhile, Mme Kollontai had been brought back to Moscow for other duties. Söderblom contacted her, too, reminding her of her earlier assurance to Mrs von Dardel.

  The Swedish public were beginning to be concerned. They had learned of Wallenberg’s exploits in Budapest through a front-page interview in Stockholm’s leading morning daily, Dagens Nyheter. This reported the stirring account of his rescue operations, as told by a Hungarian Jew who had just arrived in Sweden.

  The Americans also began showing official concern. On 4 April Minister Johnson in Stockholm cabled the State Department, urging that his opposite number in Moscow, Averell Harriman, be instructed to help the Swedish legation there in their representations to the Russians, ‘as we had a special interest in Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary.’ On 9 April US secretary of state Edward Stettinius cabled Ambassador Harriman to give ‘all possible support’ to the Swedes.

  US treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr, added his considerable weight to the official American concern about Wallenberg. A copy of Johnson’s cable of 4 April reached his office, via General William O’Dwyer, the new executive director of the War Refugee Board. Morgenthau scrawled across the bottom, ‘Let Stettinius know that I am personally interested in this man.’

  On 19 April Ministe
r Johnson reported from Stockholm: ‘Local newspapers today comment extensively on arrival in Stockholm of the Swedish legation staff from Budapest and particularly the absence of attaché Raoul Wallenberg, who has been missing since January 17. In view of the special interest which the Department and the War Refugee Board had in Wallenberg’s mission, as well as our own deep anxiety for his safety, it is suggested that the United States government communicate to the Swedish government its concern in the matter.’

  Acting Secretary of State James Grew cabled back two days later instructing Johnson to inform the Swedish government of America’s ‘great concern and sore distress.’ On 30 April the State Department sent a cable to its newly opened mission in Soviet-occupied Hungary, instructing it to ask the Russian military authorities for information about Wallenberg ‘and expressing the concern of this Government in his welfare.’

  On 12 May George Warren, Stettinius’s adviser on refugees and displaced persons, wrote to the WRB’s General O’Dwyer asking him to assure Treasury Secretary Morgenthau that the State Department would pursue the Wallenberg inquiry ‘as long as any possibilities of information remain to be explored.’ What he did not tell O’Dwyer – possibly because it had not yet been drawn to his attention – was that the American offer to help the Swedes had, astonishingly, been rebuffed. Ambassador Söderblom had, in effect, told Ambassador Harriman to mind his own business; the Swedes would handle the Wallenberg affair without American help.

  It was to take twenty years for the story of this extraordinary, and perhaps fatal, snub to be made public. Two other blunders of comparable magnitude were perpetrated a year after the rebuff to Harriman: these did not come to light until January 1980 – thirty-five years after Wallenberg’s arrest. Together, these miscalculations led to Wallenberg’s abandonment to a cruel fate in the Gulag Archipelago, where some believe he may have survived into a bitter old age.

  It is clear from the record that Ambassador Söderblom became convinced very early in the game that Wallenberg was dead and that there was therefore no point in annoying the Russians with persistent inquiries about him. As early as 14 April 1945 he was cabling his Foreign Office that Wallenberg had ‘probably been killed,’ and held out little hope that the matter would ever be ‘cleared up.’ On 19 April he wrote to his Foreign Office more explicitly on this point: ‘What I fear is that the Russians, however much they might like to, cannot clarify what has happened. Firstly, there is great disorder in Hungary. Secondly, the troops who were in Budapest in January have now moved to Vienna. Further, one must unfortunately consider it unlikely that Marshal Tolbukhin’s headquarters and troops can find time at present to look into a case of this kind.’ In a ‘strictly confidential’ note to Harald Fallenius, under-secretary for administration at the Foreign Office, Söderblom gave his opinion that he thought it ‘possible that Wallenberg fell victim to a fatal car crash or was murdered during the journey from Budapest to the east, his disappearance going unnoticed in the general confusion which reigned in the area.’

  Foreign Minister Günther was more sceptical. On 21 April he cabled Söderblom a ‘definite instruction’ to go to Dekanosov and ask for a full investigation. Söderblom had no choice but to comply, though with how much vigour we may guess from a remark in his next message home: ‘As I have said before, it is unfortunately possible that it may remain an unsolved riddle.’

  On 1 July the Swedish Foreign Office got a message from its embassy in Berne, Switzerland, quoting ‘an absolutely reliable source’ from Budapest who said he had seen a third party in the Hungarian capital who in turn claimed to have seen Wallenberg alive and well in Pest in April, disguised behind a beard and living incognito. This information was passed on, for what it was worth, to Söderblom in Moscow. On 6 July he cabled Stockholm to say he had received it ‘just as I was about to make a démarche to the Soviet Foreign Ministry.’ As a result, he had held back, thinking that Wallenberg might be hiding from the Russians, having escaped from them. He might pop up in Istanbul or Berne and ‘tell sensational stories to the press.’

  This, said Söderblom, would put him in ‘a very unpleasant position’ vis-à-vis the Russians, so obviously he should do nothing for the time being. The Foreign Office cabled back six days later to say the report from Berne was very speculative and little more than rumour. He should carry on the Wallenberg inquiries ‘by all available means.’ But Söderblom apparently preferred to rely on the rumour. ‘I take it that as long as you do not hear further from the Swiss source it will not be appropriate for me to take further action in the case,’ he cabled on 14 August.

  Söderblom’s role in the rejection of the American offer of help is partly revealed in the communications so far made public between him and his Foreign Office – but only partly because of the suspicion, widely held by the Swedish press, that a key cable from Söderblom was doctored. We have seen how, on 9 April 1945, Stettinius cabled Harriman in Moscow to give ‘all possible support’ to the Swedes. On 12 April* Harriman cabled back saying ‘the Swedes say they have no reason to think the Russians are not doing what they can and they do not feel that an approach to the Soviet Foreign Office on our part would be desirable.’

  However, Söderblom, in his ‘strictly confidential’ letter to Foreign Office Under-Secretary Fallenius on 19 April, said that he ‘presumed that the American representation in Hungary has been approached through the State Department. The US embassy in Moscow is otherwise hardly likely to feel that anything was to be done for America’s part.’ This confused and turgid quotation was released to the Swedish news media in February 1965, after a Swedish television programme had raised serious questions about the failure of Söderblom to act on America’s offer of help.

  As a US embassy official observed in a report to the State Department, ‘the fact that the Foreign Office press release used a partial and confusing quote of Minister Söderblom’s without publication of the full text of the message…has aroused the suspicions of the Swedish press.’ It certainly had. The matter was taken up editorially in Dagens Nyheter. ‘One must ask why that telegram was not quoted in full. The customary secretiveness?…The negative Swedish attitude caused the American interest to decline. The fact is that a Swedish démarche concerning Raoul Wallenberg was made shortly afterwards in Moscow. But would not an American action have carried much more weight at that time?’

  The Göteborgs-Handelstidningen expressed a similar view: ‘Unfortunately one has reason to suspect that the Swedish version was doctored. The Americans were eager, but it is doubtful whether the same could be said about the Swedish legation.’

  Fifteen years after these disclosures, the story of Söderblom’s second major blunder came to light with the release, at the end of January 1980, of 1900 pages of hitherto secret Swedish Foreign Office documents relating to the Wallenberg affair.* Among these – and quite the most remarkable – were Ambassador Söderblom’s notes on a meeting he had with Stalin on 15 June 1946, before he left Moscow to take up a new appointment.

  Söderblom was obviously bowled over by the honour of being received by the Soviet leader, who usually saw only the American and British ambassadors, and then only if they were bringing personal messages from their heads of government, at that time Harry Truman and Clement Attlee.

  ‘Stalin seemed fit and in vigorous good health,’ wrote Söderblom. ‘His short but well-proportioned body and his regular features made an especially agreeable impression. His tone of voice and demeanor gave an impression of friendliness.’

  In the course of their conversation, Stalin asked Söderblom if there was anything he could do for him. Söderblom mentioned the case of Wallenberg. ‘You say his name was Wallenberg?’ asked Stalin.

  ‘Yes, Wallenberg,’ said Söderblom, and spelt it out for the Soviet dictator, who wrote the name on a pad in front of him.

  After Söderblom had recounted briefly how, according to Dekanosov, Wallenberg had been taken under Soviet protection, to be seen later leaving for Debrecen under escort, Stalin
said: ‘I suppose you know that we gave orders for the Swedes [in Budapest] to be protected.’

  ‘Yes,’ Söderblom replied, ‘and I am personally convinced that Wallenberg fell victim either to a road accident or bandits.’

  ‘Have you not had any definite information on the matter from our side?’ inquired Stalin.

  ‘No,’ answered Söderblom, ‘but I assume that the Soviet military authorities do not have any further reliable information about what happened after that.’

  After this astonishing exchange, Söderblom went on to ask for an official statement from the Russians saying that all possible action had been taken to find Wallenberg, though without success, and an assurance that if further information came to light this would be passed on. ‘This would be in your own interests,’ said Söderblom, ‘as there are people who, in the absence of an explanation, would draw the wrong conclusions.’

  ‘I promise you,’ Stalin replied, ‘that the matter will be investigated and cleared up. I shall see to it personally.’*

  If Stalin took Söderblom’s remarks as meaning that the Swedish government no longer had any real interest in the Wallenberg affair, this would not be surprising. It may be no coincidence that at about this very time, according to evidence later accepted by the Swedes as authentic, an NKVD commissar told Wallenberg in the Lefortovo Prison: ‘Nobody cares about you.’