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

by Bierman, John

  After the release of the Söderblom-Stalin document in 1980, the Swedish media challenged Söderblom, then aged seventy-nine and living in comfortable retirement at Uppsala, north of Stockholm, to explain himself. ‘I didn’t want to make a direct accusation to the Russians that they had killed Wallenberg or something of that kind,’ he said. ‘It would have made the whole situation more difficult if such an unsuitable suggestion had been made.’

  In an interview with Dagens Nyheter he denied he had ‘declared Wallenberg dead’ at his meeting with Stalin. ‘The suggestion that he might have died in an accident was only one of the theories I put forward. It was, after all, quite possible given the state of affairs which then existed. Or he could have been robbed by people who thought he was carrying a good deal of money and jewellery.’

  Söderblom maintained that it was ‘inconceivable’ for him to have suggested at that time that the Russians were responsible for Wallenberg’s disappearance. Besides, he had believed they really wanted to discover the truth. ‘I do not think my behaviour was weak or cowardly. I did what was appropriate under the circumstances: I carried the matter to the highest possible level.’

  Söderblom expressed extreme scepticism about the witnesses who have appeared over the years with information that Wallenberg is still alive. ‘They have heard about him, and every rumour about a Swede is built up into a fantasy about Raoul Wallenberg.’ He did, however, allow that ‘the Wallenberg affair is something that haunts one…One never stops thinking about it.’

  In the view of Tage Erlander, who was Social Democratic prime minister in 1946 and for many years subsequently, ‘it was a very dangerous conversation between Söderblom and Stalin, dangerous and perhaps disastrous. It would have been better if it had never taken place.’

  Erlander was none too happy about the timing of the release of the documents, which occurred when there was East-West tension over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. ‘It may be regarded as Sweden’s small contribution to increasing that tension,’ he said.* ‘On the other hand, it should be remembered that the release of the documents had been planned for some time. International opinion is increasingly demanding an explanation of the Wallenberg affair, but right now the Russians are not too concerned about world opinion.’

  At about the time of Söderblom’s fateful conversation with Stalin, a Swedish journalist, Edward af Sandeberg, was released from Soviet custody. He had been based in Berlin during the war as the correspondent of a now-defunct Stockholm daily and arrested as a spy by the Russians. After he got home, in June 1946, and first told his story to the Swedish Foreign Office, he mentioned something that one might have supposed would have electrified them. In the course of his de-briefing he said that during his imprisonment he had met a Rumanian and a German prisoner, each of whom had told him independently that they had met a Swedish diplomat named Wallenberg in prison. Not yet having heard about the Wallenberg affair, Sandeberg did not realize the significance of this news. Neither, it seems, did the Swedish Foreign Office; they made no attempt to follow up his information. Later, when he had discovered that Wallenberg was a cause célèbre, he published newspaper articles on the matter, but they still ignored him.

  The Rumanian mentioned by Sandeberg never turned up, but the German, Erhard Hille, did after a mass release of Axis prisoners in mid-1955. What Hille had to say then confirmed exactly what Sandeberg had reported nine years earlier. Sandeberg believes the reason for the Foreign Office’s indifference was that Foreign Minister Östen Undén thought he was a Nazi sympathizer, trying to stir up trouble between Sweden and the Soviet Union. Indeed, Undén is on record as having later described Sandeberg as ‘that Nazi.’ According to Sandeberg, he ‘never was, and that can be verified.’ It was not until May 1949, at the request of younger and more vigorous senior officials at the Foreign Office, that Sandeberg was invited to make a full statement.

  Another opportunity that was missed occurred after Söderblom’s departure from Moscow, when the chargé d’affaires, Ulf Barck-Holst, began pursuing a vigorous new line, hoping to undo the damage done by his former chief. Barck-Holst told the Foreign Office he was going to try for a further interview with Stalin and suggested that Foreign Minister Undén should take the matter up with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov at the United Nations in New York. Undén did not act on this suggestion; nor did he give approval to a further suggestion by Barck-Holst: that the Americans should be brought into play, in spite of the rebuff of the previous year.

  Undeterred by the string of negative replies from Stockholm, Barck-Holst was suggesting in December 1946 that Undén might make some headway by ‘sending a beautiful Christmas present to Mme Kollontai.’ Where Söderblom had been over-cautious, Barck-Holst appears naively over-enthusiastic. However, he may have been right in believing that at that time some kind of exchange deal might have been struck with the Russians had they been handled correctly. On 30 December he cabled Stockholm to say that ‘whenever the Wallenberg question has been raised, as a rule there has immediately been a question whether any favourable information has come in about Makarova, the Baits, or Granovsky.* In this way they have tried to use the Wallenberg case as a kind of basis for negotiations.’

  On 14 January 1947 Barck-Holst suggested to Stockholm that they prevail on the Swedish press to stop publicity on the Wallenberg case for a while and prepare an exchange offer to make to the Russians. Barck-Holst said he ‘perhaps over-optimistically has the impression that the case has begun to come under active consideration at last,’ but could not do anything unless he soon received an acceptable offer to make to the Russians.

  There is nothing in the documents released to show whether or not he received any encouragement, though the strong likelihood is that the Swedes would never have considered handing over persons to whom political asylum had been granted. After this correspondence was released in 1980, ex-Premier Erlander said, ‘The idea of an exchange was never brought up before me, nor would I have been agreeable.’ He conceded that it might have been a different matter if the Swedes at that time had held a Soviet spy who could have been exchanged.*

  Surveying the whole chapter of events in the two years after Wallenberg’s disappearance, Erlander admitted that ‘we failed to secure the release of one of our most notable countrymen, one of our greatest. In the continuing efforts to obtain certainty, one must presume that Wallenberg is still alive, otherwise it would be pointless to pursue the matter. It is very likely that he is alive.’

  To Nina Lagergren ‘it all makes terribly bitter reading. It’s like a nightmare to learn how Raoul was abandoned to his fate.’

  Chapter 13

  After the departure of Söderblom and Barck-Holst from Moscow, more inquiries and memoranda were presented to the Soviet Foreign Ministry by the next ambassador, Gunnar Hägglöf. These received stalling replies until, on 18 August 1947, the Russians, obviously in an effort to put an end to this irritating business once and for all, brought in their senior deputy foreign minister, Andrei Vyshinsky, who up to then had not bothered himself personally with such a paltry matter.

  One of the most difficult things to be explained away was the admission, originally made by Dekanosov* on 16 January 1945, that Wallenberg was under the ‘protection’ of the Soviet military. Vyshinsky dealt with this by saying that while his ministry had, indeed, received a brief message to that effect, ‘based on indirect statements by one of the commanders of a military force fighting in Budapest,’ it had been impossible to verify that information. The Russian officer who had made the statement had never been found. A search of prisoner-of-war carnps and other establishments had turned up no trace of Wallenberg. In short, ‘Wallenberg is not in the Soviet Union and is unknown to us.’ The note concluded with the ‘assumption’ that Wallenberg had either been killed in the battle for Budapest or kidnapped and murdered by the Nazis or Hungarian Fascists.

  For a while, Vyshinsky’s reply silenced the Swedes. Certainly Foreign Minister Östen Undén could not
find it in his heart to imagine – as he was to make plain later on – that so distinguished a Soviet luminary as Vyshinsky would tell a deliberate lie on such a matter. If there were any independent spirits in the Swedish Foreign Office who had their doubts they did not speak up. But the Swedish press were not so easily satisfied; nor were many Swedish parliamentarians. In December 1947 three members of the Riksdag put forward Wallenberg’s name for the 1948 Nobel Peace Prize and this apparently stung the Soviets into their first public discussion of the Wallenberg affair.

  On 21 January 1948 the semi-official Soviet weekly New Times fired off a broadside: ‘A new campaign of slander against the Soviet Union has been unleashed in Sweden. Delving into the rubbish heap of anti-Soviet fabrications, the servitors of Swedish and foreign reaction have dragged out and revived the so-called Wallenberg affair…”

  New Times said it was unknown whether Wallenberg had been killed ‘by the frenzied Nazis or the bandits of Szálasi.’ But then it added: ‘Swedish right-wing papers gave this regrettable but by no means exceptional occurrence in wartime conditions, a sensational, even provocative character. Fables about the “Soviet secret police,” which is allegedly holding Wallenberg in its fearsome clutches, were persistently disseminated by the press.’

  The New Times article – a typical example of Soviet polemic, with not even a mention of Wallenberg’s humanitarian activities in wartime Budapest – went on to denounce this ‘filthy campaign,’ describing the Wallenberg affair as ‘less a mystery than the vilest of provocations,’ the product of ‘the despicable activities of the Swedish stepbrothers of the American warmongers.’ It failed completely to touch on the substance of the affair.

  Within a couple of months, as luck would have it, Wallenberg’s friend and admiring colleague from Budapest, Per Anger, was transferred to the political department of the Swedish Foreign Office, where one of his functions was to take charge of the ever-growing Wallenberg file. Going through the documents, Anger found confirmation of his belief that Wallenberg was alive and in Russian hands. He considered that Ambassador Söderblom’s handling of the case had been disastrously weak-kneed and Vyshinsky’s assurances that Wallenberg was ‘unknown to us’ totally unconvincing. The reports and rumours of Wallenberg’s death at the end of the battle for Budapest, Anger believed, had been deliberately disseminated by the Russians to discourage further inquiries.

  Anger knew from his own experience how suspicious the Russians had been about the activities of the Swedish legation and other foreign missions in Budapest after they took the city. He concluded that they would have been even more suspicious of Wallenberg since they found him on the Pest side of the Danube, cut off from his colleagues and claiming to be there to look after the Jews – a notion which Anger believed must have lacked credibility in Russian eyes.

  He bore in mind that the Russians had arrested five Swiss diplomatic and consular officials in Budapest as a consequence of similar suspicions, and had held them for a year before exchanging them for two Russians who were in Swiss custody. Anger concluded that it was highly likely that Wallenberg had suffered a similar fate. Quite apart from these assumptions, disturbing if not yet conclusive stories were beginning to seep out via returning prisoners of Wallenberg having been seen in Moscow’s Lubianka and Lefortovo prisons at different times. Not the least of these witnesses was the Swedish correspondent Sandeberg; it was on Anger’s initiative in 1949 that Sandeberg was finally invited – three years after returning from Russian captivity – to tell his story to the Foreign Office. It was some time before direct testimony could corroborate this kind of evidence and thus warrant further diplomatic action, but it all added to Anger’s conviction that Wallenberg was still alive, or had been until at least mid-1947.

  As for Anger’s political boss, Foreign Minister Undén, ‘one almost got the feeling that he willingly accepted Vyshinsky’s reply that Wallenberg was not on Soviet territory,’ as Anger commented in his memoirs many years later.

  Rudolf Philipp was, like Anger, convinced – and passionately so – that Wallenberg was alive. Philipp, an Austrian–Jewish journalist, had fled to Sweden after Hitler’s Anschluss and now lived in Stockholm. After going through all the known facts about the Wallenberg affair, and dredging up a lot more through his own efforts, Philipp had gone to Maj and Fredrik von Dardel in 1946 to tell them he was certain Raoul was alive. They needed no convincing and they gratefully accepted him as a valuable ally.

  In the same year, a Stockholm publisher brought out a book by Philipp that recounted Wallenberg’s exploits in Budapest and impressively marshalled all the evidence indicating he was alive and in captivity. A hitherto sceptical Swedish public was largely convinced by Philipp’s passionate and persuasive advocacy. A citizens’ action committee on behalf of Wallenberg was formed to prod the government into more positive action and to conduct its own inquiries. This represented twenty-six social and political organizations with a total membership of over one million, and Philipp was to play a leading role in it.

  Dogmatic, outspoken, obsessed with the idea that this saviour of the Budapest Jews must himself be saved, Philipp created such a stir that in 1947 the sluggish Foreign Office felt compelled to set up a special committee of experts to review the evidence being presented by Philipp and the citizens’ committee. None of this made Philipp popular with the Foreign Office mandarins. One of them, Sven Dahlman, wrote in an internal memorandum: ‘Even under normal circumstances Philipp is nervous, unbalanced, aggressive, and suspicious. One has to add, though, that his reputation in general is good and that among journalists he is regarded as an authority on Central European affairs.’

  In November 1947 Foreign Minister Undén and senior officials of his ministry met members of the Wallenberg Committee for an exchange of views. It was a heated encounter, with voices raised and faces flushed with anger. Undén said he still believed Wallenberg had been killed in or near Budapest. Guy von Dardel countered that the evidence convinced him his half-brother was alive and in Russian hands. Undén scoffed. What possible reason, he asked, could the Russians have for holding him? Mrs Birgitta de Wylder-Bellander, one of the most active members of the committee, intervened to say that obviously they thought he was a spy.

  ‘What!’ asked the incredulous Undén. ‘Do you believe that Mr Vyshinsky is lying?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ replied the lady.

  Undén was outraged. ‘This is unheard of,’ he exclaimed, ‘absolutely unheard of!’

  Undén’s outrage was no doubt genuine. He was, by all accounts, one of those idealists who found it impossible to believe that leaders of great nations would tell lies in public – especially if they happened to be ‘Socialists.’ The deceit and double-dealing practised by Vyshinsky over the years, especially his role in the purges and show trials of the 1930s and in the conclusion of the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939, had apparently made no adverse impression on Undén.

  During the late 1940s Per Anger found himself increasingly caught in the crossfire between his own ministry and the Wallenberg Committee, his sympathies and convictions drawing him towards the latter but his professional loyalties towards the former. Many times, he recalls, he felt on the point of asking to be relieved of responsibility for the case. Towards the end of 1950 he got an opportunity to talk frankly, face to face, with Undén about the Wallenberg case. They were travelling together to Oslo by rail for talks with the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. En route, Undén invited Anger to expound his views on the matter, After summarizing his reasons for believing Wallenberg to be alive and in captivity, Anger told Undén what he felt should be done to secure his release.

  ‘I told him that in my view the only language the Russians understood in such a situation was either force or a quid pro quo. I pointed out that the Swiss and the Italians had regained their diplomats by exchanging them for Soviet citizens, while a Dane who had spent six years in captivity in the Soviet Union had been exchanged for a Russian held in Denmark. There had been numerous cases in Swede
n in which Soviet citizens had been involved. Would it not be possible, instead of expelling the next spy, to keep him in case he could be exchanged for Wallenberg? After listening to my proposal Undén replied curtly: “The Swedish government does not do such things.” ’

  Soon after this encounter, convinced that it was impossible to change Unden’s attitude, Anger went to the head of his department and asked to be taken off the case. At the same time the Wallenberg Committee also finally lost patience with the government. Until then it had been avoiding publicity, in the hope that more could be achieved by working quietly. In December 1950 they decided this approach was leading nowhere and that henceforth they would actively seek the help of the Swedish press.

  Things took a turn for the better during 1951, when an unusually energetic and determined official, Arne Lundberg, who had a strong interest in the Wallenberg case, took over as secretary-general of the Foreign Office. His arrival coincided with the receipt of crucial evidence from an Italian diplomat who had recently returned from captivity in the Soviet Union. So disturbing was this evidence that in February 1952 the Swedish government sent a strong new note to the Kremlin. They stated that their investigations now positively confirmed that Wallenberg had been in Soviet prisons, they urged that this information should now enable the Russians to establish his whereabouts, and they demanded that he be returned as soon as possible. It seemed that after a four-year period of relative inactivity the Wallenberg case was very much a live issue once more in Russo-Swedish relations.

  The evidence that had spurred the apathetic Swedish government into renewed activity on behalf of Wallenberg came from Claudio de Mohr, cultural attaché at the Italian embassy in Madrid. During the latter days of the war he had been serving in the Italian embassy in Sofia, and had been captured by Soviet troops in Bulgaria in September 1944. In mid-1951 he and five other Italians had been exchanged by the Russians for six Italian Communists jailed in Italy. At a cocktail party in Rome after his return, de Mohr told a Polish émigrée that he had been in the cell next to a Swede named Wallenberg, with whom he had communicated by tapping code messages on the wall between them.