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

by Bierman, John

  The Polish woman passed this information on to a compatriot living in Stockholm, who in turn passed it on to Wallenberg’s family. Guy von Dardel immediately set off for Rome to get more detailed information from de Mohr. What he learned there took him to the Swedish Foreign Office, which in turn sent a senior police official, Otto Danielsson, to Rome to question de Mohr officially.

  The Italian told how one night towards the end of April 1945 he and two other diplomats who were sharing cell 152 in the Lefortovo Prison heard the sound of new prisoners being put into the cell next door.

  ‘Very early one morning, not long afterwards, we heard our new neighbours in cell 151 communicating with another cell by tapping in code. We understood the latter half of the message, learning from it that one of the new prisoners had been taken by the Russians in Budapest in January 1945. Later we got into direct contact with the prisoners in 151 and learned from them that one was a German diplomat named Willi Roedl and the other a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg. We were very much surprised that a Swedish diplomat had been taken prisoner. We asked several times for confirmation of this to make absolutely sure.’

  After that, said de Mohr, he and his cell-mates were in regular contact over a long period with Wallenberg and Roedl. Then there was a long break in communications before they resumed contact once more, this time with cell 203 on the floor above 151, into which the two diplomats had been moved. These contacts, said de Mohr, continued until April 1948.*

  The démarche in February 1952, arising out of de Mohr’s evidence, got the Swedes nowhere. No doubt the earlier, over-cautious approach had influenced the attitude of the Russians, whose reply on 16 April said simply that they had no further information beyond that contained in Vyshinsky’s statement in 1947.

  On 23 May the Swedes tried a new tactic. Would the Soviet authorities be willing to make further inquiries if the Swedes supplied them with the evidence obtained in the course of their own recent investigations? The Russians waited fifteen months before deigning to reply. On 5 August 1953 they told the Swedes once again that ‘Wallenberg has not been and is not in the Soviet Union and is unknown to us.’ With some asperity, Soviet Ambassador Konstantin Rodionov told the Swedish Foreign Office that over the years the question of Wallenberg’s fate had been ‘shamelessly exploited’ by circles hostile to the Soviet Union and that the Swedish press had been publishing ‘invented articles’ with the purpose of undermining relations between Sweden and the Soviet Union.

  By 1955, ten years after the end of the war, large numbers of German and Austrian prisoners began returning from the Soviet Union. Alerted by de Mohr’s evidence, Swedish Foreign Office investigators canvassed those returning, looking for any who might have seen or communicated with Wallenberg. Rigid procedures were established for interviewing all those who claimed such knowledge. Hearsay evidence was excluded. Only information deriving from direct contact with Wallenberg or his driver, Langfelder, was to be accepted. Each witness was to be kept in ignorance of the testimony of the others. Each interviewee was to confirm his statement under oath. All such statements were subjected to the sharp scrutiny of the veteran criminal investigator Otto Danielsson. Even the ultra-cautious Swedes concluded that the evidence of many of these witnesses was authentic.

  • Gustav Richter was police attaché at the German legation in Bucharest until the Rumanians surrendered in August 1944 and the Russians took him prisoner. On 17 January 1945 he was taken to Moscow’s Lubianka Prison and put into cell 123 with an Austrian lieutenant named Otto Scheuer. On 21 January Wallenberg was brought in to join them. Richter and Wallenberg became friendly. ‘During the month we spent together he seemed in good spirits,’ Richter testified. ‘He told how he and his driver, Langfelder, had been brought to Moscow by train, but separated on their arrival at Lubianka. He gave me a piece of paper with his signature on it and his address at the Swedish Foreign Office, but this was later found by the Russians and taken from me.’

  Richter said that at about the beginning of February Wallenberg drafted a written appeal to the prison director, protesting about his continued detention and asking to be allowed to contact the Swedish embassy. ‘Wallenberg was taken for interrogation only once while he was sharing the cell with me,’ Richter testified. ‘He told me that one of his interrogators had said to him: “We know who you are. You belong to a big capitalist family in Sweden.” Wallenberg said he had been accused of spying and he told me his interrogation had lasted an hour to an hour and a half.’

  It seems clear from this evidence that when Wallenberg arrived at Lubianka he thought he would soon be released, hence the good spirits that Richter noticed. By the time he had been accused of spying he must have had serious misgivings.

  On 1 March Richter was moved to cell 91 on the sixth floor of Lubianka Prison, while Scheuer remained in cell 123 with Wallenberg. Richter never saw Wallenberg, or had contact with him, after that.

  But on 27 July 1947 something very strange happened. At about 10 p.m. he was taken from his cell for an interrogation, which was conducted by an NKVD colonel, with a lieutenant-colonel acting as interpreter. Richter was asked to name all the people with whom he had shared a cell since his capture. When he mentioned Wallenberg they appeared to have found the name they were looking for. ‘They then asked me to give the names of all those to whom I had mentioned having met Wallenberg,’ said Richter.

  After he had done that Richter was put into solitary confinement, where he was kept for seven months, for no apparent reason. His solitude was broken by the arrival of two cell-mates, a German colonel named Horst Kitschmann and an admiral named Werner Tillesen. Kitschmann had at one time shared a cell with Langfelder. He told Richter that he too had been taken for interrogation on the night of 27 July, subjected to the same line of questioning, and then put into solitary.

  Although three other prisoners – Otto Scheuer, Willi Roedl, and Hans Loyda – are known to have shared a cell with Wallenberg at different times in the Lubianka or Lefortovo prisons, Richter is the only one who returned to tell his story. Many others, however, communicated with Wallenberg by prison telegraph after his removal from Lubianka to Lefortovo in April 1945.

  Since the prison telegraph is a vital element in the other testimony, something should be said about it and the conditions under which it operated. Lefortovo was a top-security jail. It held about six hundred prisoners, usually kept three to a cell. Every cell had a peep-hole, and every two or three minutes one of the four guards who patrolled each floor looked through the hole. Newspapers were forbidden, but library books were available, in Russian only. Prisoners were never given the opportunity to see anyone but their own cell-mates.

  The prison courtyard was divided into small, walled-off sections, so that even during their twenty-minute exercise periods, once a day, prisoners remained isolated. Nor could they catch glimpses of each other as they entered and left their cells; the ground plan of the cell block was in the shape of a letter K to prevent this, and the guards used an elaborate system of flags when moving prisoners from their cells for exercise or interrogation to prevent accidental encounters with other prisoners en route. In addition, prisoners were forbidden to communicate with each other in any way. Despite this, the prison telegraph flourished – certainly in the time when Wallenberg was there. The most common method of telegraph, known to the prisoners as the ‘idiot system,’ consisted of spelling out messages by means of a simple but laborious code in which one tap meant A, two taps B, and so forth. A more sophisticated variant of this was the five-by-five system. In this, the letter W was dropped from the alphabet,* allowing the remaining twenty-five letters to be split up into a simple grid.

  By this method, one first tapped out a number in the horizontal line and, after a pause, a number in the vertical line, to indicate the appropriate letter. Thus, four taps followed by three would mean N. Very occasionally, Morse code would be used.

  Since all such communication was strictly banned, and the guards would look in t
hrough the Judas-hole every two or three minutes, great care had to be taken during transmission. To disguise what he was doing, the prisoner would sit on his bed with a book in one hand, apparently reading. In the other hand, behind his back, he would hold a suitable implement – usually a toothbrush – and tap with it on the wall. Often, the prisoner would remove his tapping arm from his sleeve and arrange the sleeve in a natural-looking way on his lap to deceive the guard.

  There were other hazards. From time to time, the Soviet secret police placed spies in the cells to try to find out what was going on. A prisoner would never use the telegraph system unless he was sure of his cell-mates, and each cell had a call sign, so that the others would not be trapped into communicating with an Informer. Tapping was, therefore, an extremely laborious and hazardous business. In a Soviet prison, however, one had plenty of time on one’s hands. In his early days in captivity, Wallenberg was known to his fellow-prisoners as ‘a keen tapper.’

  • Karl Supprian, who was a scientific attaché at the German legation in Bucharest before his capture in August 1944, was among those who communicated with Wallenberg by these means. He shared a cell in Lefortovo with the Italian de Mohr and another Italian diplomat named Ronchi. After mid-April 1944 he regularly communicated with Willi Roedl, who was known to him from Bucharest, and Wallenberg, who was Roedl’s cell-mate. Roedl first told him about Wallenberg. According to Supprian’s testimony, ‘I was very surprised to hear that a Swedish diplomat was in prison and asked Roedl to confirm this, so that there should be no mistake. Roedl repeated the message.’

  • Heinz-Helmut von Hinckeldey, a major on the German general staff, also captured in Bucharest, ‘talked’ to Roedl and Wallenberg by the same method. ‘I communicated with Wallenberg in German,’ von Hinckeldey testified after his return in 1955. ‘Wallenberg gave the name of his family’s bank in Stockholm as his address. Roedl told me the piece of paper bearing Wallenberg’s signature and address, which he had hidden in the lining of his sleeve, was discovered by the guards and taken from him.’ Von Hinckeldey said Wallenberg told him he had protested repeatedly about being kept prisoner and had asked in vain to be allowed to contact the Swedish embassy. ‘He told me he had refused to make any statement to his interrogators, citing his diplomatic status.’ Von Hinckeldey recalls the last message received from Wallenberg – ‘We are being taken away’ – but ‘after such a long time I cannot exactly remember the date.’

  • Ernst Wallenstein had been the scientific attaché at the German legation in Bucharest before he was captured on 1 September 1944. He said that he had had contact with Wallenberg and Roedl from the end of 1945, when they were sharing a cell one floor above his own in Lefortovo. He testified shortly after he was freed in 1955. ‘I still remember very clearly that time as Wallenberg had the intention to send a written protest at his imprisonment, but was not sure to whom this should be addressed. By the knocking code, we agreed that it would be best to send it to Stalin himself and that the letter should be written in French. I suggested that he should use the form “M. le Président”, and when Wallenberg asked for a polite form of closing, I suggested that a suitable phrase would be “agréez, M. le Président, à l’expression de mes très hautes considérations.”

  ‘I know that Wallenberg wrote such an appeal and that he had it forwarded via the prison guard. I know from my own experience that such appeals were usually delivered.’

  • Bernhard Rensinghoff, who was formerly economic counsellor at the German legation in Bucharest, shared cell 105 with Wallenstein, underneath and just to the right of Wallenberg and Roedl’s cell 203.

  He said: ‘The contact between us was very lively. We exchanged messages daily. Roedl and Wallenberg were both enthusiastic knockers. Wallenberg told me in this way about his activities in Budapest and about his capture. For his address he gave “Stockholm.”

  ‘During our first exchange we spent most of the time composing a statement in French in which Wallenberg referred to his diplomatic status and asked to be granted an interview. Wallenberg had, in the summer of 1946, addressed this plea to Stalin,* requesting to be allowed to contact the Swedish legation in Moscow. After some time, Wallenberg got word that his letter had been forwarded.’

  Shortly before Roedl and Wallenberg were removed from their cell, Wallenberg was taken for an interview. After the interview Wallenberg tapped out a message telling Rensinghoff that the commissar who interviewed him had said it was quite clear that his was ‘a political case’ and if he claimed to be innocent it was up to him to prove it.

  According to what Rensinghoff said he was told by Wallenberg, the NKVD commissar said ‘the best proof that Wallenberg was guilty was the fact that the Swedish legation in Moscow and the Swedish government had done nothing about his case. Wallenberg had asked to be put into contact with the Swedish embassy or Red Cross, or at least to be able to write to one of them, but they had not responded. “Nobody cares about you,” said the commissar. “If the Swedish government or its embassy had any interest in you, they would have been in contact long ago.” ’

  Whether this was part of the ‘treatment,’ or whether the commissar knew that the Swedish embassy had written off Wallenberg as dead, is impossible to say. Either way, the effect of such a remark on Wallenberg’s morale must have been devastating.

  According to Rensinghoff, Wallenberg on another occasion asked his interrogator if he would have a trial or not and was told that ‘for political reasons you will never be sentenced.’ The only other communication Rensinghoff had with Wallenberg – and as far as he could remember this was in the autumn of 1946 – was a brief message: ‘We are being taken away.’ This was followed by what sounded like fists being pounded on the wall before Wallenberg and his cell-mate were removed.

  • Willi Bergemann, another former member of the Bucharest legation staff, was in cell 202 of the Lefortovo between September 1946 and May 1948. Next door, in cell 203, were Wallenberg and Roedl. Bergemann testified that he exchanged tapped messages with them until both of them were moved, which he thought happened sometime between March and May 1947. ‘Wallenberg was a very keen knocker,’ Bergemann recalled. ‘He knocked in perfect German. If he wanted to speak to us he would knock five times in succession before commencing.’

  Although only one of Wallenberg’s cell-mates came out of the Gulag to tell the tale, three men who shared cells with his driver Langfelder did get home.

  • Horst Kitschmann, a Wehrmacht colonel, taken prisoner in May 1945, said Langfelder joined him in cell 105 in Lefortovo in November 1945 and stayed until he was moved in the beginning of December. In his testimony, given following his release in mid-1955, Kitschmann described Langfelder as a ‘well-built man, about 172 centimetres tall, with red-blond hair, blue eyes, and a somewhat hooked nose. His age would have been between thirty and thirty-five. I remember he said that an aunt of his owned one of the biggest milling enterprises in Budapest…Through Langfelder I learned for the first time about the Swedish diplomat Wallenberg.’

  Like others who had been in direct contact with either Langfelder or Wallenberg, or who had heard about them from other prisoners, Kitschmann was called in for interrogation on 27 July 1947, as Richter had been. ‘They asked me to name all the people I had shared cells with. When I mentioned Langfelder’s name they asked me what he had told me. After I recounted what I had heard, the NKVD colonel in charge asked me whom I had told about Langfelder.’ After his interrogation, Kitschmann was put into solitary confinement until 23 February 1948 ‘as a punishment for having told my cell-mates about Langfelder and Wallenberg.’

  • Erhard Hille, a Wehrmacht corporal captured in January 1945, was in Lefortovo cell 105 on 22 March of that year when, as he testified in February 1956, ‘the Hungarian citizen Vilmos Langfelder was moved into my cell.’ He described Langfelder almost exactly as Kitschmann had done, saying the newcomer had told him he was a qualified engineer and that his family had owned a factory in Budapest. He told Hille about his and Wallenb
erg’s exploits in wartime Budapest and about their arrest.

  Hille said Langfelder had told him they were arrested by an NKVD major three or four days after Wallenberg had reported himself to the Russians. ‘Later they were brought by rail, via Rumania, to Moscow, where, as far as I can remember, they were brought to Lubianka Prison on 6 February 1945.’ Langfelder had told him that he was moved to Lefortovo on 18 March, and that after three days alone in a cell he was moved to cell 105. He and Langfelder were cell-mates until 6 April, when Hille was moved to the Butyrka Prison. He had not seen Langfelder since, but, ‘in later years, however, I met other prisoners who had been his cell-mates,’ Hille said.

  One of these had shared a cell with both Wallenberg and Langfelder, at different times. This was a prisoner named Hans Loyda, who told Hille in 1946, when they were both at a prison camp near Krasnogorsk, that after Langfelder had been taken on 18 March from the cell they shared in Lubianka he was replaced by Wallenberg. ‘Wallenberg was a very good cell-mate,’ Loyda had told Hille, ‘and he asked the prison officer to pass his cigarette ration on to Langfelder.’

  Loyda said Wallenberg was taken several times for interrogation. The Swede had complained to him that the Russians had no reason to hold him. He had told them he had represented their interests in Budapest, but they did not want to believe him. The interrogators had said Wallenberg was a rich Swedish capitalist, so why should he do anything for the Russians?

  In mid-May 1945, Loyda said, he, Wallenberg, and Roedl (the third cell-mate) were taken from the Lubianka in a van. Loyda saw Wallenberg and Roedl taken off at Lefortovo, while he went on to Butyrka.