• Ernst Huber, a corporal telegraphist with German military intelligence in Rumania, who was taken prisoner in August 1944, said he shared a cell with Langfelder in Lefortovo during mid-April 1945. He gave a similar description of Langfelder to that given by Kitschmann and Hille, except that at this time he was wearing a beard.
Testifying in March 1956 Huber recalled the version Langfelder had given of the arrest of himself and Wallenberg. They wanted to contact the Soviet commander to organize help for the Budapest ghettos, and he and Wallenberg set out together by car. There was still shooting in the streets, so they had to proceed slowly, stopping every now and then to take cover in a house. Later they were stopped by some Russian soldiers who forced them to get out of the car and then slashed its tyres to stop them getting away. Wallenberg showed his diplomatic credentials and asked to be taken to the commanding officer. Instead, they were handed over to the NKVD and detained for a short time in a temporary prison in Budapest.
Then, escorted by an officer and four soldiers, they were taken by train to Moscow, via Rumania.* According to Huber, Langfelder added the detail that they stopped en route at a Rumanian town called Jassy, where they were allowed to go for a meal to a restaurant called Luther. In Moscow, as in Budapest, they were told they were not prisoners but in protective custody. On arrival in the Soviet capital they were even allowed a sightseeing trip to the famous Moscow subway system before going on foot to Lubianka Prison. On arrival there they were separated. Langfelder said he and Wallenberg were subsequently accused of spying for the United States, and possibly for Britain as well.
Like others who had been cell-mates of Langfelder or Wallenberg, Huber said he was suddenly called for interrogation ‘one evening at the end of July 1947,’ and asked to name all the prisoners with whom he had shared a cell. When he mentioned Langfelder the close questioning began. ‘The rest of the interrogation concerned Wallenberg and what Langfelder had told me about him,’ said Huber. After the interrogation, like the others, he was put into solitary confinement, where he remained until the following April.
Later during his imprisonment, Huber testified, he met Hille in the Butyrka Prison and also a Finn named Pelkonen. The latter, who had shared a cell with Langfelder in Lefortovo in 1945, was subsequently interrogated and then put into solitary confinement.
Though there are certain minor inconsistencies in the evidence gleaned from prisoners released by the Russians, they are mainly a matter of discrepancies of dates. Far more significant than these discrepancies is the emergence, despite Russian endeavours, of a remarkably coherent account of Wallenberg’s fate following his arrest. The interrogation of prisoners in July 1947 and their subsequent solitary confinement show, as a Swedish Foreign Office report noted, that ‘the Russian authorities wished as far as possible to prevent information about Wallenberg from spreading.’
As a result of all this information, the Swedes felt able to assert flatly in a note to the Kremlin that ‘complete evidence’ existed and that it was now clear that the Soviets had held Wallenberg as a suspected spy. ‘So the terrible tragedy occurred that Raoul Wallenberg, who made a heroic personal contribution to save people, including non-Jewish Socialists and Communists, from the Fascist terrorists, has been accused of spying and arrested.’ The contents of this note, delivered personally to Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Valerian Zorin, did not budge the Russians an inch.
A new Swedish note, dated 10 March 1956, contained a fresh element – a declaration signed by Supreme Court Justices Rudolf Eklund and Erik Lind to the effect that the evidence left no doubt that Wallenberg had been a prisoner in the Soviet Union after being taken into custody in 1945. At the urgent insistence of Rudolf Philipp the judges’ declaration was amended in one important respect before it went to the Russians. Originally the two judges had said the testimony they had studied proved Wallenberg to have been alive up to February 1947. Philipp pointed out that it might prove dangerous to let the Russians know that their firm information went only as far as 1947. In other instances, he pointed out, the Russians had answered queries about missing prisoners with death certificates showing that the individual in question had died after the last sighting.
The 10 March note, with the judges’ declaration attached, said that all the conditions seemed fulfilled to enable the Russians to trace Wallenberg and send him home, a tactful formulation that might have allowed the Russians to pretend that some terrible mistake had been made which could now be rectified. Instead, the Russians shot back a reply in the record time of nine days, and its tone and content were totally negative. Once more, it said, a ‘thorough investigation’ had been made which merely confirmed that Wallenberg was not and had never been in Russia. The Kremlin added that it was impossible to accept the testimony of ‘war criminals,’ whose information was in disagreement with the results of their own ‘thorough investigation.’
But one must ask why such ‘war criminals’ were released – while Wallenberg and Langfelder were not – and why unregenerate Nazis wishing to slander the good name of the Soviet Union should do so by speaking up for a man who had, by his own account, thwarted Nazi plans by rescuing thousands of Jews.
Chapter 14
At Easter 1956 Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander made an official visit to Moscow for talks with Stalin’s successors, Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. In his pocket he carried a letter from Maj von Dardel to her son. It is not known whether Erlander really believed that Wallenberg would ever receive it.
Dear, beloved Raoul,
After many years of despair and infinite sorrow we have now advanced so far that the leaders of the governing parties, Prime Minister Erlander and Interior Minister [Gunnar] Hedlund, are going to Moscow to see to it that you may at last return. May they succeed and may your sufferings come to an end. We have never given up hope of seeing you again, despite the fact that all our efforts to contact you have, to our great sorrow, been unsuccessful. From other prisoners who have returned, and who have shared cells with you, we have got some information about your life in prison in Russia, and via Major Richter we have got greetings from you…There is a room waiting for you when you return with the Prime Minister.
What made Maj von Dardel believe that Erlander would be able to bring Raoul back with him is not clear, but it was not to be. Even though, with the passing of the Stalin era, thousands more foreign prisoners – mostly Germans, and many of these with dubious war-crimes records – were being sent home, Wallenberg was not one of them.
Certainly Mrs von Dardel can have had little cause to believe the Russians would let him go. She had already appealed directly to Khrushchev without response. ‘You who are yourself a father should be able to understand my feelings,’ she had written, ‘the sufferings that are tearing my heart to pieces. I ask you with all my heart to let my son return to his longing old mother.’ She had also written to Khrushchev’s wife, Nina: ‘In my distress I turn to you, who are also a mother, with a plea for help to have my son allowed to return to his mother and his country.’ Again, there was no reply.
When Erlander raised the matter with Khrushchev and company he got the stock reply; they stuck to the 1947 Vyshinsky version that Wallenberg was not and had never been in the Soviet Union. Erlander persisted, handing over to the Russians copies of some of the testimony they had gathered over the years. He carefully omitted the evidence of witnesses who still had friends or relatives behind the Iron Curtain, as well as other material that – should the Russians become aware of it – might cause serious consequences to individuals. Even without this material there was more than enough to make out a prima facie case. In a communiqué published on 5 April, at the end of the visit, it was stated that the Russians had agreed to study the documents handed over, adding that if it turned out that Wallenberg was in the Soviet Union, he would ‘naturally’ be allowed to return home.
On 14 July Soviet Ambassador Rodionov informed the Swe
dish Foreign Office that the results of new Soviet investigations could be expected ‘shortly.’ Two months passed; nothing happened. The Swedes sent a sharp reminder, pointing out that it was now six months since the Soviet leadership had promised an investigation of the latest evidence. Another two months passed and the Swedes sent yet another reminder, expressing ‘surprise and great disappointment’ that the Soviet pledge had not yet been implemented. Another two months went by – and finally the reply came. This response, delivered by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on 2 February 1957, stunned Swedish officials.
In a complete reversal of all their previous denials, the Russians now admitted that Wallenberg had been a prisoner, but that, unfortunately, it appeared he had died ten years previously in Lubianka Prison. The text of the Soviet statement, as released by the Swedish Foreign Office to the press the next day, said that in the course of a ‘page-by-page search’ of the archive documents from all wards on certain prisoners, ‘a document has been found which there is good reason to consider as referring to Raoul Wallenberg.’ This came from Lubianka Prison, and it took the form of a handwritten report addressed to the former minister of state security, Viktor Abakumov, and written by Colonel A. L. Smoltsov, the former head of the prison’s health service.
The document, dated 17 July 1947, read, ‘I report that the prisoner Walenberg [sic], who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Walenberg under my care, I request approval to make an autopsy with a view to establishing the cause of death.’ In the same handwriting, an additional notation was scrawled across the bottom of the report: ‘I have personally notified the minister and it has been ordered that the body be cremated without autopsy. 17 July. Smoltsov.’
The Soviet note went on: ‘It has not been possible to find any other information whatsoever having the character of document or testimony, all the more so since the aforementioned A. L. Smoltsov died on 7 May 1953. On the strength of what has been cited above, the conclusion should be drawn that Wallenberg died in July 1947.’
Not only was the sole witness conveniently dead but so also was Abakumov, the minister to whom the report was addressed. The blame for the whole episode could be shifted on to him. ‘It may be considered indisputable,’ said the Gromyko note to the Swedes, ‘that Wallenberg’s detention in prison, as well as the incorrect information about him supplied by certain former leaders of the security organs to the Soviet Union’s Foreign Ministry over a period of years, was a result of Abakumov’s criminal activities. In connection with gross crimes committed by him, it will be recalled that Abakumov…was executed in accordance with the verdict handed down by the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.’*
The Russian explanation ended on a conciliatory note: ‘The Soviet government presents its sincere regrets for what has occurred and expresses its profound sympathy to the Swedish government as well as to Raoul Wallenberg’s relatives.’
Flabbergasted though they were by the Soviet note, the Swedish government nevertheless made public an immediate comment ‘strongly regretting’ that the reply to their queries contained ‘such meagre information. Nothing is said,’ the note continued, ‘about the motives for Wallenberg’s arrest or about his fate during the years that followed. We expect that if any new material should appear in the Soviet Union we shall immediately have it communicated to us.’
Another week passed before the Swedes made a fully considered reply to the Soviets in the form of an unusually sharply worded note handed over to Gromyko by the Swedish ambassador to Moscow, Rolf Sohlman, on 19 February. ‘Swedish public opinion is justifiably shocked by what has occurred. If the Soviet security service was able to act in such an autocratic way as to make a diplomat of a neutral country a prisoner and keep him in prison for two and a half years without reporting the case to the Soviet government or the Foreign Ministry, this fact is not in itself a circumstance for which the Soviet government can disclaim responsibility. By expressing their regret the Soviet government have also admitted their responsibility.’
What was more, said the Swedish note, the Soviet government could not have been unable to obtain reliable information about Wallenberg ‘if they had really undertaken the thorough investigations they have repeatedly assured the Swedish government that they had made.’ In conclusion, the Swedish government found it difficult to believe that all the documentation concerning Wallenberg’s imprisonment, except the note from Smoltsov, should have been ‘completely obliterated.’ They therefore expected any further material likely to clarify what happened to Wallenberg to be communicated to them, while reserving the right to press for continued investigations in the Soviet Union.
Quite apart from the altogether too convenient fact that everyone who might be held to blame was dead – all the way up to Beria and the mighty Stalin himself, who had scribbled Wallenberg’s name on his desk pad that day with Söderblom in 1946 – the Soviet statement lacked credibility on almost every point. It was, to say the least, curious that the date of Wallenberg’s supposed death was just ten days after he was last reported seen and ten days before all the prisoners who knew of him were called in for interrogation and then put into solitary confinement. Rudolf Philipp’s earlier warning to the two Supreme Court judges not to draw attention to the date of the last reported evidence of Wallenberg appeared well-justified. Then there was the supposed cause of death – myocardial infarction. A heart attack was considered by Swedish specialists to be most unlikely in a man of thirty-five, on a prison diet and previously in good health.
But though it was clear that the Soviets were lying now, as they had lied all along, one thing in the statement might be true: Wallenberg might in fact be dead, even though the time and the cause of death alleged by the Russians were, to say the least, in question. However, it was not long before fresh evidence cast doubt on that possibility. Some time after July 1947, this evidence indicated, Wallenberg had been moved from Lubianka to Vladimir Prison, some 100 miles east of Moscow, where he was reportedly sighted into the mid-1950s.
This information, vetted with the same vigour as earlier evidence from returned prisoners, came from, among others, a Swiss named Brugger, who had spent a decade in Soviet prisons. He told the Swedish investigators that he and Wallenberg ‘talked’ to each other in prison code by tapping on the wall between their cells in the Corpus II hospital block of Vladimir Prison at the end of July and the beginning of August 1948. The Swede had identified himself as ‘Wallenberg, First Secretary, Swedish Legation, Budapest, arrested 1945.’ He asked Brugger, if he ever got out, to go to any Swedish embassy or consulate and say he had been in contact with him.
An Austrian, whose name was not disclosed because of possible reprisals,* said quite independently that he had actually shared a cell with Wallenberg for one night in Corpus II of Vladimir Prison around the end of January or the beginning of February 1955. Wallenberg told him he had spent some years in solitary confinement and asked the Austrian, if he was released, to tell any Swedish diplomatic mission that he had met him. ‘If you forget my name, just say a Swede from Budapest and they’ll know who you mean.’ When a prison political commissar came to the cell next morning and found Wallenberg had company, he had the Austrian transferred immediately to another cell. Afterwards, the Austrian testified, he had been warned not to talk to other prisoners about having seen Wallenberg on pain of imprisonment for the rest of his life.
A German named Mulle, who was sent to Vladimir Prison in 1956, told the Swedes he had met there a Georgian prisoner named Simon Gogoberidse, who had been in Vladimir since 1945 and was consequently considered very well-informed about what went on there and, in particular, about prominent prisoners. According to Gogoberidse, Wallenberg had been in solitary confinment for some years. He was not sure whether Wallenberg was in the hospital block because he was ill or for isolation purposes. Gogoberidse told Mulle that after the visit of the Swedish pr
emier to the Soviet Union in 1956, a prison political officer had commented, ‘They’ll have to look for a long time to find Wallenberg.’
Another German prisoner, named Rehekampf, quite separately claimed to have been given similar information about Wallenberg by the same co-prisoner, the Georgian Gogoberidse. Both Mulle and Rehekampf, like a number of other ex-prisoners from Vladimir, characterized Gogoberidse as truthful and reliable.
This testimony sparked off a flood of fresh notes and memoranda from the Swedish Foreign Office to the Kremlin. The first, on 9 February 1959, ‘urges the Soviet Government to make a speedy investigation whether Wallenberg has been detained in Vladimir Prison.’ Replying on 6 March, the Russians ‘had the honour to state’ that a new investigation in accordance with the latest Swedish request had shown that the information referred to ‘has not been confirmed.’
On 27 June Ambassador Rodionov, now head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s Scandinavian desk, sent for Sweden’s Ambassador Sohlman and complained to him about ‘items of information’ in the Swedish press about Wallenberg’s having been seen alive in Russian jails after 1947. This information, said Rodionov, was ‘all made up’ and added, ‘The Foreign Ministry requests that what I have now said be reported to Mr Raoul Wallenberg’s mother, Mrs von Dardel, who has turned to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Khrushchev with an inquiry about the fate of her son. At the same time, on the part of the Soviet Union the hope is expressed that Sweden…may assume an attitude that makes it impossible for certain elements in the future to use this question for the purpose of poisoning Soviet-Swedish relations.’
By now the Swedes were not so easily frightened by thinly veiled warnings of this kind. On 18 July, in a written memorandum, they refuted the suggestion that their actions were based on press reports, fabricated or otherwise, but were on the basis of evidence given by former prisoners from Vladimir Prison. ‘Naturally,’ said the memorandum, ‘the Foreign Ministry must attach great importance to statements of such a detailed character. The Foreign Ministry does not believe that there is any reason to assume that these statements were made with the obvious intention of spreading untruthful information. Nor does it appear likely that all statements could be attributed to confusion of names or slip of memory.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 17
