That file is available for study in the State Department’s archives. Written across the top of Pickering’s memorandum are the words ‘Disapproved by Kissinger’ and the date ‘15 October 1973.’
Kissinger offered an explanation of this episode when asked about it in 1979 by Mrs Lena Björck-Kaplan, chairman of the working group for the US Free Raoul Wallenberg Committee. As she recalls the conversation, the former secretary of state denied that he rejected the recommendation, claiming that he had never seen it. Could she really believe, he asked, that someone of his background – a German Jew who had escaped to the United States as a schoolboy – could have turned down such a suggestion? He could only suppose that a subordinate authorized to act on his behalf under certain circumstances must have done so on this occasion. In fairness to Kissinger, it should be pointed out that at the time the recommendation was rejected the calamitous October War was raging in the Middle East. It therefore seems quite possible that one of his senior aides took it upon himself to shunt such a comparatively ‘minor’ matter as the fate of an unknown Swede off his chief’s agenda.
Nevertheless, in Sweden it is widely believed that Kissinger withheld his approval because he was still angry over the Swedes’ condemnation of US policies in Vietnam and their harbouring of American draft-resisters.
Another world figure who might have helped Wallenberg but failed to was fellow-Swede Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in an air crash in Northern Rhodesia in 1961.
According to Professor Carl-Fredrik Palmstierna,* private secretary to King Gustav VI (son of the monarch who had played a part in sending Wallenberg to Budapest), Hammarskjöld was asked three times in the 1950s by the Wallenberg Committee to raise the matter with the Russians. This was after he had promised that if direct Swedish representations failed he would work ‘with heart and soul’ for his countryman’s release. According to Palmstierna’s memoirs, when Hammarskjöld was asked to fulfil this promise – first in 1955, again in 1956, and finally in 1959 – he found reasons not to do so. In June 1956 it was Palmstierna himself who put the request to Hammarskjöld. In his memoirs he says:
He answered in a stream of crystal-clear phrases, saying the fact that he himself was a Swede made it doubly difficult to put the case of a compatriot to the Russians. If matters had been different he would, of course, etcetera, etcetera…
I wondered to myself how matters could have been different. If Hammarskjöld had taken up the case of a non-Swedish citizen he would presumably have been rebuffed with the argument that as secretary-general of the United Nations he had no right to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. The indifference of Hammarskjöld did not surprise me. Again that damned Foreign Office outlook! Of course, there was no question of ‘declaring war on Russia’ as he said on a later occasion, quoting Undén. But was it not to be feared that the Russians would consider this lack of official interest in one of our own people, this anxiety to avoid any unpleasantness, as an indication of Swedish weakness?
Palmstierna also accuses the late King Gustav VI of indifference to the plight of Wallenberg.
When the case was brought to the fore again in the mid-1950s, I thought it advisable to draw the attention of my Royal master to the matter. This, however, proved far from easy…Our minister of foreign affairs, Östen Undén, a Marxist professor of law, followed with benevolent interest the Great Socialist Experiment in Russia and he allowed nothing to interfere with Sweden’s friendly relations with Russia.
Out of loyalty – an elastic notion – the King had adopted the views of his foreign minister. I knew only too well that in the initial phase of the Wallenberg case Undén had committed many sins of omission, but criticizing his handling of the matter in front of His Majesty was like trying to get between the bark and the tree.
Palmstierna says his first conversation with the king on the subject took place in March 1955, during a visit to Stockholm by Gromyko, whom the king was about to receive in private audience.
This was, I hoped, an occasion…to open the matter directly with one of those responsible for detaining Wallenberg. It was, after all, a purely humanitarian case…I dashed to the King’s study and suggested this to him. The King thanked me, admitting; that he himself had thought of discussing the question with Gromyko. At last, I thought, maybe something will come of this. You never can tell how the Russians will react. Maybe they still feel some respect for a king.
But my optimism proved premature. In a quarter of an hour His Majesty returned, saying that having thought it over he felt he had better talk to Undén before raising the question with Gromyko. My disappointment was great. The outcome of that conversation [with Undén] was only too easy to predict.
Palmstierna recalls that the last time he tried to raise the Wallenberg question with the king, in the summer of 1959, Gustav appeared irritated:
‘What do you expect me to do?’ he demanded. ‘Are we supposed to ransack the prisons of Russia or declare war for the sake of Wallenberg?’
Again those words of Undén’s! Again I was told that never had so much been done for a Swede in distress as had been done in this case. This was, of course, no real answer, for the case was unique in Swedish history. With a shrug of his shoulders, the King made it clear he considered the responsibility was not his but that of the government. I contented myself by replying that posterity would concern itself deeply with the handling of this case. Another shrug, and His Majesty returned to the pile of papers on his desk.
Palmstierna believes that Queen Louise, as well as Undén, influenced the king against intervention:
I may be indiscreet, but in the name of historical truth I must state this. I do not know what persons could have persuaded her to believe that the Austrian Rudolf Philipp…who devoted years of research to revealing the Russian lies and subterfuges, was using the case of Raoul Wallenberg as a meal ticket, at the expense of the latter’s family…Once when Her Majesty brought forth this accusation I replied in moderate terms that this was not the case; I knew exactly what reward Philipp had received for his endeavours. There was a somewhat confused reply.*
Palmstierna records that in 1972, at a press conference in Vienna, Undén’s successor as foreign minister, Krister Wickman, declared that his government ‘had consigned the case of Raoul Wallenberg to oblivion.’ This, incidentally, was confirmed quite independently by Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who was present and who in fact had asked the question which elicited this answer. ‘He asked his secretary and the Swedish ambassador, “Who is this man who is asking this question?” ’ Wiesenthal recalls. ‘And then he answered me. “This case has been closed for a long time. We are doing nothing more on this case.” ’ In later years Wiesenthal was willing to concede that the Swedish government was once again pursuing the matter actively. ‘When I was in Sweden recently,’ he told me in late 1979, ‘I was talking to the Deputy Foreign Minister and he said to me, “Now you will be content with us because we are active again.” ’†
Well into the 1980s Wiesenthal remained extremely active, persuaded as he was that Wallenberg might still be alive. In the summer of 1979, he was given air time on the Russian-language Service of the Voice of America, the US government-controlled overseas broadcasting organization, to transmit an appeal for anyone in the Soviet Union who anything knew about Wallenberg’s whereabouts to write to him – ‘Simon Wiesenthal, Vienna, is enough of an address’ – telling what they knew. ‘We need little pieces of information so that we can build up a bigger picture,’ he said. ‘This is our duty as free people, not just my duty as a Jew, to help prove that this man is alive and to bring him back to the free world.
‘We have so many Nobel Prize winners, you know, but I don’t know of any other man whom I would rather nominate for the Peace Prize than Raoul Wallenberg.’
If Wiesenthal’s use of the Voice of America to broadcast an appeal in Russian for information about Wallenberg suggests a degree of official US involvement
once again, that indeed was the case.
In 1979, when the Kalinski and Kaplan testimonies first came to light, interest was suddenly kindled in the United States, where the Wallenberg story was virtually unknown. Annette Lantos, a Californian housewife of Hungarian–Jewish background, was moved to tears by a brief item in The New York Times. There was reason enough for her emotional reaction: she and her husband, Tom Lantos, then legal aide to Democratic Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., of Delaware, both owed their lives to their possession of ‘Wallenberg’ passports that, as teenagers, they had been able to obtain in Budapest in 1944. To both, Wallenberg had become a dim – if legendary – memory, someone they imagined had died many years before.
Annette Lantos threw herself energetically into writing letters, organizing committees, setting up press conferences, contacting potentially interested bodies – especially among the American Jewish community – and enlisting the support of prominent persons. Her husband’s Washington connections helped. In July 1979 three influential senators – Frank Church of Idaho, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island – plus Berlin-born freshman Senator Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota became co-chairmen of the American Free Raoul Wallenberg Committee. The objectives of this committee were ‘to gather and substantiate all information on the whereabouts of Wallenberg; to press the government of the Soviet Union to reveal all that it knows about Wallenberg and, if he is still alive, to free him; to enlist the support of governments, private groups, and individuals throughout the world in the committee’s efforts on behalf of Raoul Wallenberg.’
When Nina Lagergren visited the United States soon afterwards, the tireless Annette Lantos helped to arrange widespread media coverage, which thus brought the Wallenberg affair to the notice of a wide American public. In the autumn of 1979, when Guy von Dardel was in the United States, Mrs Lantos and her senatorial supporters helped arrange a meeting with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who promised active American government support.
Soon after that Annette Lantos was selected to talk to President Carter on a radio phone-in programme. Naturally, she asked the president about the Wallenberg case – and he claimed that he had himself raised the issue with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev when the two leaders met in Vienna, earlier that year. What response Carter got has not been disclosed.
In the autumn of 1980, just before the elections which swept President Carter out of office and cost Church his Senate seat, both Houses of the US Congress unanimously passed resolutions acknowledging Wallenberg’s wartime achievements and calling on the State Department to take up his case with the Soviet government. The resolutions also called on the US delegation to the forthcoming Madrid conference on European security and co-operation – at which progress on the 1976 Helsinki Agreements on human rights was to be reviewed – to take up the issue with the Russian delegation.
The Swedes took the lead in an opening speech to the plenary session and in a further address before the conference’s human rights committee. The US delegate to this committee followed up, saying:
‘The United States heartily supports the intervention by the delegate of Sweden and his entreaty once and for all to ascertain the fate of Raoul Wallenberg. As the Swedish delegation said, there have been secret reports that he may still be alive. As you know, Mr Wallenberg’s heroic actions in Budapest at the end of World War II were financed in part by the American government. The US delegation and the American people feel a special debt to Mr Wallenberg and his family. We would very much like to see the governments involved co-operate fully in order to determine the facts about his disappearance.’
The Biritish delegate immediately followed, saying his country ‘fully and wholeheartedly’ supported the Swedish plea.
‘Wallenberg’s extraordinary work in helping refugees and the victims of oppression deserves special consideration,’ he said. ‘Renewed reports that he might be alive have aroused great hopes and deserve to be thoroughly investigated. In the confused post-war era when he disappeared strange things did happen. The possibility that he has somehow survived many vicissitudes cannot be dismissed.’
The Soviets, as usual, stonewalled. Their delegate said only that they would reply later in the conference to all the matters raised.
Ironically, the elections which swept Carter, Church, and so many others out of office brought to Congress the one man in American public life who owes his life directly to Raoul Wallenberg – Tom Lantos. Swimming against the political tide, he beat the incumbent conservative Republican to become the Democratic member of the US House of Representatives for the nth District of California.
On 26 March 1981 Lantos introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives which would confer honorary US citizenship on Wallenberg, a distinction previously accorded only to one other foreigner, Sir Winston Churchill. His bill had 258 co-sponsors, guaranteeing it passage through the lower house. Lantos was confident that an identical resolution would pass swiftly through the Senate. The effect of making Wallenberg an honorary American, Lantos told a news conference before presenting his bill on the floor of the House, would be to ‘give the State Department the legal basis to pursue the case of the ultimate American hostage.’
Lantos added: ‘It is my considered judgement that the chances are even that Raoul Wallenberg is alive today.’ But even if it turned out that he had! died in captivity, by passing his joint resolution the US Congress, and people, will ‘not only have honoured the man…but will have honoured ourselves and our profound commitment to human rights.’
Lantos’s wife spoke with great emotion about Wallenberg. ‘He was like a Moses from the north, who came to us in the most terrible days. His noble and courageous deeds truly shone like a bright light in that abysmal darkness. Just remembering his goodness and his sacrifice for our sake, somehow helped to heal my own emotional and spiritual wounds. If it is the only thing in my life I must spare no effort to help this man.’
Her colleague on the Wallenberg Committee’s working group Elizabeth Moynihan, wife of the senator, took an equally strong if less emotional view. ‘In the story of Raoul Wallenberg,’ she said, ‘two issues are tragically linked – the courage of a truly good man and his unjust fate. There are few comparable examples of a man facing evil to save his fellow-men.’
Nina Lagergren found a ray of hope in the upsurge of interest in her half-brother. ‘If only my parents had remained alive long enough to see all these things happening – so many incredible things in the past few months. It’s like a miracle really, this avalanche development, so many people having been moved about the fate of Raoul who had never heard of him before. It all seems to mean something. I firmly believe that all this couldn’t be happening unless it means that we will get Raoul back.’
Throughout the long saga of the Wallenberg affair, the wealthy and influential brothers Marcus and Jakob Wallenberg, directors of the bank which used to bear the family name but is now the Skandi-naviska Enskilda Bank, kept a remarkably low profile. Marcus, the older brother and head of the family, is known to have sent a letter to the Soviet ambassador, Mme Kollontai, regarding the fate of his cousin on 26 April 1945. The contents of the letter have never been disclosed, although Mme Kollontai – who had by that time been recalled to Moscow – is known to have replied that she would do what she could, although ‘when one is no longer in charge it is not so easy.’ This is the only known written exchange involving either of Raoul’s two illustrious older cousins.
Marcus apparently knew Mme Kollontai well. It was reportedly on her advice that he flew to Finland in 1944 and was instrumental in getting the Finns to conclude an armistice with the Russians. A little later, during a period of strained relations between the Soviet Union and Sweden, it is known that Mme Kollontai suggested Marcus as a suitable Swedish ambassador to Moscow and that the Soviet government let it be known that they would not object. Clearly, this head of ‘a big capitalist family’ was acceptable to
the men in the Kremlin.
According to other members of the family, Jakob Wallenberg (who died in 1980) idolized Raoul’s father. It may seem strange, therefore, that he and Marcus did not take a more public position on their cousin’s behalf. Possibly, their interventions were very discreet. Maj von Dardel never liked to discuss the matter, although she is on record as having once said that ‘whatever they have done, they have done behind the scenes.’
This appears to have been the case. In the 1970s they discreetly subsidized the Raoul Wallenberg Association in Stockholm through intermediaries and subsidiary companies, which have provided free office accommodation.
Their reluctance to champion their cousin’s cause too openly was attributed by some to their fear of jeopardizing the business which their bank conducted with the Soviet Union. A more charitable explanation may be that they were aware of a certain amount of public resentment of the family, especially among the less affluent in Sweden, and that this made them unwilling to risk being accused of damaging Swedish–Soviet relations in pursuit of what might be seen as a family concern.
One family friend reflected sadly: ‘It’s ironic to think that if Raoul had been adopted by his stepfather and had taken the name von Dardel he might have been a free man many years ago.’
Like many powerful men, the Wallenberg brothers preferred to avoid publicity. Neither ever responded to questions by journalists about their role in the Wallenberg affair. This dislike of publicity apparently extends to the Enskilda Bank. In the winter of 1979, when a British television team wanted to film the entrance to the bank’s headquarters to get pictures of portraits of the Wallenberg banking dynasty, there was some consternation among bank officials.
Told that the pictures were wanted for a documentary film about Raoul Wallenberg, a public-relations executive sniffed, ‘That’s not the kind of publicity we want.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 21
