Lászlo Szamosi tells how five fellow-Jews who were helping him to run a children’s home were taken off by the Russians and bundled aboard an east-bound train. Two of them escaped and told how they had been put together, quite indiscriminately, with a bunch of German prisoners and sent to a Soviet prison camp. This almost happened to Szamosi himself. He tells how he was rounded up with about 150 people, many of them Jews, and taken to the Hotel Britannia, where there were about 350 more prisoners.
The Russian interrogators ignored his plea that he was Jewish and totally disregarded his Swedish papers. Only the intervention of an official of the Soviet-sponsored Hungarian Provisional Government saved him from deportation. ‘If not for that I might have suffered the same fate as Wallenberg,’ says Szamosi.
Ferenc Hovarth, subsequently a professor of engineering at Beersheba in Israel, had a similar experience. He too was rescued by Wallenberg, only to fall later into the clutches of the Russians. ‘I was taken by a very small Russian soldier, almost a child, and he took me to some very big Russian soldiers. When about twenty people had been rounded up they marched us to the courtyard of a building about a kilometre away, where we joined about a thousand other people. Nobody knew what was going to happen. We stood there for hours, wondering. Then, slowly, people were called up to a room for questioning by a Russian officer with an interpreter. I pulled out my Swedish passport and kept saying, “I’m a Swede, you must let me go.” I refused to answer their questions, but kept saying, “I’m a Swede, it’s written in Hungarian, it’s written in English, and it’s written in Russian, so please let me out. I’m not a Jew. I’m a Swede.”
‘It confused them so much that they finally said, “Okay, go to the devil – you’re a Swede.” So that’s how I got out, but a lot of the people there that day were deported to Russia. Some came back after a year or two, but others never returned.’
Hovarth was doubly lucky. When, after a while, the Russians discovered that there were thousands of ‘Swedes’ in Budapest, they became, as Lars Berg recalls, acutely suspicious of all Swedish passport holders, and even more so of the Swedish legation which had issued them: ‘They detained one after another of our local employees, especially Wallenberg’s people. Most of them were released but at least one of them never came back.
‘The bravest among these told me what the Russians had been asking about. It was mostly about us Swedish diplomats, our work, our private lives, our friends. They wanted to know who was the head of espionage for the Germans, me or Wallenberg? Wallenberg seems to have been the one they suspected most. For the Russians, with their view – or rather, their lack of view – on humanitarian matters, it was completely unthinkable that the Swede Wallenberg should have come to Budapest to save Jews. He must have come on some other mission.’
Once Wallenberg had actually been taken in for questioning by the NKVD his danger would have been acute, especially if he had mentioned his plan for Hungarian economic recovery, which he may have been politically naive enough to have done. His family name alone – as well-known in Northern Europe as Rockefeller in North America – might have been enough to condemn him. The Wallenbergs had owned property in pre-Revolutionary Russia and had actually been accused of backing White Russian forces in the Ukraine during the fighting which followed the October 1917 uprising.
Furthermore, it is entirely conceivable that Soviet intelligence knew all about the wartime links between one of his relatives and a group of Germans, mainly Prussian Junkers, who wanted to make a separate peace with the Western Allies and then join forces with the Anglo-Americans against the Russians.
Raoul’s cousin Jakob was the main point of contact between these people and the Allies. During the war he was a member of the Swedish Government Commission on Economic Relations with Germany. In this role he travelled frequently to Berlin, where he was on close terms with Karl Goerdeler, former governing mayor of Leipzig. Goerdeler, a Prussian monarchist of the old school, was in turn closely connected with General Ludwig Beck, an ex-chief of the German general staff and leader of a group of senior Wehrmaeht officers who, as the war began to turn against Germany, decided that Hitler must be got rid of. They organized several futile attempts on the Führer’s life, culminating in the almost-successful 20 July bomb plot in 1944.
Had these attempts succeeded, Goerdeler would have been made chancellor in Hitler’s place. From 1942 until Goerdeler and his fellow-conspirators were arrested and hideously executed in 1944,* Jakob Wallenberg acted as a conduit for messages between the conspirators and the Western Allies, sending detailed proposals – all of which were rebuffed – to the British leader, Winston Churchill himself.
If Russian intelligence had known about this link between one member of the Wallenberg family and German ‘reactionaries’ on the one hand, and the Anglo-American leadership on the other, this knowledge certainly would have counted heavily against Raoul Wallenberg.
Among the many ways in which Soviet intelligence might have learned of the link was a disastrously indiscreet contact which members of the Goerdeler-Beck group made with the German Communist underground shortly before the 20 July attempt. Against the advice of Goerdeler and other older men among the plotters, the Socialist wing of their circle contacted the Communists in the hope of finding out what action they would take should the putsch succeed and to try to widen the basis of the Socialists’ support.
Until then, there had been no links between the two mutually suspicious groups. The Communist underground considered Goerdeler, Beck, and company to be little better than the Nazis whom they wished to supplant. The success of such a reactionary group, they thought, might prevent a Communist Germany arising from the wreckage of the Third Reich. However, they agreed to the meeting, if only to find out what the other side was up to, and on 4 July the Socialists Julius Leber and Adolf Reichwein met the Communists Franz Jakob and Anton Saefkow, who brought along a third comrade, known as Rambow.*
The German Communist underground served chiefly as an espionage network for the Russians. One can only guess at how much information they were able to send back to Moscow about the Beck–Goerdeler group’s activities, and whether this included any reference to Jakob Wallenberg’s role as an intermediary.
In one sense, Raoul Wallenberg was an American agent, by virtue of the fact that he was reporting to and drawing funds from an agency of the US government. He may well have been ill-advised enough to tell this to the Russians. His captors are not likely to have taken much account of the fact that the Americans were supposed to be their allies or to have appreciated the distinction between a humanitarian agency and an intelligence agency.
Indeed, at least one official US document relating to Wallenberg’s mission contains language dangerously redolent of cloak-and-dagger work, however innocent its intention. On 3 August 1944 Stettinius sent the following to the US embassy in Stockholm to be passed on to Ivar Olsen, representative of the War Refugee Board:
Please ask Wallenberg personally to contact Félix Szentirmay, 10 Szemlchegy Ut., Budapest, telephone 358–598, and orally tell him that through a friend in Los Angeles Wallenberg has heard from Eugene Bogdánnfy, whom Wallenberg does not (repeat not) know. As a means of verifying his statement as to the message, Wallenberg should refer to the following property held by Szentirmay: Bogdánnfy’s ruby cuff-links and pocket watch, Mrs Bogdánnfy’s fur coat, gold bracelet, and brooch with green stones. Wallenberg should also express Bogdánnfy’s concern for Mikki’s well-being. Wallenberg should tell Szentirmay that Bogdánnfy expects that Szentirmay will be asked to go to Switzerland soon and suggests that he apply for a visa immediately. Bogdánnfy wants Szentirmay to be sure that when he goes to Switzerland he has at his fingertips the cash position of all the enterprises. Szentirmay must of course treat this message with the highest confidence. Szentirmay should not (repeat not) be advised by Wallenberg of the reason why he is being asked to go to Switzerland, referred to below, or of the board’s interest in the matter.
For your inf
ormation, Bogdánnfy is a Hungarian residing in Los Angeles who has substantial interests in several large enterprises of which Szentirmay is manager. Union Bank of Switzerland acts as Bogdánnfy’s trustee and will ask Szentirmay to go to Switzerland to discuss business problems. The purposes of the project are to secure adequate sources of supply of pengos against blocked francs or dollars and to have Szentirmay undertake to secure cooperation of individual named in Paragraph Three of Department’s 1426 of July 17, WRB’s 55,* and with whom Bogdánnfy and Szentirmay are well acquainted.
If for any reason you do not (repeat not) believe that securing his or Szentirmay’s cooperation is appropriate, advise the board thereof and do not (repeat not) ask Wallenberg to contact Szentirmay until the board has had an opportunity to consider such reason.
On 19 August Minister Johnson replied that the message would be delivered personally to Wallenberg by Per Anger, who was due to return to Budapest in a week, since ‘it was not considered advisable to request Swedish Foreign Office to transmit message of this nature.’ Indeed, it was not. Stockholm, like all neutral European capitals, was a hotbed of espionage during the war, and even an intelligence service less paranoid than the Soviets’ might well have regarded the recipient of such a message with considerable interest.
According to Pavel Sudoplatov, a retired KGB hatchetman of high rank whose memoirs attracted considerable attention when they were published in 1994, there was yet another reason for the Soviets’ particular interest in Wallenberg. Sudoplatov speculates that, having used Wallenberg’s banker cousins as go-betweens in their peace negotiations with the Finns, Stalin and his henchmen viewed the captive Raoul as a similarly valuable asset, to be recruited as an agent of influence either by persuasion or coercion. Sudoplatov further speculates that when Wallenberg refused to be either persuaded or press-ganged the Soviet leadership had him executed.
Given all these factors, it is not surprising that Wallenberg was shipped off to Moscow by the NKVD. Given the apparent lack of interest in his fate in the early days of his incarceration, it is not surprising that the Russians were in no hurry to let him go, taking Swedish unconcern for tacit admission that they knew he had been up to no good. What is less easy to understand is why they should have hung on to him for so long after the Swedes had begun to show that they were, after all, seriously concerned, and long after the matter had become a considerable irritant to Russo-Swedish relations. There is no obvious reason for the Russians to have deliberately wished to sour relations with Sweden; indeed, good relations might well have been to the advantage of the Soviet Union. Perhaps by that time it was impossible to put the machinery of the Gulag into reverse.
In any event, some Kremlinogists and most Soviet-era Russian dissidents and émigrés will tell you that to reason along those lines is to display a lack of understanding of the illogicality which characterized so much of Soviet behaviour. ‘Don’t look for logical explanations,’ they say. ‘Don’t look for reasons why they should have kept him. Look rather for reasons why they should bother to let him go.’ Perhaps Swedish displeasure alone never was a good enough reason, and it is a fact that, to cite just one illogicality, the Russians let thousands of highly qualified Jewish scientists and technicians – some of them formerly employed on sensitive government projects – emigrate to the United States and Israel, while refusing exit visas to others, such as humble tailors, shoemakers, and clerical workers.
But assuming that Wallenberg did not die in July 1947, as the Kremlin claimed – either from a heart attack, or under interrogation or by execution – why would his captors choose to keep him alive as an undeclared prisoner for decades, as so much perplexing evidence suggests? The answer might be that the Russians have a tradition, dating back to well before the Communist era, of burying people alive in their penal system rather than simply executing them, as a notable string of ex-prisoners from Dostoevsky to Solzhenitsyn can testify.
Chapter 22
In August 1989 the Soviet authorities, of their own volition, at last brought themselves to utter the ten-letter word – Wallenberg – whose mention by others had been anathema to them for so many years.
In the full flush of glasnost the reforming Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev instructed his ambassador in Stockholm to invite Nina Lagergren and Guy von Dardel to Moscow to discuss the case of their half-brother. The news created something of a media sensation, stirring speculation that a significant breakthrough was in the offing – perhaps even the reappearance of the principal actor himself.
Consequently, a swarm of journalists, representing both the Soviet and the international media, greeted the Wallenberg siblings when they arrived in Moscow on 15 October, accompanied by Per Anger and Sonia Sonnenfeldt, secretary of the Swedish Wallenberg Committee. The following day, the delegation met Gorbachev’s deputy KGB chief, Vladimir Pirozhkov, and deputy foreign minister, Valentin Nikoforov. What the Russians had to offer was interesting, but ultimately disappointing. They handed over Wallenberg’s diplomatic passport, some money that had been in his possession at the time of his arrest, a cigarette case and some notebooks. These items, the Soviets said, had been discovered by chance just a few weeks before, which must seem to sceptics to be a remarkable coincidence.
‘It was quite incredible, handing me these items,’ Nina said later. ‘They gave me the feeling that they [the Russians] must have much more. Everyone told us the Russians never destroy files and documents. They must be somewhere in the KGB.’
The Russians also produced the original of the letter by the long-deceased prison doctor Smoltsov, reporting Wallenberg’s death from a heart attack in July 1947. This was later to be subjected to forensic testing, witnessed by Swedish police experts, which established that the ink and paper were, indeed, from the 1940s. But there was no death certificate or other corroborating evidence, while the letter itself was penned not on official paper but a piece of scrap.
The delegation refused to accept it as evidence of Wallenberg’s death and the Russians have since conceded that it hardly constitutes legal proof in the absence of more formal documentation. Indeed, some former KGB officers have privately expressed the view that the Smoltsov letter could have been an ordered forgery, and this seems quite likely for, at the very least, the stated cause of death in a young, healthy prisoner strains credibility. At the time, however, Gorbachev’s spokesman, Gennadi Gerasimov, insisted that Wallenberg’s death in 1947 was ‘an irrefutable fact,’ albeit ‘a tragic mistake that has never been corrected.’
The delegation left Moscow determined, as before, that in the absence of convincing proof of his death Wallenberg must be considered still to be alive, and sensing that the Soviet authorities were unable, rather than unwilling, to produce him. That remains their position to this day. For what it is worth, it is also the official position of the Swedish and US governments, although it is difficult to imagine anyone in either bureaucracy seriously believing in the survival, somewhere in the depths of Russia, of a shambling octogenarian who once knew himself to be Raoul Gustav Wallenberg.
Despite the disappointing outcome of the Moscow visit, Wallenberg’s partisans felt that the Russians were genuine in their desire to co-operate in finding a solution to the mystery. This was all the more so after the failed anti-Gorbachev coup of August 1991, which led to the final collapse of the Soviet Union. As Vadim Bakatin, subsequently head of the Interior Ministry, was to say: ‘We do not know what the facts are concerning the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, but to prevent their investigation is to stand on the wrong side of history.’
After the Moscow meetings in October 1989, an international commission composed of five Russians and five Westerners was established to seek further evidence of Wallenberg’s fate. The chairman was the Canadian civil-rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, while the one American member, Professor Marvin Makinen of Chicago University, had himself been a prisoner of the Soviets during the 1960s. The efforts of this commission have brought to light some more significant but inconclusive doc
uments. One is a Moscow cremation list for the year 1947. Wallenberg’s name does not appear on it.
Other documents include log-books from the Lubianka – inked over to conceal the names of Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder,* but restored after the collapse of the Soviet Union – which record three interrogations of Wallenberg and five of Langfelder.
Those logs were quoted in a dispatch to the London Sunday newspaper the Observer in October 1992, by the British historian Lord Nicholas Bethell, as evidence that Wallenberg did die, as the Soviets stated, in July 1947. They show that Wallenberg was interrogated in the summer of 1946 and spring of 1947 by an NKVD lieutenant-colonel named Dmitri Kopylyansky. Kopylyansky himself, tracked down by the Observer to an unlisted address in Moscow’s up-market Tverskaya (formerly Gorki) Street district, insisted in a telephone interview that ‘I never saw this man [Wallenberg] in my life.’ And although the logs seem to give him the lie, the date they cite for Wallenberg’s last interrogation by Kopylyansky, 11 March 1947, is more than four months before his purported death. So the connection is by no means clearly established and Bethell’s claim that Kopylyansky ‘may have been involved in [Wallenberg’s] murder’ cannot be more than speculation.
And speculation – albeit insider speculation – was all that any of the Russian officials interviewed by Bethell was able to offer, because the file on Wallenberg had vanished and the only man who might have known the truth, Kopylyansky, wasn’t telling. Nor, according to Bethell, was he being pressed by the powers-that-be to tell. As Alexei Kondaurov, spokesman for the Russian Security Ministry, told Bethell: ‘We have no reason to believe that he can tell us anything more than he has said already.’
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 23
