Monday, February 7, 2005
SWEDISH DIPLOMAT
WHO SAVED THOUSANDS FROM NAZIS HONOURED
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
 VIENNA, AUSTRIA (ANS) -- Raoul Wallenberg, a Protestant
diplomat from Sweden who saved tens of thousands of Jews and other
persecuted people from the Nazis in Hungary during the Second World
War, has been honored 60 years after his disappearance in
Budapest. (Pictured: US stamp in honor of Raoul
Wallenberg).
 This news comes in a story released
by the Spanish evangelical ACPress.net and sourced to La Nación,
which said, “Wallenberg, an unselfish benefactor, was kidnapped by the
invading Soviets on January 17th, 1945. He was taken to the military
headquarters of the Red Army to the east of Budapest and nothing more
was heard of him. It is thought that he might have died later in Russia. (Pictured: Raoul Wallenberg).
“Wallenberg, a Protestant architect, was the son of a business family.
He forged passports which the authorities accepted. He increased the
number of Swedish safe-houses to 30, his country being neutral in the
conflict. In this way, he managed to look after many refugees who would
otherwise have been deported and executed.”
The story went on to say, “Sixty years after his disappearance, the
Wallenberg Foundation is launching an international campaign to collect
100,000 signatures. It intends to present a petition to the United
Nations demanding an enquiry into what happened to the diplomat. They
are calling on the Russian authorities to put an end to the tragic
mystery and reveal what happened. A memorial to the diplomat in Vienna
still has the date of his death with a question mark: ‘4th August, 1912
- ?’, is how it reads.
“Many diplomats attended a memorial ceremony at which they called for
the mystery to be cleared up. Similar acts are to be held in other
cities. Survivors of the Nazi persecution who had been saved by
Wallenberg laid a wreath on the monument honoring the diplomat. Laszlo
Ladanyi recalled that he was 23 when he received a passport from
Wallenberg. Today he is 83 and he still has the passport at his home in
Buenos Aires, with profound gratitude for his benefactor.”
During the 1980's, interest in Wallenberg grew around the world. In
1981, he became an honorary citizen of the United States, in 1985 in
Canada, and in 1986 in Israel. All over the world, many people think he
is still alive and demand that he be released from his Russian
captivity. In Sweden and other countries — mainly the USA — Raoul
Wallenberg associations work endlessly to find answers to what happened
Raoul Wallenberg.
According to the Washington Post, in November 2000, Alexander Yakovlev,
the head of a presidential commission investigating Wallenberg's fate,
announced that the diplomat had been executed in 1947 in the KGB's
Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. He said Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former
Soviet secret police chief, told him of the shooting in a private
conversation. The Russians released another statement in December
admitting that Wallenberg was wrongfully arrested on espionage charges
in 1945 and held in a Soviet prison for 2½ years until he died.
The statement did not explain why Wallenberg was killed or why the
government lied about his death for 55 years, claiming from 1957 to
1991 that he died of a heart attack while under Soviet protection.
On January 12, 2001, a joint Russian-Swedish panel released a report
that did not reach any conclusion as to Wallenberg's fate. The Russians
reverted to the claim that he died of a heart attack in prison in 1947,
while the Swede's said they were not sure if Wallenberg was dead or
alive. The report did unearth evidence that the reason the Soviets
arrested Wallenberg was the suspicion that he was a spy for the United
States.
Dan Wooding is an award
winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his
wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid
to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service
(ANS). Wooding is the co-host of the weekly radio show, "Window on the
World" and was, for ten years a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network
in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest
of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is
published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com.
danjuma1@aol.com.
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