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Wallenberg's operation in Hungary was to be just one of about half
a dozen similar ones, although it became the far most sensational. The
World Jewish Congress was set to choose a suitable person for the
assignment through Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis, Chief Rabbi in Stockholm. Though
ultimately Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jewish director of a trading
company, suggested Raoul Wallenberg. Lauer's suggestion was initially met
with scepticism concerning Wallenberg's lack of diplomatic experience and
his young age - he was 32 at the time. Nevertheless Wallenberg had two
important qualities on his side; his internationally famous and
well-regarded family name and his winning personality; Wallenberg has been
described as bright, energetic and courageous. In the end, Iver Olsen,
being the representative of the WRB as well as the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS; later known as the CIA) in Stockholm, assured himself of
Wallenberg's good qualities and obtained the acceptance of this mission
from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The main arrangements for
Wallenberg's work in Budapest were to provide him with a diplomatic
passport and a rank as a secretary at the Swedish Legation (Embassy) in
Hungary. He would not receive instructions from the Swedish Foreign
Ministry, but from the WRB, which together with the Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee (JOINT) also would generate the financial recourses
needed for the mission. No documents have been found in the Ministry for
Foreign Affairs' archives concerning Wallenberg's appointment, meaning
that he was not actually working for the Swedish Government, although he
was included into the staff at the Swedish Legation. It must be pointed
out that Wallenberg was not to be acting under the name of the WRB, even
though he effectively did work for them. He was not given detailed
instructions but something more like general guidelines. These guidelines
included an account of the financial arrangement, descriptions of various
escape-routes from Budapest and a list of valuable contacts in the area.
Upon Wallenberg's arrival in Hungary,
approximately 400 000 provincial Jewish men, women and children had
already been deported to the extermination camps in Poland, under the
direction of Adolf Eichmann. Only about 200 000 Jews remained in the
capital. Eichmann was now preparing to erase the entire Jewish population
within a short period of time. Soon after his arrival, Wallenberg
organised the creation of a special department at the Swedish Legation, in
charge of saving Jews. The staff mainly consisted of Jewish volunteers,
who numbered over 300 in the last months of the operation. The Swedish
Legation in Budapest was already before Wallenberg's arrival issuing
provisional passports and certificates to Jews with Swedish connections.
Wallenberg's first task became to extend this idea and start
mass-producing these protective documents. He had previously learned about
the German and Hungarian weakness for external symbolism. Therefore an
impressive protective passport ("schutz-pass" in German) printed
in yellow and blue with the Three Crowns coat of arms in the middle, was
designed. In actual fact, these protective passports had no value what so
ever, from the view of international law. With rather shocking and
unconventional methods (everything from bribery to blackmail threats) he
succeeded to issue more then 10 000 of these protective passports. As
Eichmann's tactics grew increasingly brutal, Wallenberg built up a network
of "Swedish Houses", where Jews could seek shelter. The number
of sheltering Jews in these houses soon rose to about 15 000 people. As a
last effort, before disappearing into the Soviet prison system, Wallenberg
stopped an ordered massacre of 50 000 Jews in the Jewish ghetto of
Budapest. Two days later The Soviet troops arrived finding 120 000 Jews
living in Budapest. Some estimations say that Wallenberg must be given
credit for having saved approximately 100 000 of them. |
