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February 2012
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Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg
(4 August 1912 ? disappeared 17 January 1945)
[2]
was a
Swedish
businessman and
diplomat
. He helped save about 100,000 Hungarian
Jews
from being killed by the
Nazis
in 1944, during
the Holocaust
in
World War II
. He often risked his life, and later won worldwide admiration for his heroic eforts.
Wallenberg was born in Kapptsta, near
Stockholm
. He was a member of a prominent family of bankers and industrialists. He visited
Hungary
on business in the early 1940s, during World War II. Wallenberg became increasingly disturbed by the plans of Nazi leader
Adolf Hitler
to
kill all the Jews
of Europe. In 1944, the World Jewish Congress and the American War Refugee Board asked Wallennberg to help and he agreed to go to Hungary to save the remaining Jews there.
The Swedish government sent Wallenberg to serve as a diplomat in
Budapest
, Hungary's capital. He gave Swedish
passports
to about 20,000 Jews, allowing them to ask for the protection of the neutral Swedish government. He also protected Jews in houses he bought or rented with his own money or money from the groups that had sent him. Wallenberg, a
Lutheran
, was assisted by
Roman Catholic
and other non-Jewish leaders.
Adolf Eichmann
, a Nazi official who directed the sending of Jews to concentration camps, ordered Wallenberg to stop interfering with German plans for the Jews. Wallenberg said no. Eichmann tried to have Wallenberg killed, but he was not killed. In the final days before the liberation of Budapest by
Soviet
soldiers, Wallenberg persuaded the Nazis to stop a plan to kill 70,000 Jews who were forced to live in a
ghetto
(separated part) of the city.
In January 1945, Soviet forces arrested Wallenberg. They apparently believed he was an American spy. In 1957, the Soviet government reported that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in prison in 1947. But several people said that they saw him alive in Soviet prisons and hospitals after 1947.
In 1981, the United States Congress made Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen.
- ↑
Stockholm, Agence France-Presse in (31 October 2016).
"Sweden declares Raoul Wallenberg dead 71 years after disappearance"
.
The Guardian
.
- ↑
He is presumed to have died in 1947, although the circumstances of his death are not clear and this date has been disputed. Some reports claim he was alive years later. 31 July 1952 is the date of death declared by the Swedish Tax Agency in October 2016 and determined in accordance with Swedish law.