Spielberg's 1993 blockbuster "Schindler's List" touched the nerves of the world's painful memories of Nazi atrocities, and at the same time made "Schindler" a different person who risked saving Jewish lives during World War II. Representatives of nationals, such as the Irish pastor O'Flaherty who rescued thousands of Jews from the gas chambers, and He Fengshan, the Chinese consul general in Vienna, Austria, who handled visas for a large number of Jews to China during World War II. The most tragic "Schindler" who saved the largest number of Jews was Wallenberg of Sweden.
Wallenberg is one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. As a Swedish diplomat, he used his special status to rescue countless Jews from the brink of desperation during World War II. His rescue list is even heavier than the "Schindler's List". Fearlessly facing the threat of the German Gestapo, he worked until the end of the war, saving dozens of lives almost every day.
He was born into a noble family and had a wealthy family, and he was full of sincere sympathy for those dying. However, in 1945, Wallenberg suddenly disappeared in Budapest, and he has not been heard from since.
Saving Lives
After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, it began a criminal act of mass extermination of Jews. By July of that year, more than 400,000 people had been sent to death camps, and the remaining 200,000 Jews also became the Gestapo. Objects that are ready to be resolved within. Desperate Hungarian Jews sought the help of neutral embassies.
In July 1944, the 32-year-old Raoul Wallenberg was appointed first secretary of the Swedish embassy in Budapest to participate in the rescue of Jews. Wallenberg was born in a prestigious family in Sweden, the Wallenberg family, and can speak fluent Russian. The Swedish Legation set up a special operations unit, headed by Wallenberg, who hired hundreds of Jews to grant them diplomatic immunity and escape Nazi arrest. In addition, Wallenberg himself designed a Swedish protection passport to be issued to Jews. Such passports were useless under international law, but Wallenberg swayed between Germans and Hungarians to get them to recognize this special passport, which saved more than 13,000 Hungarian Jews.
Since then, Wallenberg has begun to build about 30 houses in Budapest "Sweden House" to provide refuge for Jews. He hung the Swedish flag in front of the "Sweden House", declaring it to be Swedish territory, and later as many as 15,000 Jews took refuge here.
In order to exterminate Hungarian Jews as soon as possible, in November 1944, German Nazis began to organize a brutal "death march" operation, forcing a large number of Jews to go to concentration camps on foot. Wallenberg has been following the marching ranks, handing them protective passports, food and medicine, and even bribing the Nazis with huge sums of money to free those in the ranks who hold protective passports. When the Germans transported Jews by train, Wallenberg, regardless of his life, got into the car, stood on the tracks, or climbed on the roof, and issued protective passports to the people in the car.
In January 1945, when he learned that the Germans were preparing to massacre one of the largest Jewish ghettos in Budapest, Wallenberg sent a letter to Schmidt, commander of the German army in Hungary, warning him to take full responsibility for the massacre. Schmidt saw that the defeat of the Nazis in Germany had been decided, and in order to leave a way out for himself, he did not implement this plan, and a large number of Jews were able to escape from death.
When the Soviets arrived in Hungary, 97,000 Jews were still living in the two Jewish ghettos in Budapest, and in other parts of Hungary, a total of 120,000 Jews had escaped the slaughter of the German Nazis. According to Wallenberg's friend Per Inger, Wallenberg rescued at least 100,000 Jews!
Mysterious disappearance
On January 13, 1945, the Soviet advance troops arrived in Budapest. Wallenberg explained to the Soviet army in Russian: he was the charge d'affaires of Sweden in Soviet-occupied Hungary. To explain his work in rescuing Jews in Hungary, he asked to visit the Soviet headquarters in Debrecen. The Soviet side agreed to his request.
On January 17, Wallenberg and his driver left Budapest under Soviet escort for the Soviet headquarters. Before leaving, he said to his colleagues: "I don't know if I'm a guest of the Soviets or their prisoner. I think I'll be back in eight days." Wallenberg disappeared without a trace. No trace.
Wallenberg's disappearance has attracted the attention of the Swedish government, which hopes that the Soviet Union will release Wallenberg as soon as possible. On March 8, 1945, Hungarian radio under Soviet control announced that Wallenberg had been killed on his way to Debrecen, possibly by Hungarian Nazis or the Gestapo.
However, Swedish officials and the Wallenberg family are very skeptical of this statement and have been demanding that the Soviet Union reveal the truth. In 1957, Sweden provided the Soviet Union with the testimony of prisoners who had been detained with Wallenberg, proving that Valsalva was indeed being held in Moscow. The Soviet Union was forced to admit the fact of arresting and imprisoning Wallenberg, but announced on February 6 of that year that after investigation, it was found that Wallenberg had died of a "myocardial infarction" on July 17, 1947. Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
However, the Soviet statement did not end the incident. As late as the late 1980s, sources continued to reveal that Wallenberg was still alive. For example, in 1951, after his release from the Soviet Union, Italian diplomat De Moor said Wallenberg was still being held in Cell 152 of Moscow's Lefotor Prison; Kalinski, a Polish Jew who was allowed to move to Israel, said that during his incarceration He met Wallenberg three times, the last time in October 1959; in 1973, another Soviet Jew testified to a U.S. commission of inquiry that he met in a labor camp on Wrangel Island in northeastern Siberia Wallenberg; the Stockholm International Court of Justice also testified that Wallenberg was still imprisoned in a prison in Leningrad in 1980.
The Swedish government and Wallenberg's family did not believe the Soviet Union's statement. For decades, Sweden and the Soviet Union had been negotiating the Wallenberg incident. statement. In 1982, the Swedish government released a detailed 13,000-page document on the incident, but it still failed to clarify the issue.
Jews around the world established Wallenberg committees to honor the legendary "Schindler", and Israel, the United States and Canada declared him an honorary citizen. On January 17, 1985, the "Wallenberg Committee" of at least 25 countries held commemorative activities. At the time, Swedish Prime Minister Palme issued a statement saying that "Wallenberg has today become a symbol of humanitarianism and self-sacrifice". The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, was full of respect for the diplomat. When he and his wife visited Israel in 2001, they specially visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum and planted a tree there to commemorate Wallenberg. In 2000, the Swedish Prime Minister visited Russia and reiterated the matter to President Putin, asking Russia to find out the truth as soon as possible
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Soon, Russia's "Commission for the Rehabilitation of Political Victims" recommended that Wallenberg be rehabilitated, which was approved by President Putin.
On November 28, 2000, Yakovlev, chairman of the Rehabilitation Commission, told the press that Wallenberg was killed by the Soviet secret police in Moscow's Lubyanka prison in 1947, "a case full of morality and politics. , we must admit that the old government made mistakes." On December 22, the Russian General Prosecutor's Office issued a statement acknowledging that Wallenberg and his driver were "victims of Soviet oppression."
The reason why Russia rehabilitates Wallenberg at present, of course, also has its own deeper considerations: on the one hand, it sends a signal to the West that the new generation of politicians led by Putin dares to face history and take responsibility. Trust; on the other hand, shows that Russia respects humanitarianism and human rights.
Although Russia euphemistically acknowledged the brutality of the Soviet secret police's arrest and killing of Wallenberg, it remained tight-lipped about how Wallenberg was treated during his detention. Wallenberg's family was not happy with Russia's response. Lawyers for the Wallenberg family even testified that Wallenberg was still alive and living in a Russian mental hospital.
In 2001, Soviet intelligence chief Sudoplatov revealed the real inside story of Wallenberg's case in his memoir "Intelligence and the Kremlin". It turned out that Wallenberg was arrested and escorted to Moscow by Bulganin, Deputy People's Commissar of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, in order to lure him into acting as a spy. However, Wallenberg, who has a lofty personality and firm belief, categorically rejected this "suggestion". What kind of torture he suffered in the special cell of the Lubyanka Ministry of Internal Affairs prison in Moscow, although there is no written proof, we can imagine.
Vyshinsky, a senior Soviet judicial official who participated in the infamous Moscow Trials in the 1930s, once proposed the execution of Wallenberg in a memo sent to Foreign Minister Molotov. In this regard, Molotov made positive comments. Less than two months after the instructions, Wallenberg died suddenly. Sudoplatov speculated, based on his more than 30 years of experience in the intelligence services, that Wallenberg was transferred to a special cell for testing poisons and gases, where he was injected with lethal venom in the name of healing. According to the documents of the prison medical department found by Su, the director of the prison medical department reported Wallenberg's death to the Minister of Security himself. According to the order, the body was immediately cremated without an autopsy. The reason for not dissecting is that the deceased died of poisoning.
The murder of the Swedish diplomat Wallenberg by the Soviet Union will, like the massacre in the Katyn Forest, become an indelible humiliation for this tyrannical empire. As a great humanitarian, Wallenberg will always be missed and respected by people.
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