Raoul Wallenberg: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:30, 9 July 2007

Revision as of 07:16, 9 July 2007

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His immediate task in Budapest was to lend the War Refugee Board's support to the saving of Hungarian Jews. Details of his possible intelligence work are still uncertain, but it was quite likely that this was also part of his brief. (see Redovisning p. 44.) This work was already under way in Budapest when Raoul Wallenberg arrived, both under the auspices of the Swedish Legation and other neutral countries as well as through the agency of the papal nuncio. His arrival heralded an expansion of this activity but also a tightening of the rules surrounding it at the Swedish Legation. The expansion was, in all probability, an emulation of the example set by the Swiss, for whom every Palestine Certificate was regarded as a “family document”: it is likely that this was an initiative of Jewish individuals who were already issuing Swedish provisional passports at the Swedish Legation. The Hungarian authorities had limited these to a maximum of 4,500, presumably after they had approved the Swedes’ definition of 649 Swedish entry visas approved by the Swedish Foreign Office as “family visas”, with a corresponding increase in the number of protective documents.

It soon became well known that Wallenberg had substantial financial backing. First and foremost, this was revealed by the way he succeeded in tapping local Jewish funds. He had credit and could acquire considerable sums of money or quantities of goods against the promise that the money would be repaid into Swiss bank accounts. To a very great degree, Wallenberg’s influence hinged on the implicit knowledge of his background.{{factFact|date=July 2007}} He had been sent to Budapest at the behest of the WRB, but with the active involvement of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He had Swedish diplomatic status, answering initially to the First Secretary of the Legation, [[Per Anger]], but receiving his instructions directly from the WRB. He was given a long list of people to contact, and was directed to organize a network to protect Jews and to prepare escape routes from Budapest. Wallenberg contacted some of the names of the list – along with others who did not figure there – and presumably was even allowed access on one occasion to [[Horthy Miklós]] junior, the son of the Hungarian regent. Apart from this, however, there is no documentary evidence that he became involved in the development and coordination of the general rescue efforts in Budapest, nor that he collaborated with or assisted the resistance. On the contrary, it was he who was assisted both by the government and by the resistance in order to protect his wards.{{factFact|date=July 2007}}

Raoul Wallenberg was – in comparison with the papal nuncio, other diplomats from neutral powers and other individuals, like Valdemar Langlet, who were already involved in saving Jews – both too young and too inexperienced when he arrived. His callowness was even more striking compared to leading Jews in the Jewish Council and those working at the Swedish Legation. He lacked their extensive network of contacts and influence, especially in high political circles, so it would have been unthinkable for him to have been in charge of the entire rescue operation. This supposition seems to be borne out throughout the entire Horthy regime, for all the documents witness that it was the Swedish Envoy, Ivan Danielsson, and the First Secretary to the Swedish Legation, Per Anger, who handled all the contacts between the Swedish Legation and the government. Nor was there any immediate change in this situation even when the substantial amounts of money that Wallenberg had at his disposal began to pave the way for him to extend his circle of acquaintances and influence. His reports and diaries reveal that he spent relatively heavily on wining and dining, and other forms of entertaining.