In July 1944, Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest as a Swedish diplomat with a secret mission funded jointly by the U.S. War Refugee Board and Swedish government: save as many Hungarian Jews as possible from the ongoing deportation to Auschwitz.

Adolf Eichmann had arrived in Budapest in March 1944 and had organized the deportation of over 437,000 Hungarian Jews in just 56 days — the fastest mass deportation of the Holocaust. By the time Wallenberg arrived, the Jews of Budapest — approximately 200,000 — were the last large Jewish community still alive in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Schutzpass

Wallenberg designed a protective document — the Schutzpass — that declared the bearer to be under the protection of the Swedish Crown pending emigration to Sweden. The document was legally meaningless but looked impressively official, with the Swedish coat of arms and multiple stamps. He issued thousands of them.

More remarkably, Wallenberg used personal courage that bordered on recklessness. He climbed on top of deportation trains and handed Schutzpasses through the roof hatches to people inside. When guards threatened to shoot him, he ignored them. He established "Swedish houses" — 32 buildings in Budapest flying the Swedish flag — that sheltered approximately 10,000 Jews.

The Final Days

When the Arrow Cross (Hungarian Nazis) began a reign of terror in October 1944 — massacring Jews on the banks of the Danube — Wallenberg worked around the clock, issuing passes, bribing officials, and threatening German and Hungarian officers with prosecution after the war. On at least one occasion, he personally confronted Eichmann, who reportedly considered having him killed.

On January 17, 1945, as Soviet forces entered Budapest, Wallenberg went to meet the Soviet military commander. He was never seen freely again. The Soviet Union claimed he died of a heart attack in a Moscow prison in 1947, but evidence suggests he may have survived much longer in the Gulag. His fate remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

He was declared Righteous Among the Nations in 1963 and has been made an honorary citizen of the United States, Canada, Hungary, Australia, and Israel.