Marking 100 years since the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research will hold on Tuesday a symposium on Rescue Operations During the Holocaust.
The program will take place in the Yad Vashem Auditorium at 9:30 in Hebrew and English with simultaneous translation.
The symposium will take place with the participation of Swedish Minister for Integration, Erik Ullenhag (The Living Legacy of Raoul Wallenberg), Prof. Irwin Cotler, MP, former Canadian Minister of Justice (Raoul Wallenberg and his Humanitarian Legacy: What have we Learned? What Must we Do?, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, MK Dr. Marina Solodkin, Hungarian Ambassador to Israel HE Mr. Zoltan Szentgyorgyi, Holocaust survivor and activist in the Zionist Youth Movements’ Underground in Budapest David Gur, Michael Wernsted, representative of the Wallenberg family, Dr. Bengt Jangfeldt who has recently uncovered new documentation related to the period (Who was Raoul Wallenberg: A Biographical portrait), Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Dr. Robert Rozett, Director, Yad Vashem Libraries (Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest) and Prof. Dina Porat, Yad Vashem Chief Historian, who will chair the first session.
During the symposium, the Wallenberg Maquette, created by artist Philip Jackson and donated to Yad Vashem by Milla Gradel and Maurice Djanogly OBE, will be presented to Yad Vashem by Mr. David Gradel, where it will become part of Yad Vashem's Collections.
A special session of the symposium is dedicated to Rescuers and Survivors, with the participation of Irena Steinfeldt, Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem, Prof Dan Michman, Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Dr. Rafi Vago, Tel Aviv University, Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Editor-in-Chief, Publications Department, Yad Vashem. Dr. Bella Gutterman will moderate the session.
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish-diplomat in Nazi-occupied Hungary who led an extensive and successful mission to save the lives of nearly 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.
Born to a famous banking and industrial dynasty, his grandfather arranged a job for him at a Dutch bank in Haifa, in then-Palestine in 1935 where he first met Jewish escapees of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Deeply affected by their stories of persecution at the hands of the Nazis, he returned to Sweden, where he met his future business partner, Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew. Wallenberg began travelling extensively to Nazi-occupied France and Germany, witnessing German bureaucracy in practice, as well as visiting Lauer’s remaining family in Hungary.
As Hungary was invaded by Germany in 1944, the Germany’s began an intensive deportation program, sending the Hungarian Jewish population to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
When the US established The War Refugee Board (WRB) in 1944 with the aim of rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution, Wallenberg, with the help of his influential Hungarian partner Lauer, was chosen as first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest, charged with the mission of beginning to rescue Hungarian Jews.
When Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, 400,000 Jews had already been sent to Auschwitz, under the orders of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Nazi’s Final Solution for the extermination of Jews. Only 230,000 out of a pre-war population of approximately 750,000 remained.
Wallenberg used his role to launch a series of highly unconventional diplomatic efforts, ranging from bribery to extortion. Designing a Swedish protective pass to help Jews be legitimized by German invaders and their Hungarian allies, he began by issuing three times as many protective passes as he was authorised to and employed an exclusively Jewish staff to protect them from persecution.
As the situation deteriorated in Hungary and the Nazis overthrew Mikos Horthy’s collaboratist regime, Wallenberg established protective Swedish ghettos and often himself acting as a human shield to Nazi Jewosh-transportation trains, climbing aboard trucks to widely distribute Swedish protective passes to the Jewish population inside. When Wallenberg discovered Eichmann’s plans for a massacre of Budapest’s largest Jewish ghetto, he used his diplomatic connections to threaten the general in charge of the operation, August Schmidthuber, that should he proceed with the operation he would be hanged as a war criminal when peace was declared. The massacre was stopped as a result of Wallenberg’s intervention. When the Russians liberated Budapest days later, they found 97,000 Jews remaining in its two largest ghettos, but Wallenberg disappeared following their arrival in the city, never to be seen again. The Russians later claimed he died in their captivity on July 17, 1947
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, was established in 1953. Located in Jerusalem, it is dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education. www.yadvashem.org

EJP