This month the Swedish Foreign Office (UD), will present the final report
of the Swedish – Russian Working Group on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg (RW)”
about its ten year long investigation. In addition, the four independent
experts to the Commission, will issue separate reports on their findings
based on thorough examination of Russian archives, in particular those of
the Vladimir prison. These investigations cover a period of about 10 years
since the beginning of the Working Group.
There is however a prehistory, stretching back to 1945 when RW was arrested
by Soviet troops in Hungary, and started a long and obscure transit through
Soviet prisons and camps.
While in the beginning the Swedish Foreign Office carried the main burden
for the efforts to clarify RW:s fate, it soon became apparent that their
efforts had to be supplemented by independent investigations and pressure on
the Soviet Union. In the first place, I should mention Raoul ‘s and my
mother, Maj von Dardel, as well as my father, Frederik von Dardel, his
stepfather, who until their deaths in 1979 carried the heavy burden of
ensuring that everything was done to solve RW:s fate. They were helped by
many ardent collaborators, such as the Czech author Rudolph Philipp who
wrote the first Swedish book about RW:s achievements and was the first to
claim that RW:s later fate was far from certain; and Birgitta Bellander who
organised a joint committee of the major Swedish RW movements. This
initiative, outside of the UD, later evolved into the Swedish RW-Committee,
which for a long time was headed by Sonja Sonnenfeldt.