This spring marks the 65th anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary. Earlier this week, Holocaust Remembrance Day was held in Ottawa, with survivors, MPs and senators from all parties, ambassadors from about fifty countries and many others recalling the worst catastrophe in recorded history inflicted by Hitler’s regime, which included one and a half million children among the six million murdered.
In Sweden, many people are quite tired of Raoul Wallenberg. They, as Swedes, may not shout out directly ‘Do not bother us with this old story again’ but from their reluctant reactions you recognize at once, you better be quiet. However, their reactions could also be understood in a more positive sense. In Sweden, heroes are not very popular – it is a nation driven by the wish to build a democratic society which should be open for each and every one; that also means that no one should stick out! If we leave out the moral guilt official Sweden feels for one of their greatest sons, whom they ingloriously abandoned after the end of World War II when Raoul Wallenberg became a prisoner of the Soviet Union, we understand that the Swedish reactions are not quite as inappropriate as they may seem at first.