March 2012

A major challenge for researchers  in the Raoul Wallenberg case has always been how little original documentation about the young Swedish diplomat survives from his adult life before 1944. Few personal letters or other documents have been preserved.

In particular, such papers would fill in important information about Wallenberg’s personal and professional contacts before he was sent to Hungary in July 1944 on a humanitarian mission to aid its Jewish population. Hungary had been formally allied with Nazi Germany since 1940, but Germany had nevertheless moved to occupy the country on March 19, 1944. In a short few months, almost 500,000 Jews were deported to exterminations camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia.