FSB and the Supreme Court ignored the order of their declassification (Google traduction) The Constitutional Court (CC) has published a decision on the appeal of the historian Nikita Petrov, which should ensure the access of citizens to the most socially…
Next year marks the 100th birthday of one of the 20th century’s most admired figures: Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi persecution in World War II Hungary only to be swallowed up himself in 1945 by Stalin’s Gulag. Although Soviet leaders claimed in 1957 that Wallenberg had died suddenly in the Lubyanka prison on July 17, 1947, the full circumstances of his fate in Soviet captivity have never been established.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the current chief of the Federal Security Service’s registration and archives directorate, Lieutenant General Vasily Khristoforov, emphasized that he, too, considers Wallenberg a hero and that FSB officials are doing everything to uncover more documentation. He strongly denied withholding any information that would shed light on the truth.
Yet it is indisputable that Russian officials for decades chose to mislead not only the general public but also an official Swedish-Russian Working Group that investigated the case from 1991-2001. This group included official Swedish representatives as well as Raoul Wallenberg’s brother, Guy von Dardel. Russia did not merely obscure inconsequential details of the case but also failed to provide documentation that goes to the very heart of the Wallenberg inquiry.
Chief among these are copies of the Lubyanka prison register from July 23, 1947. They show that a “Prisoner No. 7” was questioned on that day, six days after Wallenberg’s alleged death. Russian officials have since acknowledged that “Prisoner No. 7” almost certainly was Wallenberg. Researchers have yet to receive a copy of the full page of this Lubyanka interrogation register, in uncensored form, showing the complete list of interrogated prisoners and other details.
Google translation from russia. Rearranged by Maribeth Barber.
Radio Liberty published a letter from independent researchers Vadim Birstein and Suzanne Berger, a qualitatively new turn in the case of Raoul Wallenberg. Additional details of the case – in a conversation with one of the authors of the letter Vadim Birstein.
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944 by issuing protective passports to so-called “Swedish subjects” awaiting repatriation to their homeland. After the capture of Budapest by Soviet troops, he was arrested and taken to Moscow, where he was kept in the MGB inner prison in the Lubyanka. For many years, Stockholm unsuccessfully tried to discover the prisoner’s fate. In February 1957, Moscow officially made it known to the Swedish government that Wallenberg had died of a myocardial infarction on July 17, 1947, in Lubyanka Prison. In support of this version the Soviets presented a document–a report from the chief of the medical unit inside the prison, Smoltsov, addressed to Interior Minister Viktor Abakumov. This version did not satisfy the Wallenberg family, which holds high social status in Sweden.
In 1990, Vadim Birstein and current chairman of the Memorial Society, Arseny Roginsky, gained access to some of the archival collections of the MGB-KGB. In April 1991, I, as editor of the international department of the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, published an article by Vadim Birstein « The Mystery of the Prisoner number seven« , which presented the preliminary results of the study and questioned the official Soviet account of Wallenberg’s death. Subsequently, Moscow and Stockholm agreed to continue the work of the bilateral commission. However, in 2001, the Commission concluded that the search ended in a stalemate, and ceased to exist.
Dear Mrs. von Dardel, dear Marie and Louise,
We are writing to you to share the information enclosed below. As you know, over the last few years, we have continued an often slow but productive exchange with the archives of the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation (FSB). The latest round of discussions, in November 2009, have yielded a resounding surprise. In a formal reply to several questions regarding Russian prison interrogation registers from 1947, FSB archivists stated that « with great likelihood » Raoul Wallenberg became « Prisoner No. 7″ in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison some time that year. The archivists added that “Prisoner No. 7” had been interrogated on July 23, 1947 which – if confirmed – would mean that the Soviet era claims of Wallenberg’s death on July 17, 1947 are no longer valid. Never before have Russian officials stated the possibility of Raoul Wallenberg’s survival past this date so explicitly.
The Swedish Ambassador, Tomas Bertelman, and his staff responded quickly to the new information. In a letter addressed to Yuri Trambitsky, head of the FSB’s Central Archive, dated December 9, 2009, Bertelman asked Mr. Trambitsky for clarification, writing that “if this hypothesis is confirmed, it will be . . . almost sensational.”
We have also sent a detailed follow-up request to FSB officials, asking for more precise information about “Prisoner No. 7,” including procedural details pertaining to the assignment of numbers to prisoners under investigation, as well as possible steps to be taken to verify “Prisoner No. 7’s” identity and his fate after July 23, 1947. So far, Russian officials have not presented any additional information for their claim that “Prisoner No. 7” could be identical with Raoul Wallenberg.
We stress that an in-depth verification of the new information has to take place before any final conclusions can be drawn, but if indeed confirmed, the news is the most interesting to come out of Russian archives in over fifty years.
Google translation from russia. Rearranged by Maribeth Barber.
Swedish businessman and diplomat Raoul Gustav Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912 to one of the wealthiest families in Sweden. He studied at the University of Michigan (USA), where he received his diploma in architecture. In 1936 he went to work in Haifa (then part of Palestine).
He returned to Sweden in 1939 and became a partner in Kalman Lauer’s Hungarian export-import firm. In the summer of 1944, as the first secretary of the Swedish Mission, Wallenberg went to Budapest. Hungary, in March 1944, had been invaded by German troops. Taking advantage of his diplomatic immunity, Wallenberg saved, according to various sources, from 20 to 100 thousand Jews by issuing them Swedish passports. He placed them in specially purchased houses that were proclaimed as Swedish property, and thus were protected by international law. He also bribed German and Hungarian officials, promising ample supplies in exchange for Jewish lives.
On January 13, 1945, Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet patrol in the International Red Cross building in Budapest. (In another version of the story, he came to the location of the 151st Infantry Division and asked for a meeting with the Soviet command. According to a third account, he was arrested at his apartment.) After being questioned, he was sent under guard to Debrecen for a meeting with the commander of the Second Ukrainian Front, Rodion Malinovsky, who wanted to speak with him. On the road he was again detained and arrested by military intelligence (in another account, he was sent to the headquarters of a group of Soviet troops after being arrested in his apartment).
Thomas Bertelman,
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Ambassador of Sweden to the Russian Federation
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.
Dr. Vasily S. Khristoforov Director, FSB Archives Directorate
Federal Security Service
Bolshoi Lubyanka Street, House 2 Moscow, Russia 101000
In re: Your article about Raoul Wallenberg in “Vremya” of January 19, 2009
Dear Vasily Stepanovich,
All of us, as former members and consultants to the Russian-Swedish Working Group, were very pleased to read your thorough and very interesting article about the many puzzling questions that still remain in the case of the missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg. We believe your outline of some of the key issues that remain unresolved will help researchers such as ourselves to formulate incisive questions that can be followed up further in Russian archives. We welcome your article also because it provides an opportunity for a more direct exchange of views.
One of the central problems in establishing all the facts of Wallenberg’s imprisonment in the Soviet Union, including the main question ‘What happened to him?’ once his trail breaks off in the Spring of 1947, is, as you stress, the problem of missing documents. But your article also helps us to identify areas of research where progress may well be possible.
Maj Wallenberg’s husband Raoul died when she was pregnant and gave her new born baby the same name as his father, Raoul. Maj Wallenberg married Fredrik von Dardel some years later.
When Raoul Wallenberg diseapared in the URSS Maj together with her husband’s, Fredrik von Dardel, fought daily to get her son Raoul back home.
Fredrik von Dardel considered him as his son and was of a very precious help to his wife’s fight. He wrote a diary, with detailed historical facts about their fight.
Fredrik and Maj got two children Guy and Nina, married to Gunnar Lagergren.
Nina Lagergren has been much engaged at the Raoul Wallenberg association in Stockholm and has been very active with education at school with the Raoul Wallenberg Acadamy for young leaders.
Guy von Dardel, Raoul Wallenberg’s half brother, elementary partical physicist at CERN, fought since his abduction to get his brother home. It was due to his efforts that the first International Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg was established and that this group did groundbreaking work in Russian prison archives.
Fredrik von Dardel wrote a diary about their fight to bring their son home in 1952 up to 1978, the year before he passed away.
Guy von Dardel passed away in August 28 2009, after having hoped up to the last day to get the truth about his brother’s Fate. Guy von Dardel often said “The truth can and will be found and it will be, as the Romans said long ago, « a monument more durable than marble. »”. He left 85 archive boxes after a life long research for his brother. Writing letters to Swedish, American, Russian, Israelis Prime Ministers, Ministers, Presidents (his first was to President Truman) and other personalities.
Guy von Dardel as a private person, sues URSS in 1984. Five years late, in 1989 Guy von Dardel and his sister Nina Lagergren receives Raoul Wallenberg’s belongings at the time of his arrest (diplomatic passport; an ID, a diary; a golden cigarette case and money in old dollars and Hungarian pengos).
In 1990 the Joint Soviet-International Commission to Establish the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg that was formed and headed by Dr. Guy von Dardel, arrived to study the registration cards of the prisoner in the Vladimir prison. It confirmed the presence of witnesses who had given their testimony about the presence of Raoul Wallenberg at the prison. After consultation of the register cards there were many questions about a prisoner nr 7.
He also requested for Raoul Wallenberg being rehabilitated, which was approved by the Russian Government in 2000.
Guy von Dardel’s last letter was the Open letter to Dr. Vasily S. Khristoforov Director, FSB Archives Directorate Federal Security written together with the Independents Working Group, followed by the answer about the prisoner nr 7 who might have been Raoul Wallenberg.In november 2009 in a formal reply to several questions from the Independent researchers regarding Russian prison interrogation registers from 1947, FSB archivists stated that « with great likelihood » Raoul Wallenberg became « Prisoner No. 7″ in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison some time that year.