Germany Demanded Hungarian Enforced Labour Two days following the Arrow Cross coup, Adolf Eichmann returned to Budapest. He wished to complete his task: To exterminate the „Budapest Jews“. The German envoy Veesenmayer drew up an agreement with Vajina. 50.000 Jews…
The Jews that were not rescued from the convoys, ended up in concentration camps, mainly Dachau and Mauthausen. In November 1944, according to a statement from Veesenmayer, 27.000 Jews, both male and female, headed for the Empire. A daily average…
Enforced Labour Battalion No. 701 Following the revolt in October 1944 many Jews were arrested and sent to „Enforced Labour“ contingents, many of which were „protected Jews“. Following protests and efforts from the legation department of the neutral countries, a…
“Shoot The Jewishdog Wallenberg“ Adolf Eichmann became very embittered due to Wallenberg´s activities. Eichmann had never come across such a resistance movement. In the presence of members of the Swedish „Red Cross“, Eichmann threatened the „Jewishdog“ Wallenberg with his life.…
The Rescue Of The “General Ghetto“ By the end of December, Raoul Wallenberg moved into an appartment in Pest. He wished to be closer to the people. To avoid abduction he was permanently on the move. On the 23rd of…
In March 2003 the first independent, non-governmental Commission in the Raoul Wallenberg case presented its findings in Stockholm.1 Headed by Ingemar Eliasson, a centrist politician and the current Swedish ‘Riksmarskalk,’ the group had the task of examining the Swedish political leadership’s actions in the Raoul Wallenberg case from 1945-2001.
(John Bradford 1510-1555, English Protestant martyr)
He was the modern St. George who saved thousands of people, fighting the ferocious occupying power, his only arms being sagacity temerity and wit, motivated by compassion for the persecuted, the tortured, while he himself becoming the victim of another totalitarian power.
I close my eyes and try to remember when it was I saw him for the last time. It was around 16th January 1945. Budapest was liberated – or occupied, depending on people’s ideology – by the Soviet troops. We were a small group of the Swedish Special Mission employees, staying at the vaults of the former British Embassy and the National Bank and were supposed to spend the night in the air raid shelter. It was probably too dangerous to go home in the evening. Somewhere in the building there must have been a burst pipe, water was rising always higher and we were moving up from one wooden shelf to a higher one, wondering if, having survived the German occupation and the Szalasy Arrow Cross government, are we now going to be drowned or only frozen to death? But our Guardian Angels saved us, the water stopped and we fell into an exhausted sleep.
Next morning with bleary eyes we said goodbye to Wallenberg who came by for a short visit prior to his going to Debrecen where he was to meet the Provisory Hungarian Government. We never saw him again. The Swedish Mission was rounded up; their task of saving the remaining Jewish population of Budapest was accomplished as far as was humanly possible.