Lubyanka prison

The FSB Should Open Up the Wallenberg File

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.

Karoly William Schandl

Karoly William Schandl was born in Budapest, Hungary on July 20, 1912. His father, Karoly Schandl Sr., was a lifetime member of the Hungarian Upper House and the president of OKH (Országos Központi Hitelszövetkezet), the National Credit Cooperative.

In 1944, Karoly William Schandl was a lawyer and chartered accountant. His residence was the upstairs apartment of his parents’ villa, at 16-18 Kelenhegyi ut (Street). The Schandl home on Kelenhegyi Street was next door to the Finnish embassy, which was also used by the Swedish legation. Raoul Wallenberg’s Swedish embassy was located a double house lot away. Karoly was hiding a Jewish friend in his apartment, and was a member of the British underground. His group was led by his best friend, Gabor Haraszty, a Hungarian lawyer of Jewish origin and trained British agent. Gabor’s ISLD (SIS) code name was ALBERT. He was also connected to MI9. The group helped those who needed to escape, and was engaged in gathering military intelligence for the Allies. Secret meetings with Gabor Haraszty were held at Karoly’s private apartment, and sometimes those meetings were attended by Raoul Wallenberg.

Raoul Wallenberg and his killers

Google translation from russia. Rearranged by Maribeth Barber.

Raoul Wallenberg. Was prisoner number 7?

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.

RAOUL WALLENBERG WAS PRISONER NR 7 !!!

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.

The Thorny Truth

On August 28 Dr. Guy von Dardel, Raoul Wallenberg’s maternal half-brother, died peacefully in Geneva, Switzerland, having just reached his 90th birthday. On September 3, at a simple but elegant ceremony at the Eglise Evangelique, von Dardel’s notable contributions were celebrated in a heartfelt eulogy. However, his death received little coverage in his native Sweden, despite his membership in the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and previous position as Professor of Physics at Lund University.

Stuck in Neutral

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.