Focus on Issues Seeking the Truth About Wallenberg

“The only thing we want is the truth, what has happened to my brother. If he is alive then we want him back with us.”

This was the plea made today by Mrs. Nina Lagergren, the half-sister of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat, believed, held in a Soviet prison since the end of World War II. Wallenberg, a Christian, helped rescue more than 10,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during the war and was believed arrested by the Soviets when the Red Army captured Budapest in January, 1945.

Mrs. Lagergren made her plea at a press conference at the offices of the American Jewish Committee at which she announced the formation of a Free Raoul Wallenberg Committee in the United States by four U. S. Senators. She came here from Washington where she had spent several days in behalf of her brother, who, if alive, would be 66 years old.

The creation of the committee was announced in Washington yesterday by the Senators, Frank Church (D. Idaho); chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Claiborne Pell (D. RI). Daniel Moynihan (D. NY) and Rudy Boschwitz (R.Minn.). “Wallenberg’s tremendous courage and selflessness is one of the great modern examples of the Good Samaritan,” the four Senators, who are co-chairmen of the committee, said. “Wallenberg operated a modern-day equivalent of the underground railroad. If he is still alive, we must do everything possible to secure his freedom.”

The Senators said “there is too much evidence to accept the past Soviet statement that he died in 1947.” They said the Soviets “do not want to be forced to explain why they imprisoned someone whose only crime was saving lives.”

SPECIAL AMERICAN RESPONSIBILITY

At the press conference here, Richard Maass, president of the AJ Committee, said his organization would “fail in its duty” as a human rights agency if it did not join in the efforts to secure Wallenberg’s release. He noted the special American responsibility in that Wallenberg agreed to take up his efforts on behalf of Hungarian Jews after President Roosevelt asked the neutral Swedish government to help the Jews.

Also participating in the press conference were members of the U.S. Committee for Wallenberg: Mrs. Annette Lantos, of Hillsborough, Calif., a former Hungarian Jew, who is co-secretary of the committee along with Elizabeth Moynihan, wife of the Senator; John Berenyi, a New York investment banker, whose mother was rescued by Wallenberg; and Mrs. Dolly Cole, an editor and widow of Thomas Cole, a former president of General Motors, who is a friend of the Wallenberg family.

Mrs. Lantos said that she and other Hungarian Jewish survivors owe Wallenberg not only their lives “but more important, out faith and hope.” In the face of “man’s depravity” and “cruelty,” Mrs. Lantos said, Wallenberg demonstrated that a few men could rise to brotherhood and courage. She said those who were helped by Wallenberg want to bring his heroism before the public and help secure his release.

Berenyi, who was born after World War II, noted that his mother, grandmother, aunts and cousins were saved through Wallenberg’s efforts. He said neither they nor he would be here today without Wallenberg. Mrs. Cole said the Soviet government should realize that Americans do not consider it the same as the regime that ruled the USSR at the time Wallenberg was imprisoned and so it should be prepared to “right this wrong.”

REPORTS THAT WALLENBERG IS ALIVE

Mrs. Lagergren said that at first the Soviets did not admit that they had her half-brother but from 1947 on they claimed he had died in prison. However, she noted that since then there have been various reliable reports from released prisoners that Wallenberg was alive. The latest was from a Moscow Jew, Jan Kaplan, who was rearrested last December after he telephoned his sister in Tel Aviv and said he met in the Butyrka Prison in 1975 a Swedish prisoner who has been held since 1945. No other Swedish prisoner is known to have been imprisoned so long.

Fighting back tears, Mrs. Lagergren said her mother had carried out efforts for Wallenberg and she took over when her mother died in February. She said her mother was encouraged to make an international campaign by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when he came to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize after he was expelled-from the USSR. She said that Solzhenitsyn and other former inmates of Soviet prisons assured the family that someone could survive after more than 30 years despite the harsh conditions.

Mrs. Lagergren said her mother wrote to then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973 urging the U. S. to ask the Soviet Union about Wallenberg but never received an answer. She said that she has since learned that the State Department had prepared a letter to send to Moscow but Kissinger did not approve it. She said during her visit to Washington she did meet with State Department officials and they expressed interest in the case.

WIDE-SPREAD INTEREST REPORTED

Simon Wiesenthal, the Vienna-based Nazi hunter, has taken an interest in the Wallenberg case and has helped publicize it, Mrs. Lagergren said. She visited Israel last month where Premier Menachem Begin asked the U. S. to help. This resulted in Wallenberg’s name being presented along with other Soviet prisoners by the U.S. to the Soviets at the Vienna meeting between President Carter and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in June. In England, an all-party parliamentary committee has been formed by MPs Winston Churchill and Greville Janner, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Mrs. Lagergren noted that her family in Sweden was “alone” because few families there had suffered first-hand personal losses in World War II since Sweden was neutral. She said they were advised to be quiet not realizing such an attitude would convince the Soviets that no one cared about Wallenberg’s fate.

She also pointed to the special American responsibility since Wallenberg had acted at the request of the U.S. government. She noted that he had stayed in Budapest as the Soviets neared the Hungarian capital because he feared the Nazis would try to kill all the remaining Jews before surrendering the city and because he believed that he could convince the Soviets to help the Jews. In Washington, the four Senators said the committee will seek to substantiate information about Wallenberg, press the Soviet Union to release him if he is alive and rally world public support on Wallenberg’s behalf.