New Evidence on Wallenberg’s Fate

New evidence is emerging here about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg,

the Swedish diplomat missing in the Soviet Union after helping to save thousands of Jews in wartime Hungary.

A hitherto unknown witness claims he met Wallenberg in the Lubyanka Prison months after July 17, 1947, the date the Russians say he died. Another witness says that he heard about Wallenberg in the early 1960s in Vladimir Prison. Both appeared here at an international hearing of the case organized by Wallenberg’s sister and brother supported by sympathizers from Israel, Britain, the United States, France and Austria.

The first witness was Andre Lipchitz, stepson of the late Jacques Lipchitz, the famous Lithuanian-born Jewish sculptor. Lipchitz, a bachelor in his late 60s, gave his evidence at the hearing where he spoke under the assumed name of Andre Shimkevitch.

He said that he was Wallenberg’s cellmate for two days in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison shortly before Christmas, 1947. If true, his statement further discredits Moscow’s contention that Wallenberg had a fatal heart attack at Lubyanka on July 17, 1947. It also boosts the plausibility of witnesses who say they saw Wallenberg long after that date.

Another man, who says he heard about Wallenberg in the early 1960s, is Dr. Marvin Makinen, a Finnish-American who spent two years in Vladimir Prison at the same time as Gary Powers, the famous U-2 pilot. Makinen had been accused of espionage while on a visit to Kiev. He is now a biophycisist in the U.S.

Another report about Wallenberg was given by Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi-hunter who helped trace Adolf Eichmann in South America. He quoted an unnamed witness as saying that Gen. Gennady Kuprianov had encountered Wallenberg in 1953 and 1954. Some details of these meetings were reported in the West two years ago. Kuprianov was then said to have been interrogated by the KGB in the course of which he died.

BREAKING WORLDWIDE SILENCE

The conference which heard all this evidence, as well as a lot more tenuous information, was intended to break the world-wide silence which has hung over the Wallenberg case for the past 36 years. It was the culmination of nearly two years of efforts by concerned individuals in several Western countries.

In addition to Wiesenthal, participants included Elizabeth Moynihan; MP Greville Janner, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews; Elie Wiesel, who heads President Carter’s Holocaust Memorial Commission; Gideon Hausner, prosecutor at the Eichmann trial, and French Nobel Prize winner Prof. Andre Lwoff.

After hearing first hand accounts of Wallenberg’s wartime work both from his Swedish collaborators and Jewish proteges, as well as copious evidence about Wallenberg’s detention in the Soviet Union, the conference unanimously resolved that it believed the Swedish diplomat is still alive.

It said it would ask the Soviet Union to receive a delegation to discuss the matter in Moscow and that meanwhile the Wallenberg Association would seek the help of Western Communist parties and international human rights agencies.

But 24 hours after the conference ended the Soviet Embassy here refused to accept the resolution and would not let its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Ingrid Gaerde Wideman of Sweden past the Embassy gates in her bid to see the Soviet Ambassador.

The Swedish government on the other hand is making no secret of its strong sympathy for the conference. Ola Ullsten, the Foreign Minister, said Sweden welcomed all efforts to clarify Wallenberg’s fate. Although the Soviet government claims Wallenberg died in 1947, he said, “the Swedish government has never accepted this as the final answer.”

One of the chief participants in the conference was Annette Lantos, wife of Rep. Thomas Lantos (D.CA), who has said that his first piece of legislative business will be to propose that honorary American citizenship be conferred on Wallenberg. The Swedish diplomat’s Budapest mission was undertaken at the behest of the Roosevelt administration during World War II. Both Mrs. Lantos and her husband come from Hungary and were saved by the protection of the Swedish and Portuguese representatives there.