The Soviet Union has received a new request to disclose the fate or whereabouts of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, missing in the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. The request was made in a letter to President Leonid Brezhnev by U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D. Det.), head of an American Senate mission which recently visited Moscow to discuss arms reduction.
Biden’s letter is the fourth appeal for Wallenberg in recent weeks. There have been two inquiries by U.S. government officials in Washington and late last month the Swedish Prime Minister Old Ullsten wrote to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin requesting a new investigation of the entire affair. Wallenberg, who would have been 67 years old on Aug. 4, was kidnapped in Budapest in 1945 after rescuing thousands of Jews from the Nazis and has been reported to be still in a Soviet prison.
Interviewed by the Swedish news agency bureau in Moscow, Biden is reported to have said he was personally convinced that Wallenberg was still alive and it was extremely urgent that the Soviet authorities should trace him. Whatever had happened to Wallenberg in the past, he said, he saw no reason for condemning the present Soviet government which had nothing to do with the case.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
