President Reagan today urged the Soviet Union to make known the whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who helped save some 100,000 Jews from the Nazis in Hungary during World War II.
The State Department, which along with the White House released the President’s statement, noted that today was the 40th anniversary of Wallenberg’s disappearance.
He was captured by the Red Army in Budapest on January 17, 1945, and although reports have come out of the Soviet Union that he has been seen alive in prison camps, the only Soviet statement so far was in 1957 claiming that he had died in a Soviet prison 10 years earlier. If he is alive, he would be 72 years old.
‘ONE SHINING LIGHT OF INSPIRATION’
“In the depth of the horror of World War II, Raoul Wallenberg was one shining light of inspiration, upholding the honor of the human race,” Reagan said. “The world owes a tremendous and eternal debt of gratitude to this great man. And the Soviet Union owes the world a full and complete accounting of his fate.”
Reagan noted that “The U.S. government has repeatedly raised Wallenberg’s case with the Soviet government and has requested a full and satisfactory clarification of his fate.”
The President pointed out that in 1981 he signed a law making Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen “as a reflection of gratitude which all Americans owe to Raoul Wallenberg.” The legislation had been introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos (D. Calif.) who, as a young Jew in Budapest, worked with Wallenberg in his rescue attempts.
Other than Winston Churchill, Wallenberg is the only non-American to receive honorary citizenship, Reagan said. “To be true to our own values this was the least that we — as Americans — could do to underscore our unbounded admiration for Wallenberg’s courage and dedication to humanity and the abhorence with which we view his unjust and illegal imprisonment by the Soviet government,” the President declared.
DAY MARKED BY SPECIAL CEREMONIES
The 40th anniversary of Wallenberg’s disappearance was marked by special ceremonies today in Los Angeles and New York. (See separate story.)
Today’s anniversary was also marked throughout the Western world by 25 Raoul Wallenberg Committees. In the U.S., churchbells all over the country rang 40 times at noon. In Melbourne, Australia, a statue of Wallenberg was unveiled in his memory.
Wallenberg, then in his early 30s, was sent by neutral Sweden to its legation in Budapest in 1944 with a mission to save Jewish lives. He set up safe houses for Jews and even pulled them from cattle cars bound for the death camps, claiming they were Swedish citizens. He was last seen in the company of a Red Army officer being driven to Soviet headquarters in the town of Debrecen. Why he was arrested remains as much a mystery today as his subsequent fate.
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