Sen. Car Levin (D. Mich.), sponsored a bill approved last year naming a Washington street after Raoul Wallenberg, is now seeking the issuance of an official stamp to honor the famed World War II Swedish diplomat for his rescue of Jews from the Holocaust.
Wallenberg, who was responsible for saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps by issuing them protective Swedish passports, was declared by the Soviets to have died in 1947. Others, however, believe that he may still be alive in a Soviet prison.
Granted honorary U. S. citizenship in 1981, Wallenberg was commemorated by Congress last year by naming a Washington street in his honor. The street is the site of the soon-to-be-built Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Last year, Reps. Bill Green (R. N. Y.) and Tom Lantos (D. Calif.) obtained 115 signature in the House of Representatives on a petition to the Citizen’s Stamp Advisory Committee to issue a stamp commemorating Wallenberg. They asked that the Committee’s policy on not commemorating anyone less than ten years dead be waived in the Wallenberg case, since the diplomat’s status is uncertain.
In a letter to the Committee this week, Levin again urged the issuance of a Wallenberg stamp, stressing that such a commemorative stamp would in no way be a concession of his death.
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