Simultaneous demonstrations will be held March 27 on the East and West Coasts to marshal public opinion in support of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved some 100,000 Hungarian Jews from death during World War II and who is believed to have been imprisoned in the Soviet Union for the last 35 years.
Avron Brog, chairman of the New York regional toward of the Anti- Defamation league of B’nai B’rith, announced today that the demonstration here sponsored by the ADL’s New York regional office and the United States Free Wallenberg Committee, will begin at 7 p.m. at the ADL national headquarters followed by a candlelight procession to the nearby Isaiah Wall across from the United Nations.
During the demonstration, on attempt will be made to telephone Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police, and appeals will be read written by authors Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
In San Francisco, a candlelight ceremony will be held at the same time, 4 p.m. there, in front of the Soviet Consulate according to Mrs. Annette Lantos, of Hillsborough, Calif, one of the chief organizers of US, efforts in behalf of Wallenberg Mrs. Lantos, in a telephone interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said that efforts are being made to organize demonstrations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Toronto.
‘A HEROIC ACT OF SALVATION’
Noting that Wallenberg was arrested by the Russians Jan, 17. 1945, three days after the Red Army marched into Bucharest, Mrs., Lantos said that 35 years later the Soviet Union should admit it made a mistake and release him. She said what Wallenberg did in rescuing Jews was “a heroic act of salvation” which, during the Nazi period, was “tragically rare.”
Mrs. Lantos was one of the Hungarian Jews rescued by Wallenberg. She was then 12 years old. Her husband, Tom Lantos, a professor at San Francisco State University, was also a teenager in Hungary at the time.
Mrs. Lantos told the JTA that she believed Wallenberg dead until three-and -a half years ago when the first report reached the West that the Swedish diplomat was in a Soviet prison camp. She said since then she has “devoted” herself to effort to gain Wallenberg’s freedom.
Wallenberg was sent to Hungary in 1944 by the Swedish government at the request of the U.S. to help rescue 100,000 But when the Russian troops moved into Budapest, he was arrested and disappeared, Soviet officials long denied that he’ was in their custody but in 1957 they said he died in prison in 1947. However, in recent years several Jewish prisoners have reported seeing a Swedish prisoner and Wallenberg is the only known Swede to have been arrested by the USSR.
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