Planned events will highlight the remarkable courage the Swedish businessman showed when in July 1944, at age thirty-one, he accepted a diplomatic appointment to go to Budapest, Hungary to confront the ruthless Nazi death machinery.
By the time of Wallenberg’s arrival it had swallowed up five-hundred thousand Jews of the Hungarian countryside and the less than two-hundred thousand left in the capital were about to meet the same fate.
Driven by the young Swede’s relentless energy, a wide network of diplomatic colleagues and other helpers managed to save thousands of Budapest’s Jews.
Already by the end of the war Wallenberg’s reputation had achieved legendary status. However, in January 1945 the rescuer himself became a victim when he disappeared as a prisoner in Stalin’s GULAG.
Largely abandoned to his fate by his home country, the disgraceful lack of efforts on his behalf prompted a public apology to Wallenberg’s family by then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson in 2001.
Sweden’s relationship with what should be its favourite son has always been a complicated one. For his countrymen, he has often proved to be a problematic hero; someone who is admired, but not universally loved.
While Wallenberg’s reputation has steadily grown abroad – he is an honorary citizen of the U.S., Canada and Israel – Sweden did not dedicate an official memorial in his honour until 1997. Not surprisingly, the 2012 commemoration is again geared largely towards a foreign audience.
“The official Raoul Wallenberg year serves primarily to use him to advertise Sweden abroad as a morally outstanding country,” says art historian Tanja Schult who has studied Wallenberg as a cultural symbol.
“But it obscures the fact that the very qualities Wallenberg represents – independent, conscience driven action – stood in contrast to official Sweden’s treatment of the European Jews, at least until 1942/43, and have been a major source of conflict with his own country.”