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Corpus delicti

    Google translation from russia:

    In the historical center of Budapest, on the street Dohoney is an unusual monument – a weeping willow. Her thin metal branches – leaves-plate engraved with the names of Hungarian Jews – Holocaust victims.  Near willow plaque of black granite with the names of people fleeing the Nazis were doomed to inevitable destruction of the Jews. The first name on the list – Raoul Wallenberg. Thanks to Swedish diplomat Wallenberg, who worked in the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, sent to death camps escaped several thousand people.  January 17, 1945 Raoul Wallenberg was arrested in Budapest by Soviet troops and disappeared.

    Determining the fate of Raoul Wallenberg for many years by specialists from different countries. Nearly a decade led the search for historical records joint Russian-Swedish Working Group, established by intergovernmental agreement.  We investigated many versions examined hundreds of volumes of archival documents, held meetings with dozens of people.  But the researchers did not find the answers to critical questions: why the Soviet secret services was needed Wallenberg, what are the details of his stay in Soviet prisons, finally, what is the real reason and the date of his death? Documents related to Raoul Wallenberg, access is limited. Materials stored in the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service, in conjunction with the report of the Russian-Swedish group, and other documentary sources, allow to some extent to recreate a historical retrospective.

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    Americans in the gulag

      The little-known story of US citizens trying to escape the Depression

      Mountainous Kolyma, only a few hundred miles west of the Bering Strait, is the coldest inhabited area on earth. During Stalin’s rule, some 2 million prisoners were sent there to mine the rich deposits of gold that lie beneath the rocky, frozen soil. In 1991, when researching a book about how Russians were coming to terms with the Stalin era, I travelled to the region to see some of the old camps of Kolyma, legendary as the most deadly part of the gulag, some of whose survivors I had interviewed. In a country beset by shortages of building materials, all of the hundreds of former prison camps accessible by truck had long since been stripped bare. The only ones still standing were those no longer reached by usable roads, and to see them you had to rent a helicopter.

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      Varför är behovet av hjältar så stort just nu?

        ’Olyckligt det land som har behov av hjältar’ sa Brechts Galileo Galilei. Kännetecknande för många intellektuella och konstnärer, men även för vanliga människor efter andra världskriget var och är en stor skepticism mot hjältar. Efter att fascismen och stalinismen hade missbrukat hjältekonceptet väckte hjältedyrkan ofta mest avsky. Miljontals soldater hade mist livet och lämnade åtskilliga civila offer bakom sig. Hjälten förekom som superhjälte i serieteckningar och film eller som anti-hjälte i litteraturen. Men som konkret förebild? I alla fall i Västtyskland, där jag växte upp, var hjältar inte särskild populära.

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        Tidens Tribunal

          Historiker som ogärna vill diskutera moralen i Sveriges hållning under andra världskriget glömmer ofta att det var något redan samtiden gjorde. Och att även ett frikännande är ett domslut.. I den nyutkomna antologin “Säkerhetspolitik och historia” skriver statsvetaren och ambassadören… 

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          Raoul Wallenberg’s Lost Inheritance

            There has long been speculation about what Raoul Wallenberg inherited from the estates of his paternal grandparents, Gustaf and Annie Wallenberg. Gustaf died in 1937, Annie in 1952. New documents discovered in Stockholm Stadsarkiv (City Archive) [1] and described here for the first time, show that had Raoul returned from his imprisonment in the Soviet Union, he would have been quite well off. Raoul’s disappearance in 1945, however, ultimately led to forfeiture of his share of Annie Wallenberg’s fortune.

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            Why not a Word about Raoul Wallenberg?

              Historic truth is undoubtedly a most elusive substance and all historians face difficult choices. But authorized biographies carry an enhanced risk of avoidance and outright self-censorship. The biographies of Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg, written by two leading Swedish scholars – Håkan Lindgren and Ulf Olsson – , are no exception; in particular, with respect to one of the most controversial subjects in Wallenberg family history, the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg in the Soviet Union in 1945.

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              Prologue to Budapest: Raoul Wallenberg and Special-Metall Förening

                To researchers of the Raoul Wallenberg case, the years between Raoul Wallenberg’s return from Israel (then Palestine) in 1936 and his departure for Budapest, remain full of question marks regarding his personal and professional activities. We know he threw himself in a number of business ventures which did not yield great success. He also owned a small printing house (AB Tryck) which appears to have remained operational while he was in Budapest, but which faced difficulties in turning a profit.

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