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Letter to President Peres

    Could I kindly ask for your assistance, on humanitarian grounds, in clarifying your position on the case of Raoul Wallenberg, Israel’s first Honorary Citizen? (Please see Knesset sub- committee statement at the end of this letter and the reply of… 

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    Open letter to Dr. Vasily S. Khristoforov Director, FSB Archives Directorate Federal Security

      Dr. Vasily S. Khristoforov Director, FSB Archives Directorate

      Federal Security Service

      Bolshoi Lubyanka Street, House 2 Moscow, Russia 101000

      In re: Your article about Raoul Wallenberg in “Vremya” of January 19, 2009

      Dear Vasily Stepanovich,

      All of us, as former members and consultants to the Russian-Swedish Working Group, were very pleased to read your thorough and very interesting article about the many puzzling questions that still remain in the case of the missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg. We believe your outline of some of the key issues that remain unresolved will help researchers such as ourselves to formulate incisive questions that can be followed up further in Russian archives. We welcome your article also because it provides an opportunity for a more direct exchange of views.

      One of the central problems in establishing all the facts of Wallenberg’s imprisonment in the Soviet Union, including the main question ‘What happened to him?’ once his trail breaks off in the Spring of 1947, is, as you stress, the problem of missing documents. But your article also helps us to identify areas of research where progress may well be possible.

      Read More »Open letter to Dr. Vasily S. Khristoforov Director, FSB Archives Directorate Federal Security

      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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