News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Raoul Wallenberg

Date: January 04, 2001

Thanks to the Alliance for sending this out.

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Researcher: Wallenberg May Have Been Alive in 1989 By Peter Starck

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who Russia has said died in a Soviet prison in 1947, may have been alive as recently as 1989, a researcher said on Thursday.

Susan Ellen Mesinai, an independent consultant to a Swedish- Russian research commission set up to investigate Wallenberg's fate, said Russia had failed to produce any official records of his death.Wallenberg, hailed as one of neutral Sweden's greatest World War Two heroes after helping to save thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps by issuing them with Swedish passports, was last seen in Hungary in 1945 when he and his driver Vilmos Langfelder were arrested by Soviet troops.

Mesinai, writing in a column in the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, said Moscow's October 1989 invitation to Wallenberg's relatives to come and pick up the diplomat's personal belongings was "the most striking evidence that Wallenberg's death occurred at a later stage."

STANDARD BUREAUCRATIC PRACTICE

Mesinai said the Soviet bureaucracy had kept meticulous files on prisoners and that it had been standard practice to deliver the personal effects of deceased prisoners to relatives within six months, or else these were confiscated by the state. Until Russia explained satisfactorily why Wallenberg's belongings had been lying around and returned only in 1989, "the only logical explanation is that Wallenberg died at approximately that time," she said.

The Swedish-Russian commission is scheduled to present a report on its findings on January 12. Leaks of the report published in the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday said records indicated the Soviet Union had been willing to exchange Wallenberg for Soviet defectors to Sweden.

Sweden, however, turned down the offer, the newspaper said. In an editorial on Thursday, Svenska Dagbladet said the then Swedish government's "cynical foreign policy combined with compliance with the Soviet dictatorship" amounted to a betrayal of Wallenberg.

On December 22, Russia acknowledged for the first time that Wallenberg had been a victim of Soviet-era purges and said he had died in a Soviet prison.

But Russia's official rehabilitation, a 40-line communiqu which did not say how or exactly when Wallenberg and his driver had died, failed to shed any significant new light on the mystery surrounding their disappearance.

Alexander Yakovlev, head of a presidential committee on rehabilitating victims of Stalin-era repression, said in November he was sure Wallenberg had been executed in Moscow's Lubyanka prison in 1947.

Earlier Soviet accounts had referred to a handwritten note by a physician named Smoltsov, who said Wallenberg died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947. But Mesinai said Smoltsov had been dismissed in March that year and had not been on duty on July 17-18.

01/04/2001 08:25

Swiss Ex-Diplomat Still Mystified by 1946 ... By Marcel Michelson

ZURICH (Reuters) - The case of a Swiss diplomat saved in 1946 by Switzerland's willingness to trade prisoners with Stalin's Soviet Union, despite its ruthlessness with homecoming defectors, emerged from decades of obscurity this week.

Harald Feller, now 87, spoke to Reuters on Thursday after a Swedish newspaper contrasted his case with that of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg, like Feller, was seized in Budapest by Soviet troops at the end of World War Two but unlike him was never seen again.

Svenska Dagbladet reported on Wednesday that the Soviet Union offered to swap Wallenberg for Soviet citizens who had defected to Sweden, but Sweden turned down the offer on moral grounds, fearing for the fate of the Soviets if sent home.

Wallenberg, credited with saving thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps by issuing false passports or granting them protection under the neutral Swedish flag, simply disappeared.

Moscow maintained for years that he had died of a heart attack in 1947 in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka jail, aged 34. Last month however Russian authorities confirmed that he had been a victim of Stalin's purges.

Feller and colleague Max Meier were luckier. They had been stationed at the Swiss diplomatic mission in Budapest when they were arrested by Soviet troops in February 1945 and taken to Moscow. They were seized a day before Wallenberg, on the direct orders of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, the Swedish newspaper quoted a Russian document as saying.

FELLER KNEW NOTHING OF NEGOTIATIONS

"I still do not know why I was interned and I have no idea what went on to arrive at the prisoner swap of which I was a subject," Feller told Reuters. "Then one day out of the blue the news came we were to be returned to Switzerland," he said. He said the conditions of his internment had been "not that bad."

Meier died in December 1999, making Feller almost certainly the last survivor of the prisoner swap. The two Swiss were exchanged for two Soviets who might have shared the fate of many thousands of Soviet returnees -- execution or incarceration in the Gulag. "Together with M. Meier (Feller) was exchanged for two (Soviet) pilots," the Swiss diplomatic service's database says of the case. Feller said on Thursday he had not even known he was being exchanged for the Soviets at the time of his release. Nor had he been close to Wallenberg.

"I knew Wallenberg in Budapest because we were all diplomats but I did not work with him directly," he said. "In Moscow I never saw Wallenberg. We were in a special building for internees in Moscow and I have read that Wallenberg was in prison," he added.

Marc Perrenoud of the Independent Commission of Experts studying Switzerland's wartime past said Moscow had insisted it wanted the return of Soviet experts, especially those with defense secrets, who had sought refuge in Switzerland.

"There were some 10,000 people interned in Switzerland after the war. These were prisoners of war or forced laborers who had managed to escape from Germany into Switzerland," he said.

What happened to the Soviets returned home is unknown. "There are reports that many died at the hands of Stalin," the historian added. Swiss diplomatic archives show that Switzerland first proposed to exchange the Swiss diplomats for six Soviets who were behind bars in Switzerland for petty crimes, but quickly yielded to Moscow's demand for the two pilots instead."