News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Answers Trickle Out on Wallenberg's Fate

Date: January 24, 2001

"Wallenberg mystery lives Despite claims of Russians, activists push for explanation of hero's death NICOLAS VAN PRAET The Gazette

GORDON BECK, GAZETTE / Researcher Susan Mesinai says there is "zilch" to prove Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was shot by the Soviets as a spy in 1947, despite current claims of Russian officials.One week from today, Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler will ask Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson to re-constitute an international commission to solve one of the 20th century's lasting mysteries - what happened to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg?

After a 10-year effort by a joint Russian-Swedish team failed to arrive at a conclusion about the fate of the mythical World War II figure who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps, Cotler says the need to know for sure what happened to the lost hero of the Holocaust is stronger than ever.

It was that need that brought Cotler and more than 200 others to Place de la Cathedrale in downtown Montreal yesterday to a conference on the fate of Wallenberg, organized by the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for Humanity.

"The question is," said Susan Mesinai, a researcher who presented the findings of a three-year study into the diplomat's life, "how is it possible to save the hero who saved so many?"

As part of a strong Swedish diplomatic machine working to save Jews, Wallenberg secretly issued hundreds of real and fake Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews to save them from death camps.

Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, he disappeared mysteriously on his way to the Soviet army barracks outside Budapest. It was the last time he was seen as a free man.

Last November, 50 years later, a Kremlin official finally acknowledged that Wallenberg had been sent to the KGB-run Lubyanka prison.

The Russians claim he was shot after being accused of spying for the United States. They maintain he died in July 1947.

Mesinai and other independent researchers think otherwise.

Mesinai spent years sifting through classified Russian archives. Her conclusion: Wallenberg was probably a prisoner in a Moscow penitentiary, kept there long after 1947, perhaps as long even as 1989.

There is strong evidence that on three separate occasions three decades apart, in 1946, 1956 and 1966, the Russians made overtures to Sweden to see whether that nation would consider a trade for the diplomat, Mesinai says.

Perhaps the strongest proof that the Swedish diplomat lived longer than the Russians are letting on is a 1947 registry of all the possessions of all prisoners in the Lubyanka prison.

The registry shows when the inmates arrived at the prison, when they left or died, and where their possessions went. That is, it would if the information were there.

In fact, the names of four prisoners are blotted out. The Russians say that means those prisoners were killed. However, one of those four prisoners, an Armenian priest, was let go. He returned home.

That proves the Russians aren't telling the truth, Mesinai says.

"There is absolutely no proof that Ralph Wallenberg was killed in 1947. Zilch.

"If he died in 1985 or 1989, think about what that means. Mikhail Gorbachev was leading the country then.

"It's easy to say he died in 1945, that it's history, that it's a tragic mistake. But what if it isn't history?

"What if it's recent history? What are we going to do about this?"

Cotler said a high-ranking KGB official told him that there is a clear reason Russia is embarrassed to disclose any further information about the Swedish diplomat: Wallenberg had information about a secret understanding between high-ranking Soviet officers and the Nazis.

"That still might implicate some Russian officials today," Cotler said.

But why is it so important to know what happened to Wallenberg?

And, as historian Paul Levine asked recently, are we fascinated by him because of his life, because he did remarkable things during dark times, or because of the riddle of his fate?

Yesterday's reflections did much to honour his courage. But what Wallenberg did was no myth, Cotler said.

"When the Nazis decided to blow up the Budapest ghetto, he warned the Nazi generals that they would be hanged if they went though with it. And they didn't.

"Seventy thousand people were saved because of his act of bravery. And his bluff."

He showed us that the act of one person can change the course of history, noted Sylvain Simard, Quebec's immigration minister.

Clifford Lincoln, a longtime Liberal MP, said: "Wallenberg represents far more than one human being. He is a symbol of a huge thrust of human freedom."

Russian officials now claim there is no more information to tap, that all the other files have been lost or destroyed.

Others aren't so sure.

"This truth can be reconstructed even if the authorities aren't prepared to release the smoking gun whole," Mesinai said.

"We're getting the truth drop by drop."