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Wallenberg probe

January 18, 2012

Sweden is to open a new probe into what happened to World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg after he was captured by the Soviets in 1945. The diplomat would have turned 100 this August if he had lived.

https://p.dw.com/p/13lVk
B&W photo of Swedish diplomat and World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg.
Wallenberg would have turned 100 in 2012Image: AP

Sweden is to open a new probe into what happened to World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg after he was captured by the Soviets in 1945.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has asked experts to see whether any new material has emerged that could shed new light on what happened to the Swedish diplomat after he was arrested in Hungary by the Soviet Red Army on January 17, 1945.

Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman and diplomat, is credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from being sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II by providing them with false papers.

Russia has conceded that Soviet authorities wrongfully persecuted Wallenberg, who is believed to have died in a Soviet prison. The Russian prosecutor-general's office has posthumously rehabilitated him, saying he was wrongfully imprisoned in a KGB jail for political reasons until he died more than a half-century ago, at the age of 34. The Soviets said he died of a heart attack in prison and Russia has never retracted that explanation.

Questions about Wallenberg's fate remain

There has however never been conclusive proof of what happened to Wallenberg. Unverified witness accounts and new evidence suggest that he may have lived beyond 17 June, 1947 - the date Russian experts said Wallenberg died, probably having been executed, while in Soviet custody.

"We feel that now after a lot of time has passed there may be a possibility to dig up new information," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt's spokeswoman Anna Charlotte Johansson told AFP.

New documents claim KGB interference

Swedish diplomat Hans Magnussen is to lead the new probe. He led a Swedish-Russian working group on Wallenberg during the 1990s during a brief period of openness before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. On Monday, US researchers told the Associated Press that a newly found Swedish document shows how the KGB intervened in the early 1990s to stop that investigation.

At a ceremony in Budapest Tuesday, Hungary, Sweden and Israel launched the Raoul Wallenberg Year to honor his efforts. August will see the centenary of his birth.

Author: Wilhelmina Lyffyt (AP, AFP)
Editor: Michael Lawton