Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest

This is a book that succeeds in ambition, but fails in depth; while it is plainly and succinctly written, I feel it would have increased in rating if the style were more personal; here, there are a lot of anecdotes, of which a lot are smarmy, yet interesting; it's a bit "Schindler's List" which goes to serve memory and what the Holocaust was about, on a human level, but this is really not for historians, neither for people looking for an in-depth version of the Raoul Wallenberg story.The story kicks off in a good way, where Raoul's relatives are concerned (bar his mother):<blockquote>The Wallenberg who is best known and most admired in this family of remarkable characters is one who was never fully accepted into their ranks. Raoul Wallenberg did not have the total support of his powerful relatives in his early professional struggles. More tragically, the Wallenbergs failed to play a vital, positive role in the life of their cousin, the Soviet captive. They have done precious little to win his freedom.[...]When, in 1947, President Harry Truman offered Marcus Wallenberg his personal help in extricating Raoul from Soviet custody, the elder Wallenberg thanked the American but declined the offer. “Raoul,” he told Truman, “is probably dead by now.”</blockquote>Raoul Wallenberg was on his own, clearly. A man from a very wealthy family in Sweden, he kissed his riches and former life goodbye in order to try and help people whose fate he learned more and more about. And, as such, he cajoled, lied, begged, forced his way, stole and borrowed as much as possible to get somewhere.But his life is not without critique. For example, even though he saved many thousands of lives through his great, unselfish actions, he saved the young and at times discarded people due to feeling unable to help them. Hence, yes, he was a human being. Hagiographies suck.The pace between how Wallenberged lived and worked and how Adolf Eichmann was, worked well:<blockquote>Eichmann invited the Jewish Council of Budapest to his headquarters. He faced eight frightened old men—bankers, lawyers and industrialists who had been stripped overnight of whatever position they had still retained in Hungarian society. They were now beggars. Eichmann made an attempt at humor. “You know who I am, don’t you? I am the one known as the bloodhound!” He roared with laughter, but it was not picked up by anyone else in the ornate lobby of the Majestic. He tried another approach. With his narrow, angular face, which was itself a broken promise, he leaned toward his “guests” and in low, confidential tones reassured them that all new measures would be temporary: “When the war is over, you can go back to your normal lives. Help me, and you can avoid a lot of trouble.” He told the old men what they wanted to hear: “I am a reasonable man. Trust me, and keep your people calm.” It was all very genial, very lulling. They were to print their own newspaper, but it had to be drafted first in German, for the SS censors. Actually the paper, like the Jewish Council he had just summoned, was to be a vital link between the death squad and its quarry.</blockquote>He had humor:<blockquote>Humor, the mainstay of Budapest life, second only to paprika as the national staple, thrived. The riddle that was making the rounds was: “What is the difference between Hitler and Chamberlain? Answer: Chamberlain takes his weekend in the country. Hitler takes his country in the weekend.” And so he did. One early spring Sunday, when the chestnut and plane trees on Margit Island were starting to show off their first greenery, the Reich’s army marched in and the music died.</blockquote>Tales from the lives of people in Hungary are strewn throughout the book, to show how people's lives changed from bad to worse.<blockquote>How explicitly the Jews observed the new instructions presented them each day is described in the diary of a thirteen-year-old girl. Eva Heyman had an adolescent’s passion for recording her own reactions to the days’ events. She and her family of middle-class Jews lived in Nagyvarad, near the Hungarian-Rumanian border. March 31 Today an order was issued that from now on Jews had to wear a yellow star-shaped patch… . When Grandma heard this she started acting up again and we called the doctor. He gave her an injection and she is asleep now. Agi [Eva’s mother] again wanted to telephone the doctor but couldn’t. Then Grandpa told her that the telephones had been taken away from the Jews… . They also take the shops away from the Jews. I don’t know who will feed the children if the grownups aren’t allowed to work… . April 20 ... Today they took all our appliances away from us: the sewing machine, the radio, the telephone, the vacuum cleaner, the electric fryer and my camera… . Agi said we should be happy they’re taking things and not people. But very soon the gendarmes ran out of “things” to take away. Then they took people. The thirteen-year-old continued to fill in her diary from the ghetto. May 10 Every time I think: this is the end, things couldn’t possibly get worse, and then I find out that it’s always possible for everything to get worse and even much, much worse. Until now, we had food, and now there won’t be anything to eat. At least we were able to walk around inside the ghetto, and now we won’t even be able to leave our house. May 14 ... We can’t look out the window because even for that we can be killed. ... May 18 ... I couldn’t sleep so I overheard the adults talking … They said that the people aren’t only beaten but also get electric shocks … The gendarmes don’t believe that the Jews don’t have anything left of their valuables. For example, we deposited Grandma’s jewelry for safekeeping with Juszti, that’s true. Agi said people are brought to the hospital bleeding at the mouth and ears and some of them also with teeth missing and the soles of their feet swollen so they can’t stand. ... In the ghetto pharmacy there is enough poison and Grandpa gives poison to the older people who ask for it. Grandpa also said it would be better if he took cyanide and also gave some to Grandma. ... The gendarmes finally came for Eva Heyman and her family on June 2, 1944. At Auschwitz she was allowed to live for four months before she was sent to the gas chamber on October 17. Her diary was kept by the family’s Christian housekeeper.</blockquote>I shan't "spoil the ending", but as a Swede - which I am, born and braised - I know that both the Swedish government and the Wallenberg family hasn't exactly tried to pry information from Soviet fingers, to know what happened to Raoul; we know the Soviets claim he died in 1947, which buckets of people contradict. Mostly, these persons are former prisoners who have met and/or communicated with Raoul Wallenberg. There are indications that he lived well in the late 1960s, which means he lived for at least 20 years after the war ended.All in all: interesting and well-written, but could have gone far deeper.

A Holocaust hero in Hungary: The courage of Raoul WallenbergThe Talmud states: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is as if he destroyed the whole world. And whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved the whole world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9, Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a). There’s so much wisdom in this saying, which also resonates with history. The Nazis did everything in their power to destroy the whole Jewish race while Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, did everything he could to save them. He worked relentlessly to save 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.Wallenberg’s own life story contains as much triumph as it does tragedy. By the time Wallenberg, only 31 years old, arrived in Budapest 437,000 Jews living outside the city had already been deported to Auschwitz. He could do nothing to save their lives. But there were aproximately 230,000 Jews left in Budapest, all of whom Adolf Eichamann, who was then stationed in the capital, planned to send as efficiently as possible to their deaths. The preparations of the death machine had already begun. Most of the Jews in Budapest had already been herded by the Nazis and their Fascist, Arrow Cross collaborators, into a Jewish Ghetto. They were deprived of any means of subsistence and living in terror. Every day they were subject to the Nazi actions to deport them to concentration camps as well as at the mercy of mob pogroms encouraged by the Arrow Cross.In this humanitarian crisis, where time was of the essence, Wallenberg proved to be both flexible and resourceful. He didn’t limit himself to traditional, slow diplomatic measures to save Budapest’s Jewish community. Using his own funds, he cajoled and bribed members of the Hungarian Fascist party in power, the Arrow Cross, as well as German officials in Budapest in order to protect the lives 100,000 Hungarian Jews. Responding promptly to every call for help, he issued tens of thousands of official-looking Sweedish Embassy protection papers to the desperate Jews.Kati Marton’s beautifully written biography, Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest (New York: Arcade Publishing, Centenary Edition, 2011), narrates the life of this courageous and altruistic man. It also explores the still unsolved mystery of his death while imprisoned in the Soviet Union. Having managed to save tens of thousands of innocent lives and to survive WWII and the Nazi terror in occupied Hungary, in an ultimate irony of fate, Wallenberg perished at the hands of the Allies. He was caught in the lethal web of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. Yet he managed to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.By the time he reached Hungary in his early thirties, Raoul Wallenberg had already lived a lifetime. He had travelled the world and gained enormous life experience. Born in an affluent and established family of Swedish bankers and industrialists, Wallenberg preferred to travel and learn about different cultures rather than devote himself to making money. Although he probably could have selected any university in Europe, he chose to study at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, eager to learn more about the U.S. He also travelled to Haifa, Palestine. Through family connections he met Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew who was the Director of a Swedish Import and Export Company, the Mid-European Trading Company. Within a few months, the young man impressed Lauer so much with his competence and efficiency, that he became a joint partner in this enterprise. Given the Lauer’s family and business ties to Hungary, Wallenberg traveled to Budapest, following closely the political situation there. He was especially touched—and alarmed--by the fate of the Jews.Wallenberg also took trips to Vichy France and Nazi Germany and learned a lot about the Fascist regimes and how their bureaucracy and killing machine operated. His observations that the Nazi regime functioned through a mixture of need for respectability and natural authority served him well when he embarked on the dangerous mission of saving Budapest’s Jews. He bribed the corruptible officials with cigars, alcohol or food—a strategy that often worked in a time of severe food shortages—while at the same time issuing official-looking passports and protective orders, couched in formal language, under the auspices of the Swedish Embassy and government. At one point he even faced the “Engineer of death”—Adolf Eichmann himself—in a showdown of wills in which Eichmann backed down and Wallenberg managed to save hundreds of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis.On January 17, 1945, following the Ally victory and Budapest’s encirclement by the Soviet army, Wallenberg and his chauffeur went, under Soviet military escort, to meet with a high-ranking Russian general. Wallenberg hasn’t been heard from ever since. Marton’s book describes that several eyewitnesses claim they have seen him in the Lyubianka and, later, in several Gulags well into the 1970’s. But, ultimately, this information is highly speculative. The evidence seems to point to the fact that Raoul Wallenberg perished in 1947 at the hands of the NKVD. The heroic man who saved countless lives from the Nazis could not be saved himself from the cold injustice of the totalitarian killing machine.Claudia Moscovici,Literature Salon

Kati Marton has written an excellently researched and very readable account of Raoul Wallenberg's efforts in Nazi Hungary to save the Jews. It provides, of course, details on the life of the heroic figure of Wallenberg, but also on the major players caught in the maelstrom of WWII and of Nazi Germany's and the Arrow Cross's efforts to erase the Jews from Budapest and Hungary. There are villains, there are the collaborators, there are no shortage of apathetic political leaders, there are the victims, and in the midst of the storm there are the handful of men and women who rose up against the evil forces and, guided and inspired by Wallenberg, pushed back against the current of evil. Marton's research and interviews allow this narrative to come to life and allows us to follow the man - from his driven mission to save the Jews from sure death, to his capture and imprisonment by the Soviets and their continual denial of his presence and condition in the GULag - a tragic end in so many ways. Firstly, fear of the Russians and abandonment by the Swedish government and later by Kissinger and the American administration; secondly by the beast that was Soviet leadership and the fear Wallenberg must have instilled in them. We may never know the full story of Wallenberg - both of his heroic exploits in Hungary or the later struggles as he traversed throughout the 'GULag Archipelago', but Marton certainly gives us a full and vibrant enough picture of the man, his times, and his exploits, to give us hope that there are some out there who stand up for humanity, and others who so aptly present it to the public.

A tragic story about Raoul Wallenberg, a brave, intelligent, driven Swede who saved thousands of Jewish lives in Hungary. He was ultimately abandoned by his own country to its great shame. Very well written, meticulously organized, excellent 'voice,'.. Gripping from beginning to end. I will end here as I don't want to give anything away. Highly recommend if you like the subject matter.

Interesting book of historial interest , tells the story of a Swedish diplomat who used every means possible to save eastern jews from the clutches of the Nazi regime , and was imprisoned and treated with brutal contempt by a country who as a member of the allied fight against Germany turned out to be little better than that regime

A well written book and as I was only 5 at the end of the war, I find it incredible to learn about well known 'respected' heads of countries and the excuses they gave for sticking their heads in the sand. Unfortunately the world still hasn't learnt and blunders blindly on

You read this excellent account knowing how it was going to end, but hoping that it would finish differently. A well-documented account by someone with Hungarian roots about one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20thC

A harrowing and quite shocking true story of persecution of Hungarian Jews which everyone should read. A well researched and detailed account of what really went on behind the scenes, it does get bogged down a bit with some of the facts but I still couldn't put this book down. A quite remarkable read.