Wallenberg, the 'Swedish Schindler', remembered in Moscow

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who helped save thousands of Jews during World War 2, but was afterwards arrested by the Soviets only to die in unknown circumstances will be remembered in a Jewish museum in Moscow.

A special room in the museum will be dedicated to the memory of Raoul Wallenberg, signifying a reconciliation of sorts.

“It will never be possible to apologise enough when we are talking about somebody who saved so many people, but today when we look back at what happened during Soviet times, it's very difficult to point fingers. I think apologising isn't as important as keeping his memory alive,” Berl Lazar, Chief Rabbi in Russia, said.

Born into one of Sweden's richest families, Raoul Wallenberg was not himself a Jew. After a successful career as a businessman, his life took a decisive turn in July 1944.

Appointed as a diplomat in Budapest, it was Wallenberg's job to help Jews escape. At the same time the notorious SS officer, Adolf Eichmann, whose mission it was to exterminate them, was also in Budapest. Both men did their job with determination.

“I worked for Raoul Wallenberg. In December the fascists ordered that Jews were to be executed on the banks of the Danube. The Jews were tied up in groups of three and the person in the centre was shot so that all three fell into the river and drowned. Wallenberg asked his staff, ”Who can swim?“ I said I could. We rushed to the water's edge, and when a group fell in, we'd plunge into the icy river. We rescued 50 people,” recalled Agnes Mandl, Wallenberg employee.

Wallenberg issued Schutzpasses, otherwise meaningless documents, but which were often enough to help the Jews escape to special “Swedish houses” and then out of Hungary.

Reports say that between 30,000 and 100,000 Jews survived thanks to the efforts of his mission. As the Russians advanced, he went to meet them. He was promptly taken under guard and transported to Russia. In Moscow Raoul Wallenberg was placed in a prison cell at the bottom of a building of the Secret Police Headquarters.

What happened next is a mystery. In 1957 the Soviets said that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in his prison cell a decade earlier. But throughout the 50s eyewitness accounts claimed sightings of the Swedish diplomat. In 1989 a box of Raoul Wallenber's possessions was returned to his family. Seven years ago he was finally rehabilitated by the Russian government.

However, his family remains unhappy with the official records of his death. All that exists is a dubious document from the mid-fifties that pins the blame on people who were long dead by then. To them it explains nothing. For them the ceremony is no reconciliation, but another episode in the continued failure to explain the fate of a long-lost relative. They promise to continue their quest for the truth.

We may never find out how or when Raoul Wallenberg died. At least now in Moscow as in Jerusalem, London and New York there is a statue commemorating him. And at a time when Russia is enjoying a new-found confidence in the future, his story reminds people not to forget the errors of the past.