The Envoy: The Epic Rescue of the Last Jews of Europe in the Desperate Closing Months of World War II

by Alex Kershaw

  Late that fall, Emil Herman told his wife, Margit: “I’ll try to get to the Swedish embassy and see if I can meet Raoul Wallenberg.”

  Wallenberg was at the embassy on Gellert Hill when Vera’s father reached him. Within five minutes, he had issued Emil a Schutzpass for himself and his wife Margit, and assigned them to a protected house.

  Then Wallenberg apparently smiled.

  “Do you know we still have your little girl?”33

  It is not known how Emil reacted to this stunning statement. But without doubt, Emil Herman would never forget the date—November 30, 1944, the day his daughter was brought back from the dead.

  With their new passes, and not wearing the yellow star, Emil and Margit walked to a Swedish-protected house in Pest. Meanwhile, their daughter, Vera, was taken from an orphanage and brought to the same safe house, where she was miraculously, it would forever seem, reunited with her parents.

  They hugged, stroked, and kissed.34 Vera then grabbed her parents and wouldn’t let go, wanting never to be separated from them again. She had to hold them tight to make sure they were real. If she just kept clinging to them, she was convinced that she would not be orphaned again. And from then on, she vowed, she would not let them out of her sight and would be the perfect daughter, utterly obedient, all that they could possibly ever want her to be.35

  Soon after they were reunited, Vera’s mother, Margit, explained why she had pushed Vera into the arms of Wallenberg’s rescue team.

  “All I could think of,” Margrit told Vera, “was that if you were fed a meal worth eating and if you slept in a real bed, I would have to be content never to see you again.”

  The Hermans then joined 128 other Jews in their safe house, waiting each agonizing day for the Soviet troops to arrive. Not long after moving into the safe house together, they were forced to find a space in the building’s cellar because Allied and Soviet bombing had become so intense. “Food, delivered in the dead of night by Wallenberg’s volunteers—sometimes even by [Wallenberg] himself—was scarce,” recalled Vera. “Yet morale was high as our hearts soared at the prospect of survival.”36

  The Hermans’ protected house was on Vacsy Street in Pest, just two hundred yards from the Danube, which arced in a giant, gentle bend through the city. “We could see it from the house,” Vera remembered. “One time, my father saved a Jew who was shot down on the banks of the Danube. You see, sometimes the Arrow Cross played games. They shot six Jews and [arranged their bodies on the ice] to form a Star of David. One day, my father looked out our cellar’s window and saw that one of the legs of the star was moving. So he crawled out there and pulled a young girl off the ice.”37

  During the bombings, all 128 people squeezed into the dank cellar. “It was very, very crowded, crowded to the point where we lay on our side at night and if someone wanted to turn over, the whole row had to turn over,” added Vera. “Life became more and more desperate. But there were moments of joy.” Time even for young love: “There was a fourteen-year-old boy who had a crush on me and gave me his last lump of sugar in that cellar. I guess he was in love with me. It was a schoolboy crush.”38

  The frightened Jewish boy sat beside Vera, who was growing weaker by the day, and tried to distract her from her hunger and anxiety. Each night, she would settle down between her parents and hug them tight and try to find sleep. Perhaps, one day soon, when she awoke, they would finally be safe.

  12

  Dinner with Eichmann

  ONE EVENING THAT November of 1944, Wallenberg is said to have arrived at the front entrance of his apartment in Buda. To his surprise, according to several accounts, he found Adolf Eichmann, wearing a civilian suit, and an aide, possibly SS Sturmbannfuhrer Herman Krumey, waiting for him.1 Wallenberg, it has been claimed, had invited Eichmann to dinner but forgotten the date.2

  All that summer and fall, Wallenberg had nurtured his contacts among the SS and Arrow Cross—they were crucial if he was to exert maximum influence. On September 29, he had written to his mother: “A few days ago, I had invited some very interesting big game, namely Himmler’s representative [possibly Adolf Eichmann]. Unfortunately, something came up at work at the last minute and prevented him from coming. He is quite a nice man who, according to what he himself says, will soon shoot himself.”3

  Wallenberg, the story goes, greeted Eichmann and his aide warmly, inviting them into his apartment, where he prepared cocktails for his guests and then said that he had to make a quick telephone call.4 It was to his diplomatic colleague, Lars Berg, who would later vividly describe that night’s events in a memoir published in Sweden in 1949.5

  “I’ve got Eichmann here,” Wallenberg told Berg, “and I’ve forgotten that I invited him to dinner. Can you set up something this quickly?”

  Berg and a fellow Swedish diplomat, Gote Carlsson, lived not far away in a large mansion, owned by a wealthy count who had been accused of being part Jewish and had fled Hungary, leaving several servants, exquisite furniture, wines, and crockery in Berg’s care. The Hungarian count’s cook, Magda, was still on the premises and happy to prepare a lavish meal.

  It was a short walk to the mansion where Berg and Carlson were living. The meal was magnificent. At first, Eichmann and Wallenberg talked about the war in general. But then Wallenberg cleverly changed the topic. Eichmann was acutely class-conscious and uncomfortable in formal situations such as dinner parties and diplomatic receptions. But now, according to Berg, he appeared to relax, perhaps enjoying Wallenberg’s company and excellent wine.6

  After dinner, Wallenberg offered Eichmann coffee and brandy in the mansion’s large sitting room. Wallenberg was careful to seat Eichmann and Krumey so that they were facing curtains that covered an east-facing window. Eichmann sat in an overstuffed armchair, brandy snifter in hand. Then Wallenberg told Carlsson to open the curtains. Carlsson did so as Wallenberg turned out the lights. A fierce Soviet barrage lit the horizon to the east with explosions. “The effect was tremendous,” Carlsson recalled. “The horizon was bright red from the fire of thousands of guns as the Russians closed in on Budapest.”7

  The scene, as recalled by Berg, was cinematic indeed. The dinner guests could hear the retorts of the guns as the room lit up with each explosion and was then cast back into darkness. Wallenberg stood near the window as Eichmann sat in his armchair, quaffing the brandy. He then began to engage Eichmann in a conversation about National Socialism.

  “It’s not really a bona fide ideology,” said Wallenberg. “It’s just the political incarnation of a single basic human emotion, hate. How can it last?”

  Eichmann apparently tried to defend National Socialism, spewing clichés no doubt gleaned from Der Sturmer and other Nazi newspapers and propaganda leaflets, with their poisonous catchphrases about the Jewish-Bolshevik menace and world Jewish conspiracy.

  Lars Berg listened closely as Eichmann, the Holocaust’s most notorious figure, and Wallenberg, arguably its greatest hero, then discussed the Nazis’ racial theories. “Wallenberg, who on this occasion had no special wish to negotiate with Eichmann,” recalled Berg, “started a discussion about Nazism and the likely outcome of the war. Fearlessly and brilliantly, he picked Nazi doctrine apart, piece by piece, and foretold the total defeat of its adherents. Eichmann could scarcely conceal his amazement that anyone should dare to attack him and criticize the Fuhrer, but he soon seemed to realize that he was getting the worst of the argument. His propaganda phrases sounded hollow compared with Raoul’s intelligent reasoning.”8

  But it was also clear that Eichmann was no careerist fellow traveler, like others in the SS, who had hitched his fortunes to the Nazis for profit and power. He was fanatical in his loyalty to both Hitler and the SS, still utterly committed to carrying out his Fuhrer’s avowed mission of solving the “Jewish problem” once and for all. And now he was tantalizingly close to doing just that.

  Wallenberg was still at the window.

  “Look how close the Bolsheviks are,” Wallenberg allegedly told Eichmann.
“Your war is almost over. Nazism is doomed, finished, and so are those who cling to this hatred until the very last. It’s the end of the Nazis, the end of Hitler, the end of Eichmann.”

  “Alright, I agree with you,” Eichmann admitted. “Soon, very soon, this comfortable life will end. No more airplanes bringing women and wine from France. The Russians will take my horses, my dogs, and my palace on Rose Hill. They’ll probably shoot me on the spot.”

  There was little doubt about that.

  “For me, there’s no escape, no liberation,” added Eichmann. “There are, however, some consolations. If I continue to eliminate our enemies until the end, it may delay our defeat—even for just a few days. And then, when I finally do walk the gallows, at least I’ll know I’ve completed my mission.”

  “Why don’t you call off your people?” asked Wallenberg. “Why not leave now while you still can?”

  Eichmann was beginning to lose his temper. “Budapest will be held as though it were Berlin.”9 With that, Eichmann got up to leave.

  “I want to thank you for an exceptionally charming and interesting evening,” he said, shaking Wallenberg’s hand.

  Berg watched as Eichmann then lowered his voice. “Now don’t think we are friends,” said Eichmann. “We’re not. I plan to do everything I can to keep you from saving your Jews. Your diplomatic passport won’t protect you from everything. Even a neutral diplomat can meet with an accident.”10

  NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD THOMAS VERES had been working for Wallenberg since October, when the Arrow Cross had taken power. It was Per Anger who had introduced the aspiring photographer to Wallenberg, and Veres quickly had become part of Wallenberg’s team of Section C workers.

  Veres later recalled that on November 28, he was at Section C, taking photographs to be used on the Schutzpasses, when he was called to the telephone. “They’ve rounded up all the protected laborers and taken them to the Jozsefvaros freight station,” someone said at the end of the line. “They’re packing them into boxcars. Hurry!”

  The laborers had been preparing trenches and defenses and clearing rubble. But now Eichmann had convinced the Arrow Cross government to let him send them to build defenses around Vienna instead. And Eichmann had somehow found a train to take them there. His own men would oversee the deportation this time. The tracks leading to Austria had been fixed.

  Without a thought for his safety, Veres grabbed his Leica and made his way to the Jozsefvaros train station. “Everybody, especially those on the Nazis’ hit list, thought lying low was the best plan,” he recalled. “Keep quiet; keep out of sight. Don’t get involved. Yet here I was on a raw November morning, heading for Jozsefvaros station.”

  Veres saw Hungarian police and Arrow Cross thugs in green shirts, wielding machine guns, surrounding the station. “Anyone in his right mind was trying to get out. Wallenberg expected me to find a way in.”

  Veres put his camera in his pocket. Then he approached one of the policemen. “I’m a Swedish diplomat!” said Veres, trying to sound like Wallenberg. “I must go in to meet Raoul Wallenberg!”

  The policeman didn’t look convinced, but he allowed Veres inside. Thousands of Jewish men were being pushed onto boxcars. Veres spotted Wallenberg in his long trench coat, wearing his fedora hat, not far from his Studebaker car and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder.

  Also with Wallenberg that morning was another member of the special rescue group, the Schutzling Protokoll, that Wallenberg had recruited: twenty-year-old student Janos Beer, who had been a friend of Veres since childhood. “What Wallenberg said was gospel among us,” recalled Beer. “He was a very good organizer. People believed in him because he was so successful. He was very modest. He was also very brave, there’s no doubt about that. But he was not reckless. He knew exactly what the dangers were. He gave the impression to anybody who worked with him that if you were in trouble he would be there for you.”11

  Wallenberg saw Veres and walked over to him.

  In a low whisper, Wallenberg told him: “Take as many pictures as you can.”

  It was extraordinarily risky to do so. Veres was Jewish. If he were caught taking pictures, he would be instantly bundled onto a cattle-wagon or more likely shot on the spot by some drunken Arrow Cross youth itching to try out his new tommy gun on a Christ-killer. Nevertheless, he got to work, first making sure his camera was hidden. He climbed into the Studebaker, pulled out a penknife, slit a hole in his scarf, and wrapped it around his Leica so that the hole was over the camera’s lens. Trying to keep his nerve, he then got out of the Studebaker and made his way through the railway depot, his finger pressing down on the shutter release when he thought he could capture a good image.

  By now, Wallenberg had opened a briefcase and pulled out his black book of life, as he called the thick ledger filled with names and photographs of protected Jews. Veres had taken many of the images.12

  “All my people get in line here!” he cried. “All you need to do is show me your Schutzpass!”

  No one dared move, so Wallenberg approached the lines of terrified Jews and chose a man at random. “You, yes, I have your name here. Where is your paper?”

  The man did not have a Schutzpass. Instead, he pulled a letter from his pocket. It saved his life. “Fine,” said Wallenberg. “Next!”

  Wallenberg soon stood in front of one of the boxcars.

  “Open it!” he snapped at an SS guard. “There may be men inside holding Swedish passes.”

  An SS officer was quickly on the scene.

  “Anyone with a Swedish pass can come out, but if anyone tries to bluff I’ll shoot him on the spot.”

  Men got off.

  “Which of you has documents in Hungarian proving that you once held a valid Swedish pass?” asked Wallenberg.

  Men began to move forward.

  “Present these documents to me at once!”

  Some men pulled out scraps of paper, anything with writing on it would do. One man had no paper. “Once I was in Uppsala, at the university,” he told Wallenberg.

  “He has no pass, no paper,” said the SS officer.

  “Name a street in Uppsala,” Wallenberg ordered the man.

  The man said something.

  “That’s right!” said Wallenberg. “It’s obvious that this man is under Swedish protection. Next!”13

  Speed was of the essence. Wallenberg had to save as many men as possible before the SS or Arrow Cross decided to intervene. Veres worked quickly too, and the photographs he took that day remain the only visual evidence of Wallenberg saving lives.

  “Now back to Budapest, all of you!” shouted Wallenberg.

  The men walked out of the station. When they were safely on their way, Veres and Wallenberg calmly got into the Studebaker. Langfelder waited at the wheel. “The danger that we’d been in didn’t hit me until then,” recalled Veres. “This man, a Swede, who could have waited out the war in safety, was marching into train yards and asking others to do the same!”14

  Janos Beer was also in the car. “It occurred [to Wallenberg] that the people he rescued had not eaten all day,” he recalled, “and, instead of calling it a day and going back to the Legation, he asked [Langfelder] to head for the safe house to make sure that the group of men would be met by food, a warm soup. Wallenberg had not eaten either; we brought sandwiches but Tom Veres inadvertently sat on Wallenberg’s sandwiches in the car. But Wallenberg could only be concerned about the people he just rescued; a small event which, however, underlined for me this great man’s humanity.”15

  According to Beer, Wallenberg saved as many as a hundred men that morning.

  Later that day, Wallenberg told Langfelder to drive him across the city to the Deli station in Buda so he could say goodbye to a young woman he had come to admire very much: Baroness Kemeny, the Arrow Cross foreign minister’s wife, who had lent her support that fall to his operation. For doing so, she had been denounced to Interior Minister Vajna as a foreign agent working for Wallenberg. Vajna had apparently ordered her arrest. But the
n the Hungarian premier, Szalasi, had told her husband, Baron Kemeny, that she could leave Budapest within twenty-four hours rather than be jailed. “I must save the life of my unborn child,” she reportedly told Wallenberg before she left Hungary for good. “That’s my only excuse for abandoning you.”16

  THE NEXT MORNING, November 29, 1944, Wallenberg returned to Jozsefvaros station. He had learned that the SS planned to deport another batch of protected Jewish laborers—Eichmann had somehow managed to requisition yet another freight train to take them to the border. This time, Wallenberg arrived just before the train was due to leave from Jozsefvaros station. Again, he set up his table, opened his briefcase, and began to call out names. There were the usual long lines of men waiting to be deported.

  Janos Beer and Veres were once more working for Wallenberg that morning. Veres later remembered finding Wallenberg, seated at a table, reading out common Hungarian names from his ledger, his book of life. Veres started taking pictures again. But then thirty-one-year-old SS Captain Theodor Dannecker arrived to deal with the infuriating young Swede. The curled-lipped Dannecker, a former lawyer from Munich, had resolved many difficult situations for Eichmann over the years, recently clearing out Jews from Bulgaria and persuading apparently reluctant officials in Rome to send Italian Jews to Auschwitz.

  Janos Beer, who was walking alongside the wagons, telling men with Schutzpasses to form in a line before Wallenberg, saw Dannecker arrive.17

  “All of you released by the Hungarian government, back into town! March!” ordered Wallenberg.

  Dannecker drew his pistol.

  “Nein!” said Dannecker, and then held up his gloved hand.18

  Wallenberg protested. Did Dannecker want to start an international incident?