Intriguingly, Bethell reported that Kopylyansky was living under official protection. This may seem odd, since Kopylyansky was purged from the security services as long ago as 1952, apparently for the sin of having been born Jewish – another of the many ironies that enliven the Wallenberg affair. Why, after all these years, should he enjoy the protection of a régime that had supposedly turned its back on its Communist past and, in the process, had revealed the truth about: many even more monstrous crimes, such as the Katyn Forest massacre? The Observer speculated, somewhat unconvincingly for this reader, that it was because Kopylyansky is the repository of ‘the truth that Russia longs both to hide and reveal.’
At last report Kopylyansky was still alive, aged seventy-six and in poor health. He seems likely to take what he knows of the Wallenberg affair with him to the grave, unless his Jewish conscience should be sufficiently tormented by guilt to bring him to some kind of a deathbed confession.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s bottom line seems to be encapsulated in the words of Alexei Kondaurov to Lord Bethell: ‘I cannot deny that Wallenberg was murdered in the Lubianka. Indeed, I think it most likely that he was. But, as far as we know, there are no documents to confirm it.’
More insider speculation came in the 1994 memoirs of the old KGB hatchetman Pavel Sudoplatov. He devoted the best part of a chapter to the Wallenberg affair and also mentioned Kopylyansky as Wallenberg’s interrogator, but did not lay Wallenberg’s death at Kopylyansky’s doorstep. Instead, in a passage that might have come from the pen of Ian Fleming, he introduced one Professor Grigori Moiseyevich Maironovsky, head of a super-secret installation known as Laboratory X. According to Sudoplatov, this was an NKVD toxicological research group and ‘my best estimate is that Wallenberg was killed by Maironovsky, who was ordered to inject him with poison under the guise of medical treatment.’
It could be argued that the means by which Wallenberg was executed is irrelevant, but the arcane modus operandi described by Sudoplatov surely touches on his credibility. One has to wonder why it should be thought necessary to kill Wallenberg by poison injection when a bullet at the back of the head, the more usual method, would be simpler and a lot quicker. And since the body was to be cremated and the ashes tipped into a common grave, the usual procedure according to Sudoplatov, who would ever know the difference anyway?
A declassified but once top-secret document quoted by Sudoplatov as evidence that Wallenberg was executed in July 1947 is a letter from Soviet deputy foreign minister Vishinsky to his boss, Molotov, dated May 13, 1947. In it, Vishinsky requests Molotov to direct state security minister Abakumov ‘to submit a summary of the substance of the [Wallenberg] case and suggestions for liquidation.’
This raises a tricky question of semantics. Did Vishinsky mean liquidation of the case or liquidation of the prisoner? Opinion is divided on this, even among Russians claiming to be familiar with the usages of Soviet officialdom. But Sudoplatov says that to him ‘it is clear that this was not a suggestion to close the case, but one to eliminate Wallenberg.’
However that may be, it should be pointed out that in instances other than the Wallenberg case Sudoplatov has not been found an entirely credible witness. For instance, his sensation-stirring assertions that Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr and other nuclear physicists involved in the World War II Manhattan Project gave atomic bomb secrets to Stalin have been comprehensively shot down. So far as the Wallenberg affair is concerned, Sudoplatov – like everyone else who has claimed to unravel the mystery – is unable to cite any documents to support his assertions. Still, while conceding that the file is missing, Sudoplatov says he is sure that here and there in the Kremlin – in the Molotov section of the Presidential Archives, in the Khrushchev section of the Presidential Archives, in the Ministry of State Security Archives – there must be the odd letter that lays bare the truth.
In the event, all of Sudoplatov’s signposts have been followed by independent researchers and none has led to the documents in question. When I instituted my own inquiries through a reliable Russian colleague in Moscow I was told: ‘Don’t waste your time and money. It’s been checked out and there’s nothing there.’
So what Sudoplatov’s ‘revelations’ come down to at the end of the day, apart from a lot of detail that had already been published, is a ‘best estimate’ that Wallenberg was given a lethal injection by the sinister head of Laboratory X. His account is far from convincing.
Meanwhile, members of the international commission have been ploughing through scores of thousands of prison registration cards, hoping to trace Wallenberg’s movements beyond his last officially acknowledged location, the Lubianka. In their research they have discovered that many foreign prisoners were given false names or else referred to only by a number. This makes their task infinitely more difficult. ‘If this is what has occurred in Wallenberg’s case,’ the commissioners have said, ‘it makes the discovery of his card – and of his fate – well-nigh impossible.’
What, then, are we to make of this tantalizing mystery? Setting aside the possibility that Wallenberg might still be alive as a notion to be entertained only by true believers, we surely have to conclude that he did not die when the Soviets said he did, and certainly not because of a heart attack. But the when, where and how of his death seem likely to remain unknown, as does the why of the destruction or removal of his file.
Surely, though, we owe it to Wallenberg’s memory and to history to obtain the answers to these questions, which is why the unremitting efforts of those who persist in seeking the answers deserve our support and encouragement, even if we cannot share their belief in Wallenberg’s survival.
And then, even for the sensibly sceptical, there is always the nagging thought that even if there is only a million-to-one chance that he is alive, Wallenberg has certainly earned the right to be given that chance.
As Palko Forgacz, one of the tens of thousands he saved from the gas chambers, said after the war: ‘He was more of a hero than the heroes of old. He did good for the sake of doing good. He never made any demands and never expected any thanks for what he did. He knew that people are weak and miserable, but he did not want to make them better. He only wanted to help them.’
Raoul Wallenberg, age three, with his mother and
at the same age, with his grandfather. (Photos courtesy of the Wallenberg family)
Raoul Wallenberg, age fourteen.
Wallenberg in Florence, 9 April 1931.
Wallenberg with his mother on high school graduation day. (Photos courtesy of the Wallenberg family)
A formal portrait, age twenty-four. (Photo courtesy of the Wallenberg family)
Wallenberg in his Swedish Army Reserve uniform. (Photos courtesy of the Wallenberg family)
Wallenberg (seated)with the Jewish assistants in his legation section.
Wallenberg (marked with a cross) intervening during a deportation at a railway station.
A passport created by Wallenberg.
Jews wearing yellow stars cluster outside the Swedish Legation in Budapest.
Eva Heyman, whose diary is quoted at length in the text. (Photo courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House)
Women being driven off at gunpoint to a “death march”.
Budapest Jews read a notice ordering them to leave their homes and move to the ghetto.
Jewish men being marched through Budapest, on their way to forced labour. Photograph taken by Wallenberg. (Photos courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House)
Jewish community leaders lined up at a provincial concentration camp.
A child murdered by the Arrow Cross in a raid on a Jewish children’s home.
Hungarian gendarmes execute an “uncooperative” Jewish community leader.
Jewish women being marched through Budapest to a holding camp, prior to deportation. This photograph was taken by Wallenberg. (Photos courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House)
Raoul Wallenberg with his staff: Hugo Wohl, right; Paul Hegediis, left.
The last
photograph of Wallenberg, taken in Budapest on 26 November 1944. Sent by Raoul to his mother. (Photos courtesy of the Wallenberg family)
Bibliography
Anger, Per. With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest. Stockholm, 1979.
Bauminger, Arieh L. Roll of Honour. Tel Aviv, 1971.
Berg, Lars. What Happened in Budapest. Stockholm, 1949.
Braham, Randolph L. The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account. New York, 1963.
Dardel, Fredrik von. Raoul Wallenberg: Facts around a Fate. Stockholm, 1970.
Dawidowicz, Lucy. The War Against the Jews. New York, 1975.
Dulles, Allen. Germany’s Underground. New York, 1947.
Hausner, Gideon. Justice in Jerusalem. New York, 1966.
Heyman, Eva. The Diary of Eva Heyman. Jerusalem, 1974.
Hoess, Rudolf. Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. London, 1959.
Hungarian–Jewish Studies, Vol. 3. New York, 1973.
Lévai, Jenó. Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry. Zurich, 1948.
----- Raoul Wallenberg: His Fascinating Life, His Daring Struggles, and the Secret of His Mysterious Disappearance. Budapest, 1948.
----- Eichmann in Hungary. Budapest, 1961.
Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died. New York, 1967.
Palmstierna, Carl-Fredrik. The Feather in My Hand. Stockholm, 1946.
Philipp, Rudolf. Raoul Wallenberg: Fighter for Humanity. Stockholm, 1946.
Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–45. New York, 1961.
Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust. Jerusalem, 1977.
Shirer, William, L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York, 1960.
Sjöqvist, Eric. The Wallenberg Affair. Stockholm, 1974.
Sudoplatov, Pavel and Anatoli, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness – A Soviet Spymaster. New York, 1994.
Swedish Foreign Office White Books. Raoul Wallenberg. Stockholm, 1957, 1965, 1980.
Wulf, Josef. Wallenberg: He Was Their Hope. Brussels, 1968.
Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 5. Jerusalem, 1963.
• Much of the material relating to Adolf Eichmann and his part in the Final Solution originates from captured Nazi documents, from the transcript of his trial in Jerusalem (and Gideon Hausner’s account of it, see above), and from Eichmann’s own tape-recorded interviews, given to the Dutch journalist Willem Sassen in Buenos Aires before his capture and trial; which formed the basis for two articles in Life magazine, in January 1961.
• Much of the official material relating to Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary originates from US State Department documents and from the War Refugee Board’s archive at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Library in Hyde Park, New York, as well as from his own official reports and private letters.
Acknowledgements
In writing this book I have relied heavily on the original research done immediately after the war by the Austrian-born writer Rudolf Philipp in Stockholm and the historian of the Hungarian holocaust Jenö Lévai in Budapest.
In my own researches, I was especially helped by Wallenberg’s half-sister, Nina Lagergren, who opened her family archives to me, adding many hours of personal reminiscence, advice, and invaluable onward contacts. Also in Stockholm, I was generously assisted by, among others, Per Anger, former Swedish ambassador to Canada, Carl-Fredrik Palmstierna, a former official at the Swedish court, and Eric Sjöqvist of the daily newspaper Expressen, themselves all authors of books touching on the Wallenberg affair.
In Israel, the Budapest-born journalist Naftali Kraus was unstintingly generous of his time and advice and of his own research files. So was Dr Livia Rothkirchen, the Holocaust historian at Yad Vashem, whose publications – notably The Diary of Eva Heyman – and research facilities were heavily drawn upon. I wish to thank Lászlo Szamosi of Haifa for access to his private documents and unpublished memoirs of the period and Hakan Wilkens, counsellor at the Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv during the late 1970s.
Many other individuals and organizations on three continents gave their help and encouragement. Most of them are mentioned in the text and I am grateful to them all. Thanks are especially due to the BBC, which gave me permission to incorporate material gathered during the filming of my television documentary, Missing Hero; to the World Federation of Hungarian Jews in New York for permission to quote from their publications; and to Lars Berg at the Swedish embassy in Brasilia, who allowed me to quote from his memoirs of wartime Budapest. Thanks are also due to the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States and its president, Rachel Haspel-Osterreicher.
Finally, I must acknowledge a couple I never met – Wallenberg’s mother and stepfather, Maj and Fredrik von Dardel. They died within two days of each other in February 1979, before I had begun my research – in fact, before I had ever heard of Raoul Wallenberg. Their steadfast loyalty to their son, and to each other, over the long and bitter years following his disappearance shines through the darkness that envelops the Wallenberg affair.
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First published by Allen Lane 1981
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Author’s Note
* It wasn’t really a novel, but essentially a work of non-fiction, but let that pass.
Chapter 1
* ‘You old shitbag,’ Eichmann shouted at one community leader in a moment of frustration when the cool, correct mask slipped momentarily, ‘you’ve been out of the concentration camp too long.’
Chapter 1
* Notwithstanding this ringing denunciation, Churchill and the other Allied leaders, citing strategic reasons, rejected repeated Jewish pleas to bomb the railway line to Auschwitz – and the camp itself. The best way to save the Jews, they held, was to end the war quickly.
Chapter 2
* Jakob Wallenberg was Raoul’s father’s first cousin and was a director of the family-owned Enskilda Bank.
Chapter 2
* Recorded in 1980; Professor Hedenius is one of Sweden’s leading academic philosophers.
Chapter 2
* The cousin was obviously deemed to qualify as an Aryan, for the marriage was permitted.
Chapter 3
* Howard, considered by his fans to be the quintessential Englishman, was by odd coincidence actually a Hungarian Jew, born L´szlo Stainer.
Chapter 3
* This may seem a harsh judgement, but it was given unsolicited confirmation in February 1980 by Paul Frankl, a prominent Swedish Jew, who told me that a ‘Mayflower complex’ was common at the time among his co-religionists.<
br />
† By a grim coincidence, he was murdered by Jewish gunmen in Jerusalem in 1948, when he was UN mediator in Palestine.
Chapter 3
* It was an over-estimate.
† Erik Boheman was secretary-general of the Swedish Foreign Office.
‡ Once again, Wallenberg was exaggerating his Jewish blood.
Chapter 4
* Subsequently Marshal of the Realm, chief executive officer of the Swedish royal court.
Chapter 4
* Eva’s diary was kept by Mariska, referred to in the last entry, who was a Gentile woman in the service of Eva’s family for many years. Subsequently the diary found its way into the Yad Vashem archives. Eva was entrained for Auschwitz on 2 June 1944. She arrived four days later and survived until 17 October, when she was among Jews dispatched to the gas chamber by the notorious Dr Josef Mengele – who escaped to South America after the war.
Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust Page 24