American Jewish Committee Initiatives AimTo Revive Efforts to Solve Wallenberg Mystery

American Jewish Committee
Monday, 10 January 2000

The American Jewish Committee, through an ad in The New York Times and the release of a new publication, is calling for a renewed effort to solve the 55-year old mystery of Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat based in Budapest during the Holocaust who personally saved 100,000 Jews from certain Nazi death, was arrested by Soviet agents on January 17, 1945 and never heard from again.

"As we begin a new century, it is imperative that the fate of this moral giant of the 20th century be revealed," said David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. "The United States, which employed Wallenberg during the war, has a new opportunity to enlist the cooperation of acting Russian President Putin to open the Soviet-era archives and reveal the truth."

The AJC message will be conveyed in an ad on the op-ed page of The New York Times on January 10.

Wallenberg's heroic efforts to save Jews, his relationship with the U.S. government, and the current state of knowledge about his disappearance into the Soviet gulag, are detailed in the new AJC publication, The Wallenberg Mystery: Fifty-five Years Later, which will be released at an AJC luncheon on January 11.

Speakers at the luncheon will include the study's author, Dr. William Korey, an accomplished scholar on Soviet affairs and international human rights, and Agnes Adachi, who was Wallenberg's principal assistant in the Swedish Embassy in Budapest in 1944.

"If Washington were to press Moscow on the Wallenberg issue, it could make a difference," writes Dr. Korey. "It is now 55 years since a U.S. Secretary of State expressed, however indirectly, any concern about Wallenberg's disappearance. Since then there has been no indication that a U.S. president or his secretary of state considers the issue a priority."

Wallenberg was employed by the U.S. War Refugee Board while working in the Swedish Embassy in Budapest. Through a joint initiative of the AJC and Congressman and Mrs. Tom Lantos, he was granted honorary U.S. citizenship in 1981.

Later this month Mr. Harris and other AJC officials will travel to Stockholm to participate in a ceremony commemorating Wallenberg and other diplomats who saved Jewish lives during World War II. The ceremony, jointly sponsored by AJC and the Swedish government, will take place on January 26, the opening day of an international governmental conference on Holocaust education hosted by Sweden.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org