The Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative RWI-70

The family of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg seeks answers to lingering questions about his fate with a new inquiry in Sweden

In 1981,  the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs planned the declassification of a large set of records regarding the case of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who had disappeared in the Soviet Union in 1945. In preparation for the release of documents, the Foreign Ministry’s Legal Department contacted several foreign governments to see if they had any objections to some of the information being made public.

Some countries, including Israel, voiced concerns. Israeli diplomats asked that certain witness testimonies not be declassified, for fear that the information could reveal the Israeli intelligence services’ extensive espionage operations in Eastern Europe. The Swedish government tried to accommodate Israel’s request, releasing some of the witness statements in edited form and withholding others, some until as late as 2000.

The exchange raises several  important questions: Did Sweden consult other countries, especially the U.S. and Russia,  before declassifying records in the Wallenberg case over the years? If so, what information or documentation did these countries ask Sweden to keep secret?

Of great interest is the question if Swedish officials, in turn, ever approached Russia and other foreign entities to withhold specific information,  concerning the Wallenberg case or Sweden in general, in their archive collections. This issue is especially significant for the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Soviet Union was about to collapse and public access to Russian archival collections became possible for the first time.

Researchers want to know, for example, what kind of consultations Swedish officials conducted with Soviet officials before members of Raoul Wallenberg’s family visited the Soviet Union in October 1989, on special invitation of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Gorbachev. Also, what discussions with U.S. representatives preceded the U.S. release of Raoul Wallenberg’s CIA case file in 1994? And how did such bilateral, behind the scenes exchanges affect the ten-year investigation of Raoul Wallenberg’s fate by an official Swedish-Russian Working Group  during the 1990s?

Over time, it has become clear that Russian officials on numerous occasions withheld important information and documentation from certain members of the Swedish side of the Working Group, including Professor Guy von Dardel, Wallenberg’s brother.

There is mounting evidence that the suppression of documentation occurred intentionally. It must be urgently clarified what Swedish representatives have known about these actions and how they responded to the withholding of information by Russian officials.

The censored records include documents that may prove that  Raoul Wallenberg was alive several days after what Russian authorities claim to be his official date of death of July 17, 1947. Of special interest is an as yet unidentified  Prisoner no. 7 who was interrogated on July 23, 1947 for more than 16 1/2 hours in Moscow’s Internal (Lubyanka) Prison, together with Wallenberg’s Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder.  According to archivists of the Russian State Security Service (FSB), this Prisoner no. 7 was “with great likelihood the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.”

Russian officials clearly were aware of the information as early as 1991 (and probably long before that), but did not release it to researchers until 2009. So far, FSB officials have not permitted scholars and Raoul Wallenberg’s family direct access to the relevant documentation, so the information cannot be independently verified.

Ambassador Hans Magnusson, the Chairman of the Swedish side of the Working Group, was permitted to review the Lubyanka prison registers in 1991, but for reasons that are not entirely clear, he apparently did not notice the July 23, 1947 entry. Curiously, once the Swedish side learned about Langfelder’s July 23, 1947 interrogation, Swedish officials did not insist on a copy of the entry.

Just as surprising is the fact that Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who received the new information regarding Prisoner no. 7 in late 2009, did not immediately demand a full clarification from the Russian government when they met with Russian President Vladimir Medvedev in November 2009 and again in early 2010.

After years of futile requests by scholars and Raoul Wallenberg’s family to the FSB Central Archive to permit access to the Lubyanka Prison registers for 1947, Marie von Dardel-Dupuy, Raoul Wallenberg’s niece, sued the FSB in Russia in 2016. The case is currently pending in Russian courts. The von Dardel family has now also filed a formal request with Swedish governmental and archival authorities in order to clarify what precise considerations determined the official Swedish and Russian handling of the Wallenberg case since 1945.

While Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary in 1944 was primarily humanitarian, his work also involved other aspects, ranging from contacts with the anti-Nazi resistance to the support of Swedish as well as  foreign (U.S. and British) intelligence aims. If and how these additional dimensions of his activities contributed to his arrest and possibly to the handling of his case, must be studied in greater detail. Given Wallenberg’s official status as a Swedish diplomat in 1944, these actions would have constituted a serious violation of and direct challenge to Sweden’s official neutrality position.

New information suggests that in 1944, Raoul Wallenberg was not as inexperienced and unknown a figure as he has been generally portrayed and  that he may have been groomed by the powerful Swedish bankers Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg (his cousins once removed) to fulfill a confidential role in the Wallenberg business empire.

At the time of Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance, the Wallenberg brothers were among the most influential decision makers in Sweden, despite the serious problems they faced as a result of the official post-war U.S. investigation into their business dealings with Nazi Germany. However, there exists no indication that the Wallenberg brothers ever signaled to the Swedish government or to the Soviets that for them Raoul Wallenberg’s return was a key priority.

During the 1990s Swedish diplomats repeatedly did not push for  disclosure of specific Soviet foreign and military intelligence records that could have provided important background information in the Wallenberg case. These include details about the Wallenberg business family and their activities during WWII, as well as Soviet intelligence reports from Budapest regarding the activities and contacts of Swedish diplomats in Hungary in 1944/45, including those of Raoul Wallenberg.

The missing pieces of information could shed much needed additional light on the question of what the Soviet leadership knew about Raoul Wallenberg and why Stalin decided not to release him.  Of considerable  importance in this connection is the question of what Wallenberg’s colleagues told Soviet officials about Wallenberg’s contacts and activities when they themselves were interrogated by officials of the Soviet NKVD. The information would help determine whether there was an active attempt at the time to distance themselves and, by implication, the Swedish government from Wallenberg’s work and contacts in Budapest.

The reports could possibly also provide an answer to one of the main mysteries in the Wallenberg case, namely why  Staffan Söderblom, Sweden’s Ambassador in Moscow, failed to insist on full information about Wallenberg’s whereabouts at a time when the Soviet leadership had signaled a wish to improve relations with Sweden. Instead, Söderblom, simply asked Soviet diplomats in late 1945, and again in June 1946 – during a rare meeting with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin – for confirmation that Raoul Wallenberg had died as a result of an unfortunate accident  in Hungary in 1945.

Why Swedish officials  in general so  readily accepted rumors that Raoul Wallenberg had died in Budapest in early 1945, when they had credible testimonies that he had been detained by Soviet forces and taken to Moscow, remains a question of central importance. New evidence suggests that in late April 1946, Stalin was not only eager to improve relations with Sweden but that he was willing to negotiate. Stalin instructed the Soviet Ambassador in Stockholm to offer the Swedish government  a clear ‘quid pro quo’:  If a Swedish-Soviet trade agreement were to be secured in 1946, “favorable conditions for … positive political Soviet-Swedish relations will be created. …“ The offer challenges the prevailing notion among scholars that the Swedish government was simply too afraid to push the Soviet Union for a clarification of Wallenberg’s fate at the time.