|
January 2, 2012
Raoul Wallenberg Sweden's Not-So-Favourite Son
(The Local [Sweden])
by Susanne Berger
The Swedish government has announced that
it will designate 2012 as the official "Raoul Wallenberg
Year" and the honour is more than deserved.
Planned events will highlight the remarkable courage the
Swedish businessman showed when in July 1944, at age thirty-one,
he accepted a diplomatic appointment to go to Budapest,
Hungary to confront the ruthless Nazi death machinery. By
the time of Wallenberg's arrival it had swallowed up five-hundred
thousand Jews of the Hungarian countryside and the less
than two-hundred thousand left in the capital were about
to meet the same fate. Driven by the young Swede's relentless
energy, a wide network of diplomatic colleagues and other
helpers managed to save thousands of Budapest's Jews.
Already by the end of the war Wallenberg's reputation had
achieved legendary status. However, in January 1945 the
rescuer himself became a victim when he disappeared as a
prisoner in Stalin's GULAG. Largely abandoned to his fate
by his home country, the disgraceful lack of efforts on
his behalf prompted a public apology to Wallenberg's family
by then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson in 2001.
Sweden's relationship with what should be its favourite
son has always been a complicated one. For his countrymen,
he has often proved to be a problematic hero; someone who
is admired, but not universally loved. While Wallenberg's
reputation has steadily grown abroad - he is an honorary
citizen of the U.S., Canada and Israel - Sweden did not
dedicate an official memorial in his honour until 1997.
Not surprisingly, the 2012 commemoration is again geared
largely towards a foreign audience. "The official Raoul
Wallenberg year serves primarily to use him to advertise
Sweden abroad as a morally outstanding country," says
art historian Tanja Schult who has studied Wallenberg as
a cultural symbol. "But it obscures the fact that the
very qualities Wallenberg represents - independent, conscience
driven action - stood in contrast to official Sweden's treatment
of the European Jews, at least until 1942/43, and have been
a major source of conflict with his own country."
A special exhibit highlighting Wallenberg's accomplishments
in Budapest was previewed for only one day in Sweden, on
December 20, before leaving on an international tour. Wallenberg's
message as someone who confronted hate, anti-Semitism and
genocide should also hold special meaning for his home country
where a recent survey found that 26 per cent of young adults
between the ages of 18-29 would not mind living in a dictatorship.
By focusing the centennial almost exclusively on Wallenberg
as a symbol of tolerance many researchers also worry that
Sweden is once again sidestepping the complex and controversial
questions that remain in connection with Wallenberg's fate.
This begs the question: Why can Sweden not do both? Honour
his remarkable legacy and at the same time seize this golden
opportunity to finally determine the full truth about his
disappearance after being arrested by Soviet forces on January
17th, 1945?
Sweden's complex attitude toward Raoul Wallenberg is very
much rooted in the country's conformist culture. Right from
the beginning, his life did not fit into the clear social
parameters Swedes prefer. He was born a Wallenberg but was
raised outside the influential banking family. He was an
architect by training but worked as a businessman. He was
not a real diplomat, nor a real spy and for many years after
he went missing he was considered neither truly dead nor
confirmed to be alive. Most importantly, like any visionary,
he was not afraid to test boundaries and to break the rules
while working in Budapest.
Still, the question remains why Swedish officials showed
so little sympathy for Raoul Wallenberg after he disappeared.
The political sensitivities and uncertainties that characterized
Wallenberg's mission (the U.S. government had originated
and financed a large part of the project) as well as the
chaotic conditions of the immediate post-war period alone
cannot account for Sweden's extreme passivity. One reason
was clearly that as an official Swedish representative in
Hungary Wallenberg had been wildly successful, yet in many
ways this success carried the flair of an individualistic
achievement. It did not altogether constitute a triumph
of Swedish diplomacy. In fact, many in the Swedish Foreign
Office felt that both Wallenberg's methods and behaviour
were highly "un-diplomatic", in the true sense
of the word, and that through his unbridled enthusiasm he
had created a crisis for himself and for them that they
resented having to solve.
Swedish officials like to point to Wallenberg as an example
of a diplomat who showed both unusual compassion and the
courage to act, but they are less ready to acknowledge that
Wallenberg's success highlights a fundamental contradiction.
While his official diplomatic status undoubtedly enabled
Wallenberg to be effective, his correspondence also shows
how much he chafed at the many bureaucratic strictures imposed
on him. Where the Swedish government was cautious not to
push German and Hungarian Nazi authorities too hard, Wallenberg
was constantly trying to find ways to maximize rescue efforts.
From the very beginning Wallenberg made it clear he did
not simply want to protect only those individuals with close
business or family ties to Sweden, but he also intended
to use the system he and his colleagues were putting in
place to save as many people as possible. "In my opinion,
the help project should continue on the highest scale,"
Wallenberg wrote in late July 1944. To accomplish this,
in August 1944 he sharply urged the Swedish Foreign Office
"to sacrifice the sacred institution of the provisional
passport and to grant [us] the full right to hand them out."
His request was not met, forcing him to rely on an alternate
document, the by now famous "Schutzpass," (Protective
Passport).
That his mission did not enjoy unanimous support at home
found expression in the prescient warning issued by his
friend and business partner Kalman Lauer, writing from Stockholm:
"Gratitude for your work you can probably not expect
.... So be very careful before you throw yourself into any
adventures." Lauer realized that by confronting the
enemy outside - Nazism -, Wallenberg would sooner or later
also have to face obstacles within his own country. In other
words, what made him a hero in the world's eyes, showed
up the serious weaknesses at home, something that many Swedish
officials did not exactly welcome.
Former Under Secretary of State, Leif Leifland, who headed
the Wallenberg investigation in the 1970's and early 1980's,
suggests that one reason why Wallenberg has not been embraced
in Sweden is that quite a few members of the diplomatic
establishment resented his success. "Frankly,"
Leifland says, "Raoul Wallenberg was not very popular."
One reason was the deeply ingrained German sympathies of
the wartime Foreign Office. Another reason was that Wallenberg
overshadowed the reputation of all other Swedish diplomats
after the war. "Everywhere they went, no matter what
they did, the talk was always about Wallenberg - not about
the clever and important things they did," Leifland
says. "For many, this was hard to swallow." Sweden's
former Ambassador to Hungary, Jan Lundvik, put it even more
bluntly in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in
2009. "They did not want him back," Lundvik told
the paper. It is therefore good to see that the Swedish
government will finally show Wallenberg its long-overdue
appreciation.
But why omit an important part of Raoul Wallenberg's personal
story, as a victim of totalitarianism during the Cold War,
and why not demand that justice is finally done, as a matter
of principle? Especially now, when new information has emerged
that suggests the case can indeed be solved and that has
finally proved wrong the long held official Russian claim
that Wallenberg died on July 17, 1947 of a heart attack
in a Moscow prison. The currently available evidence leaves
open the possibility that he lived after July 1947 for weeks,
months or even years in Soviet captivity. Why does Swedish
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the official chairman of the
Raoul Wallenberg Centennial, not firmly insist on full information
from Russia's leaders who lied to an official Working Group
as late as 2001 instead of meekly asking them yet once again
for "an open archival policy"? If anything, Sweden's
limited approach serves as a reminder that while Swedish
officials may like to invoke Wallenberg's spirit, they are
still a long way from matching it.
|
|