Why was wallenberg arrested

Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Volume 19, Issue 3. Previous Article Next Article. Article Navigation. August 01 Makinen Marvin W. Makinen is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Chicago and is the founding director of the Independent Investigation into Raoul Wallenberg's Fate, Inc.

This Site. Google Scholar. Author and Article Information. Online Issn: Journal of Cold War Studies 19 3 : — Cite Icon Cite. Abstract The tragic fate of the courageous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg after he was seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War II has never been adequately explained.

Verifying things was of utmost importance for him. Historian Susanne Berger agrees. Sometimes I wake up and think that yeah, it is possible that Wallenberg lived longer, and the next morning I wake up and say: No, I really think he died in … Getting as many facts as we can and then making a conclusion is our best bet.

So far the facts are these: Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets, taken from Budapest to Moscow and locked in a cell in the Lubyanka prison. He was later transferred to another MGB prison — Lefortovo, but had been returned to Lubyanka by March , where his trail ends. Another question without an answer is why Wallenberg was arrested in the first place. The name, Wallenberg, was well-known to Stalin, says Birstein, because the Wallenberg family has been doing business with the Soviet Union since the beginning of the 20th century.

Apparently, Stalin was the one to order the arrest. After winning the war in , the U. What do you think he did with a prisoner that no one needed? The FSB is uncooperative these days — they intentionally censor and withhold some documents, say historians. Archives of Russian state bodies, in theory, should be much more open, says Daria Sukhikh, lawyer from the Team 29 informal legal association that helps the Wallenberg research.

Cases of state bodies denying access to their archives or documents should be considered by courts, but courts often take the side of powerful organizations like the FSB, Sukhikh said at a Wallenberg conference. It eats up a great deal of time, effort and money, they say. If there are no comprehensive answers to the questions from the catalogue presented to the FSB archives, further actions will include formal complaints and possibly a lawsuit, say Team 29 lawyers.

Your donation to The Moscow Times directly supports the last independent English-language news source within Russia. Support The Moscow Times! Contribute today. By Daria Litvinova. Holocaust Hero Vanishes Raoul Wallenberg, a year-old secretary of the Swedish legation, arrived in Budapest in This story, researchers believe, is most likely a lie. Wallenberg trusted the Communists only slightly more than the Nazis. But he allowed himself to fall into their hands because he hoped that the Soviets would allow him to stay in Hungary to take part in the postwar revitalization of its society.

In April , Averell Harriman, acting on behalf of the U. His offer was curtly declined. It was not until June , under pressure from the Swedish public and the Foreign Office, that the Swedish minister to Moscow finally requested an interview with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to discuss Wallenberg.

Though the Swedish Foreign Office had evidence that Wallenberg was imprisoned in Moscow, the minister volunteered that he personally believed that the great humanitarian had been killed in Budapest. Offered an easy out, Stalin did not disagree.

That conspiracy of silence continued for eleven years. They admitted that he had survived the war, and even that Stalin had been holding him prisoner at the time of the meeting with the Swedish minister.

But they claimed that Wallenberg—a healthy thirty-two-year-old man at the time he was abducted—had died in prison of a heart attack two years later. That remained the official line until the fall of The following year, President Reagan made Raoul Wallenberg an honorary citizen of the United States—an honor previously extended only to Winston Churchill.

Evidence that he was alive during many of the last fifty-six years is compelling and impossible to dismiss.