Shafts of Light, XI: Raoul Wallenberg

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

The wicked sit in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places they murder the innocent.

Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
they seize the poor and drag them off in their net.

They think in their heart, “God has forgotten,
God has hidden God’s face, God will never see it.”

But, in fact the Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations shall perish from the land.

to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

Steven Spielberg is a minor god in my pantheon of deities, not just because of his splendid films but also for his work with the Shoah Foundation. Schindler’s List is the finest film I have ever seen (ET is second).

Schindler’s List is three hours and seventeen minutes long, all black and white. Its palette is dark and grim. Just two brief slashes of red. To see the little girl in the red coat, in her singular humanity, is God’s calling to each of us.

Raoul Wallenberg was the Swedish Oscar Schindler. There was no earthly reason for him to play that role in Budapest in 1944. He was born near Stockholm in 1912 to a wealthy and prominent family of bankers and bishops. Someone said that the Wallenbergs are to Sweden what the Roosevelts or the Vanderbilts are to America.

But little Raoul didn’t want to be a banker or a bishop. He wanted to be an architect, so he matriculated at…? Anybody know? The University of Michigan. Class of 1935. Top of his class.

Now I don’t why a prominent Swede chose Michigan. Maybe because Michigan has a great architecture program. But I like to think maybe he liked the school colors: maize and blue, just like the Swedish flag.

Who is the most famous Michigan alumnus? Gerry Ford? Branch Rickey? Arthur Miller? Madonna? Tom Brady? Globally it might be Raoul Wallenberg.

When Mr. Wallenberg returned from Ann Arbor to Sweden however, it turned out his Michigan architecture credentials were worthless in his homeland, so he went to work for a trading firm and did business around the world including Hungary. He spoke Swedish, German, English, and Hungarian. Flawlessly.

In May and June of 1944, the Nazis, under the direction of the infamous Adolph Eichmann, the architect of The Final Solution, deported 430,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz; 430,000 in seven weeks; 381,000 were murdered at Auschwitz most within hours of arrival.

These Jews came from the Hungarian countryside. There were still 150,000 Jews in Budapest. Not long before this a couple of prisoners had escaped Auschwitz and reported to the world what was happening there.

As an archenemy of the Axis, the United States was powerless to intervene in Hungary, but the US had cash, and they sent it to the neutral nations of Europe—Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, the Vatican—and asked them to help Hungarian Jews.

Raoul Wallenberg was the ideal candidate to help. He was a born salesman and diplomat, he spoke flawless German and Hungarian, and he was just as slick and charismatic as Oscar Schindler and as eager to offer a bribe of cash, cigarettes, or whiskey if it would buy freedom for a few Jews.

When he arrived in Budapest in July of 1944, at the age of 31, he started issuing what they called Schutz Passes—Safe Passes—that would protect the bearer from the Nazis. These Safe Passes were printed in maize and blue, I like to think because of Michigan, but probably because of the Swedish flag. He started handing them out to any Jew who would take one. These Safe Passes made the holder an honorary Swede.

Then he rented 32 buildings in Budapest and turned them into safe houses, sanctuary buildings. He posted a Swedish flag above every door. He called one “The Swedish Library,” and another “The Swedish Research Institute.”

But the human traffic in and out of these buildings did not look Scandinavian. The residents of these buildings were not tall, blond, and blue-eyed, but short, raven-haired, ebony-eyed, and swarthy. The Nazis would watch this human traffic in and out of “The Swedish Library” and joke, “Look, there goes one of Wallenberg’s Swedes.”

For the six months that he was in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg was a whirling dervish of energy, a volcano of passion and compassion. He would not rest.

Of the 150,000 Jews in Budapest when the Nazis arrived in March of 1944, 130,000 survived the war. In subsequent years, Raoul Wallenberg has been credited with singlehandedly saving as many as 100,000 Budapest Jews; in reality it was probably fewer than 10,000. Still…

In January of 1945, the Russian Army finally liberated Budapest from the Nazis, and every Jew who had not been carted off to Auschwitz was finally safe. Adolph Eichmann had fled, eventually ending up in Argentina where he lived for ten years until he was apprehended and hanged in 1960–61.

The day the Soviets liberated Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg went to Soviet headquarters to see if the Russians would help him rehabilitate Budapest and its citizens, but instead the Russians arrested him. They suspected that he was a spy working for the Americans. He was never heard from again.

We don’t know how, when, or even if, he died. We know he spent at least two years at a prison in Moscow; prisoners who shared his cell reported the sightings when they were released from Soviet prison.

He probably died in that Moscow prison in 1947. The Soviets told the world he died of a heart attack, but in 1947, Raoul Wallenberg was only 34 years old. The Russians probably executed him.

But people kept reporting that they’d seen him here and there in Russia or in Europe until 1987, 40 years after the war. None of these sightings could be verified or denied. The Swedish government finally declared him dead in 2016, 70 years after the end of the War.

In 1979, his mother and stepfather committed suicide within days of each other. His half-sister said that her parents had ended their lives out of despair at never finding their son.

It’s kind of creepy to think that such a luminous saint, such a brave and kind and able war hero, just disappeared into thin air, just vanished from the face of the earth without a trace.

But I don’t know. I’ve chosen to find some meaning in that. I like to think that Raoul Wallenberg is sort of out there in the ether somewhere, reminding us how much courage and compassion we have within us to share.

In 1981, Congressman Tom Lantos of California sponsored a bill naming Raoul Wallenberg an honorary citizen of the United States, only the second non-American to be so honored, after Winston Churchill. Since 1981, six more non-Americans became honorary citizens, but in the history of the United States, there are only eight.

Back in 1944, future Congressman Lantos was a 17-year old Jew in Budapest. The Nazis murdered his whole family, but he survived the war by taking refuge in one of Raoul Wallenberg’s Safe Houses. His childhood sweetheart also survived the war by using one of Mr. Wallenberg’s Safe Passes to escape to Switzerland. After they both emigrated to the United States, future Congressman Lantos married his childhood sweetheart, and they were married for 58 years.

The Hebrew Psalmist says,

The wicked sit in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places they murder the innocent.

Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
they seize the poor and drag them off in their net.

They think in their heart, “God has forgotten,
God has hidden God’s face, God will never see it.”

But, in fact the Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations shall perish from the land.

to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

To do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
So that those from earth may strike terror no more.
That Hebrew Psalm is a terse précis of Raoul Wallenberg’s brief but fulgent life.

In Ann Arbor, Raoul Wallenberg Plaza sits on the site of the first Jewish cemetery in the state of Michigan, 1848. There’s a sculpture there now, a holocaust memorial. It’s a shrouded, solitary figure. You can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman, but one hand is a clenched fist in anguish, and the other is raised hopefully to the heavens.

Outside the Art and Architecture Building at the University of Michigan, there is another sculpture called Köszönöm Raoul Wallenberg: Thank you, Raoul Wallenberg.

The upright and fallen slabs of stone represent the chaos of war, and the slight steel beams, framing a sort of open, transparent building, show us how little it takes to build safe sanctuary for imperiled children of God.

So, Raoul, if you’re out there somewhere, you’re 109 years old. Unlikely, I guess. But Köszönöm Raoul Wallenberg, wherever you are. Thank you for what you did to guard the least, the last, and the lost. And thank you for reminding us to be ever watchful for the little girl in the red coat, because there’s a little girl in a red coat in each of our lives.