What is raoul wallenberg famous for

In , Sweden officially declared Raoul Wallenberg - a Swedish diplomat that led many rescue missions during WWII - dead after being missing for 71 years. Raoul Wallenberg, who saved more Jewish lives than any other civilian during the Holocaust. He created fake Swedish embassy buildings to house Jews and boarded trains while being shot at to hand out passports and save civilians. He was also Gay.

The movie "Pimpernel Smith" helped inspire the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg when he went to Hungary in and saved tens of thousands of Jews by issuing protective passports and declaring safe houses Swedish territory. About Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands thousands of Jewish lives during ww3 but unfortunately died in a KGB prison in This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Raoul Wallenberg.

He ordered that the Swedish flag be flown over these houses, thus converting them into official Swedish embassy annexes and shielding their inhabitants from the Nazis. Wallenberg employed his financial resources to buy off German officials. He created cells of spies who provided him with information about the goings-on within the Budapest police department and the Hungarian fascist political establishment.

He also personally rescued Jews from the deportation trains. As the trains were about to leave Budapest, Wallenberg appeared at the rail yard and handed out Swedish papers to all those onboard whom he could physically reach. Then he argued that all those holding papers should be let off the trains. Wallenberg accomplished all this while in great personal danger. On at least one occasion, during the fall of , Eichmann tried to have him assassinated by attacking his car. However, Wallenberg was not in the vehicle at the time of the attack.

Despite such pressure, Wallenberg persisted in his efforts to thwart the Nazis. He even challenged Eichmann directly, suggesting to him during a face-to-face exchange that the Germans were destined to lose the war and might as well surrender. In December , the Soviet military began a siege of Budapest. On January 17, , Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, began a journey to Debrecen, located miles east of Budapest, where the Soviets and a provisional Hungarian government were headquartered.

The exact purpose of the trip is unknown, although one possibility is that Wallenberg wanted to discuss how to protect the Jews from pro-Nazi Hungarian thugs once the Red Army left the country.

However, along the way to the meeting, Wallenberg and his driver were taken into custody by Soviet forces. What happened to the two men next remains a mystery, as they were never seen or heard from again by the outside world. In , Andrei Vyshinsky , the Soviet deputy foreign minister, announced that Wallenberg was not in the Soviet Union and suggested he had possibly died during the Russian effort to seize Budapest.

The paperwork never was handed over to the Swedish authorities, nor was any explanation given as to why Wallenberg had been incarcerated. Some experts suggested that the Soviets might have believed Wallenberg was a spy for Western nations. Believing him to still be living, some humanitarian organizations and individuals, including many whose lives were spared because of his valor, spearheaded a movement to have him released by the Russians and relocated to the U.

In the meantime, Wallenberg was showered with worldwide tributes. In , U. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation naming Wallenberg an honorary American citizen, a mark of distinction that until that time had been earned only by Winston Churchill And he had a famous name. Soon the committee approved Wallenberg and, by the end of June , he was appointed first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest with the mission to start a rescue operation for the Jews. Raoul was very excited to go to Hungary, but first he wrote a memo to the Swedish foreign department.

He was determined not to get caught in the protocol and paperwork bureaucracy of diplomacy. He demanded full authorization to deal with whom he wanted without having to contact the ambassador first. He also wanted to have the right to send diplomatic couriers beyond the usual channels. The memo was so unusual that it was sent all the way to Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, who consulted the king before he announced that the demands had been approved.

By the time Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July , the Germans, under the leadership of SS officer Adolf Eichmann , had already deported more than , Jewish men, women and children from Hungary. They had been deported on freight trains between May 14 and July 8. Only about , Jews, out of a population that once numbered close to three-quarters of a million, were now left.

That same July, Eichmann was preparing a plan that in one day would exterminate the entire Jewish population in Budapest, the only Hungarian region remaining with large pockets of Jews intact. Horthy, the head of state, meanwhile received a letter from the Swedish King, Gustav V, with an appeal to halt all the deportations.

Oddly enough, the German authorities approved the cancellation of the deportations. Eichmann could do nothing but wait and sit on his plan. During this time, minister Carl Ivar Danielsson was head of the Swedish legation. His closest aide was secretary Per Anger. Wallenberg now headed the department responsible for helping the Jews.

The buildings were then used as hiding places for Jews. Wallenberg did not use traditional diplomacy. He more or less shocked the diplomats at the Swedish legation with his unconventional methods. Everything from bribes to extortion threats were used with success. A copy of Wallenberg's fake protective pass.

In previous experience, Wallenberg had noted that both the German and Hungarian authorities were weak for flashy symbols and he therefore had the passes printed in yellow and blue with the coat of arms of the Three Crowns of Sweden in the middle and the appropriate stamps and signatures throughout.

At the start, Wallenberg was only given permission to issue 1, of his passes. Quickly, though, he managed to negotiate another 1,, and through promises and empty threats to the Hungarian foreign ministry he eventually managed to raise the quota to 4, protective passes. In reality, Wallenberg managed to issue more than three times as many protective passes as he was officially allowed. The situation for the Jews improved considerably.

He expected the invading troops of the Soviet Union to soon take over Budapest from the Nazis. On October 15, the Horthy declared that he wanted peace with the Soviets. But his radio speech had barely been broadcast when the German troops took command. Eichmann returned to Hungary and received a free hand to continue the terror against the Jews. Wallenberg kept on fighting in spite of the ruling powers of evil and appeared often as an unwelcome witness to the atrocities.

In many cases he managed to save Jews from the clutches of the Nazis with firm action and courage as his only weapon. A Swedish flag hung in front of each door and Wallenberg declared the houses Swedish territory. Toward the end of the war, when the situation became increasingly desperate, Wallenberg issued a simplified form of his protective pass, one copied page with his signature alone. In the existing chaos even that worked.

The newly instated Hungarian Nazi government immediately let it be known that with the change of power the protective passes were no longer valid. The first march started November 20, , and the conditions along the kilometer road between Budapest and the Austrian border were so horrendous that even the Nazi soldiers accompanying the Jews complained themselves.

The marching Jews could be counted in the thousands of never-ending rows of starving and tortured people. Wallenberg was in place all the time to hand out protective passes, food and medicine.