"Well Taken Care Of"

For almost twelve years Russia and its Baltic neighbor, Sweden, have been in a bitter dispute over the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, a slender, balding Swedish-legation attache who was picked up by Russian secret police in Budapest near the end of World War II. When the NKVD drove him off to Marshal Malinovsky's headquarters on Jan. 17, 1945, Wallenberg said: "I'm going to Malinovsky's . . . whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet." Those were the last words ever heard from him.

Raoul Wallenberg was no ordinary diplomat. The polylingual, much-traveled son of a wealthy Swedish banker, he had begun his diplomatic career only some six months earlier after a quiet meeting in Stockholm with U.S. Minister Herschel Johnson and Iver Olson, representative of Franklin Roosevelt's War Refugee Board in Sweden. Olson and Johnson put the mission to Wallenberg simply: Would he go to Budapest as a member of the neutral Swedish-legation staff and, using U.S. funds, try to save Hungary's remaining 300,000-odd Jews (prewar Hungarian Jewish population: 800,000) from Nazi gas chambers or slave-labor camps? Wallenberg was warned that if the Germans or the Hungarian puppet government learned of his work, nothing could be done to save him. "If I can help," said Raoul Wallenberg, "if I can save a single person, I will go."

With Zeal & Energy. Wallenberg went. He arrived in Budapest listed officially as third secretary of the Swedish legation, his luggage bulging with information on Hungarian underground agents and secretly pro-Allied officials of the Hungarian government. Operating with enormous zeal and energy, he persuaded Hungarian officials that if a Jew claimed neutral citizenship he should not be deported until the truth of his claim had been established. This done, he promptly affixed to the homes of some 20,000 such Jews signs that read: "Under the Protection of the Swedish Legation." He rented 32 houses in Budapest in the name of the Swedish legation, packed them with other Jews; he issued thousands of "protective passports" to still others, finally became so bold that on several occasions he bluffed Gestapo or SS guards into releasing Jews already loaded aboard freight cars for deportation or worse.

Inevitably, the purposeful young (32) diplomat came under Gestapo surveillance. Just before the Russians entered Budapest in January 1945, he went underground. When the Russians arrived, he made contact with Marshal Malinovsky, Red Army commander on the Hungarian front, who advised Stockholm, via Moscow: ". . . Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg well taken care of by army authorities."

Without Post-Mortem. Then the curtain descended. Shortly after Wallenberg was picked up by the NKVD, a Russian official in Stockholm declared: "Wallen berg is not really a prisoner. He committed some follies after liberation; therefore he had to be taken care of. He will return soon safe and sound."

After that, while the Swedish Foreign Office kept up a steady barrage of protests, and Swedish public opinion angrily demanded Wallenberg's release. Moscow said nothing. Last week the Soviets finally broke the silence. Raoul Wallenberg, Soviet officials told the Swedish government, died of a heart attack in Lubianka prison on July 17, 1947, nearly ten years ago. His arrest and detention, they said, were undoubtedly the result of "the criminal activities" of then State Security Chief Viktor Abakumov, who was executed in 1954 for "crimes against Soviet laws" as an accomplice of his boss, Lavrenty Beria. There was, the Russians said, a report to Abakumov from Colonel A. L. Smoltsov, chief of the Lubianka medical service, certifying Wallenberg's death, and adding that the body had been ordered cremated without a postmortem.

Best guess as to why the Russians really had imprisoned Wallenberg in the first place was that he had worked out an elaborate plan for the restoration of Jewish property seized by the Germans, and the Russians wanted to seize it for themselves. What had actually caused his death could only be inferred from the fact that the Soviets blamed all on that old scapegoat. Security Chief Abakumov, without benefit of postmortem.

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