AJC Participates in Exhibition Opening on Raoul Wallenberg

 

March 16, 2012 -- New York – To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish hero who rescued tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Second World War, a new exhibition, “To Me There’s No Other Choice: Raoul Wallenberg, 1912-2012,” was opened last night in New York at Scandinavia House. The event was sponsored by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Institute, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

 

Wallenberg was sent to Hungary in 1944 as a Swedish diplomat, and with the support of the U.S. War Refugee Board, to rescue Hungarian Jews. Through extraordinary ingenuity, courage, and determination, he managed to create safe houses and present Swedish documents to many Hungarian Jews who were otherwise marked for extermination in the Nazi death camps. In 1945, he was arrested by advancing Soviet forces and disappeared into the Gulag, never to be heard from again.

 

The evening began with a program introduced by Jonas Hafstrom, Ambassador of Sweden to the United States. The keynote speakers were Jan Bjorklund, Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden; Professor Irwin Cotler, Member of Parliament, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; and David Harris, AJC Executive Director.

 

In his remarks, Prof. Cotler said that “no organization is more responsible for including the Wallenberg name in the moral lexicon of the United States than AJC.”

 

On July 24, 1979, AJC held a press conference in New York to announce the formation of the Free Wallenberg Committee, headed by Annette Lantos, wife of U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, and Nina Lagergren, Wallenberg’s half-sister. The four Senate sponsors of the group were Frank Church, Claiborne Pell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Rudy Boschwitz.

 

As Congressman Lantos later said in a statement placed in the Congressional Record, “AJC showed confidence in this important first effort to call attention to Raoul Wallenberg despite a general reluctance by others to support it.”

 

Harris noted that AJC was also deeply involved in the successful effort, two years later, to secure honorary U.S. citizenship for Wallenberg, only the second time in history such an honor was bestowed. Moreover, AJC pressed for American and European countries, including Sweden, to raise the issue of Wallenberg’s disappearance with Soviet officials. Among the research publications issued by AJC were “The Wallenberg Mystery: Fifty-Five Years Later” by Dr. William Korey and “The Last Word on Wallenberg? New Investigations, New Questions,” also by Korey.

 

“Ultimately, we collectively failed in bringing Wallenberg, the “guardian angel” of Hungarian Jews as he was called by those he saved, back to life from the Gulag. But it is vitally important that his name never disappear from human consciousness,” Harris said. 

“His remarkable example is a reminder of what was done during the darkest hours of the Holocaust by one determined individual. It is the ultimate answer to those who claim that nothing was possible against the Nazi genocidal juggernaut,” said Harris.

“This new exhibition from Sweden is a valuable educational tool that not only educates about the past, but challenges present generations to explore their inner humanity. In a world where Iranian leaders deny the Holocaust, and therefore all that Wallenberg so valiantly did against the Final Solution, and call for the annihilation of Israel, Raoul Wallenberg reminds us of what the human spirit is capable of.”