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10.30 pm
Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South): First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon(Mr. Amess) on introducing this debate and on everything that he has done to preserve the memory of Raoul Wallenberg. Raoul Wallenberg was a beacon of courage and determination during the awful days of the holocaust. The fact that one man could save 100,000 lives is a tribute to his personality, his courage and his determination.
Raoul Wallenberg's tragedy was that, when he had saved so many lives, in 1945 we in the west ignored his fate. After he had been captured by the Russians,the Swedish, British and American Governments did nothing in the years that followed to inquire of the Russians what was happening to him. I do not believe that he died of a heart attack in 1947. I do not believe that the diet in the Russian prisons was so full of cholesterol or that they stuffed him with butter, cream and roast beef.I believe that he was murdered long after 1947.The indifference of the west to his fate was in stark contrast to his courage in ensuring that 100,000 people lived rather than perished in the holocaust.
Mr. Anthony Steen (South Hams):
With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
Order. It is not with my permission; the permission rests entirely with the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess). It is not normal to have more than three hon. Members speaking in an Adjournment debate, unless the hon. Gentleman has the agreement of the Minister.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. David Davis)
indicated assent.
Mr. Amess:
I am aware of the pressure that the Minister is under, but I believe that two hon. Members wish to speak for just a few seconds, and I would welcome their contribution.
10.32 pm
Mr. Steen: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) for raising this very important matter. Hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to pay tribute to him for persevering for many years until he managed to persuade the authorities to build a monument to a very great man. I hope that the Minister will be able to make encouraging sounds about the other half of the money needed to complete the project.
10.33 pm
Mrs. Barbara Roche (Hornsey and Wood Green): I shall make some very brief comments. I was born in 1954 and I am extremely proud to be Jewish. I grew up with the memory of what the name Wallenberg means.It means a great deal to the Jewish community. He was a shining light; he was a beacon at a time when it would have been convenient for people to forget, ignore and hide their heads in the sand. He did not do so and we owe him a great debt. I am proud that we are having this debate tonight. I am also extremely proud that one of my constituents to whom the hon. Member for Basildon(Mr. Amess) referred is Sir Sigmund Sternberg, who is a wonderful figure. We in the Jewish community are proud of him, but he is also famous and well-known in the Christian community. I pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, and to all my colleagues for their work. I wish the memorial every possible success.
10.34 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. David Davis): I thank more than usually my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) for his
moving tribute to a man who unquestionably deserves no less than my hon. Friend's words. I particularly welcome the fact that there were tributes from both sides of the House--I was tolerant, because it was appropriate to show that the House is united in its admiration of Raoul Wallenberg's qualities.
Raoul Wallenberg was an exceptionally courageous man whose selfless efforts saved many thousands of lives, for which he deserves to be remembered. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to add my tribute to Wallenberg's bravery. Although I am replying on behalf of the Government, I will speak for a few moments on a personal basis.
Ever since first reading about Wallenberg rather more than 10 years ago, I have been inspired by his conviction, principle, humanity and, above all, selfless bravery. There are few people of whom I could say without qualification that they are my heroes, but Raoul Wallenberg is one of them. His deeds provide a source of inspiration to which we should all aspire, even if none of us could match them.
I make no apology for repeating some of the facts of which my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon reminded the House. Wallenberg went to Budapest in 1944 to head a special department of the Swedish legation, charged with helping persecuted Jews wherever possible. He left behind a secure and comfortable life in Stockholm to take up his mission. He found himself plunged into the horrors of Adolf Eichmann's extermination programme.
Lars Berg, a colleague of Wallenberg's in the Swedish legation in Budapest in July 1944 and a career diplomat, said:
By the time that Wallenberg arrived in Budapest, the majority of the Hungarian Jewish population--numbering more than 400,000, mainly from the provinces--had already been deported to Auschwitz. The Jews remaining in Budapest were left until last. Wallenberg worked with the energy of a man possessed. In close to six months, risking his own life on a regular basis, he saved thousands who would otherwise have perished in the holocaust. It is widely thought that, directly and indirectly, he saved 100,000 people.
Raoul Wallenberg started by designing and issuing Swedish "passports"--documents that had no legal status but which were designed to achieve recognition by their extravagant symbolism. Wallenberg originally had permission to issue 1,500 such documents but ultimately issued many thousands. Witness reports even record Wallenberg issuing those passports to Jews already loaded on to cattle trucks waiting to depart for the concentration
camps, and to Jews in the forced marches to the border, en route to the same fate--both times under the noses of the Nazis.
Wallenberg's audacity and resourcefulness saved many Jews from certain death. He saved many more Jews by providing safe houses--buying up property and marking it with the Swedish flag.
Above all, however, Wallenberg's genius lay in his ability to motivate and inspire, drawing in other neutral representations in Budapest to work with him;to co-ordinate the relief efforts; and to deal with the enemy in whatever form necessary. He would bribe officials to gain advance information on planned raids and death marches; he reasoned with, bargained with and cajoled those in authority, including the Nazis, to spare lives; and when all else failed, he threatened reprisals after the war when it was clear that the tide had turned.
When the Russians entered Budapest some 120,000 Jews had survived the Final Solution, some if only barely alive in the ghettos. Per Anger, another Swedish diplomat who had worked alongside Wallenberg, said that
The tragedy is that Wallenberg was not to share the freedom that he had won for so many others. A moment of liberation for others was the moment in which his captivity began. No one can dispute that we owe it to Wallenberg's memory to help to establish his fate.
It is well known that in January 1945, Wallenberg was taken into custody by the Red army, transported to Moscow and gaoled. What exactly happened next remains unanswered. For years the Soviet authorities denied that they held him. It was not until some 12 years later,in 1957, that Andrei Gromyko, then Deputy Foreign Minister, informed the Swedes that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack, at 36, in the Lubyanka--the notorious KGB headquarters--in 1947. That, of course, was not the end of the story.
A number of approaches have been made over the years to press the Russians to provide a full and frank account of what happened to Wallenberg after he was taken into Soviet custody. Unfortunately, despite a greater openness in Russia today, such a response has not yet been forthcoming. Efforts continue to elicit one.
The Swedish Government, with whom we remain in contact on this issue, believe that the best hope of making progress now lies with the joint Swedish-Russian Wallenberg working group. This was established in 1991 to search for relevant documents and to interview persons who might have knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Wallenberg's disappearance and subsequent fate. This group is continuing its work.
The group held its 12th meeting in Moscow in September 1995 and it is hoping to publish a common report by the end of this year; but it is slow and painstaking work. We hope that answers may be found in the Russian archives. Sadly, the group has made no breakthrough yet, possibly because the bulk of the documents relating to Wallenberg may have been destroyed by the Soviet security forces responsible, anxious to cover their tracks.
The evidence about Wallenberg's fate is not clear. Despite reports of sightings of Wallenberg which date from as late as 1986, none of these has been corroborated
by the joint working group or the researchers who preceded them. On the other hand, the version of events recounted by the former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky in his book "KGB" ties in with earlier Russian claims that Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison in 1947. While the Soviet authorities had tried to claim that Wallenberg died from a heart attack, Gordievsky states that he was shot, no later than 1947.
The uncertainty is frustrating. We sympathise with the relatives and surviving friends of Wallenberg for whom the lack of any clear information about his fate must be unimaginably distressing. The full facts of this case need to be uncovered. We will continue to give our support to the joint working group.
"Raoul Wallenberg began from such a hopeless starting point, with such small resources and with such a lack of actual force to back him up. When he arrived to organise help for the Hungarian Jews, he was nothing but a blank page. He was not a career diplomat. His knowledge of the Hungarian language was limited. He knew no one of importance in Budapest. However, he had a job to do: to stop the already initiated deportations of the Hungarian Jews, to give them food and shelter and, above all, to save their lives. The most remarkable thing about Raoul Wallenberg's work was that it was not based on any legal rights. His task was not to protect any Swedish subjects, Allied prisoners of war, wounded or sick people. Neither he nor the Swedish legation had any right to interfere with the manner in which the Hungarian authorities chose to handle their problems--in this instance, the Jews. Wallenberg was not supported by physical force--neither weapons nor soldiers gave weight to his words. He began his mission with only one source of power--an unfaltering faith in himself, buttressed by the justness of his cause. His only protection was a diplomatic passport."
"he was the only foreign diplomat to stay behind in Pest with the sole purpose of protecting these people. And he succeeded beyond all expectations. If you add them all up, 100,000 or more people owed their lives to him".
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