On the centennial of his birth, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, the company that manages the airport, and the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation pay tribute to the “Hero without a grave”.

The placement of the bust of Wallenberg in Punta del Este is part of a global campaign that aims to deploy Wallenberg busts in numerous public spaces of major cities worldwide.

During the Holocaust, Wallenberg saved the lives of thousands of people persecuted by the Nazis only to dissapear into the Soviet Gulag on January 1945.

“The lives of those rescued by Wallenberg are the main tribute to his memory. Today we are honored to add this bust to the one which was unveiled last year at the Ezeiza International Airport, in Buenos Aires.” said Eduardo Eurnekian, Chairman of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

The piece is a work of artist Beñat Iglesias Lopez.

A Swedish diplomat who led a rescue operation to save nearly 100,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary has been recognised as the first honorary Australian citizen.

Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust in 1944 by issuing protective passports and providing shelter in diplomatic buildings.

Mr Wallenberg had already been honoured in Australia through parks and monuments but Governor-General Quentin Bryce said she was proud the country was now going “one step further”.

“I cannot think of a more appropriate and significant figure to welcome to our Australian family,” she told a ceremony in Canberra on Monday.

Mr Wallenberg had tried to save as many Jews as possible, “repeatedly putting his own life at risk,” she said. “Wallenberg’s life is an example to all of us.”

The diplomat was arrested by Soviet troops in January 1945 at the age of 34. The exact date and circumstances of his death are not known.

Frank Vajda, a professor of neurology at Melbourne University, was saved by Mr Wallenberg’s actions as a nine-year old boy in Hungary.

He has since campaigned for honorary citizenship for Mr Wallenberg for decades.

Professor Vajda and his mother were lined up in front of a machine gun for not wearing the yellow Star of David in 1944. Mr Wallenberg persuaded members of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party to release their group.

“I owe everything to Australia, but I owe my life to Raoul Wallenberg,” he said, describing the diplomat as an “ordinary but very fine man.”

Monday’s ceremony at Government House was also attended by George Farkas, the son of John Farkas – a resistance fighter who was the last known person to see Mr Wallenberg alive.

“I think it’s a recognition that some people can do unbelievable good in the face of reprehensible evil,” he said of the award.

Mr Farkas said there had been sightings of the diplomat up into the 1980s in Russian prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

“Can you imagine what Wallenberg must have thought … that the world had forgotten him?” he said. Mr Wallenberg has already been recognised as an honorary citizen of the United States of America, Israel, Hungary and Canada.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that Mr Wallenberg would be similarly honoured by Australia last week, in recognition of his “tireless devotion to human life during the Holocaust”.

The move was supported by the Coalition. On Monday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said it would have been “so easy to look the other way”.

“Of all the examples of resistance to Nazi tyranny, Raoul Wallenberg’s is perhaps the most flagrant,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said that the Prime Minister gave ‘‘long and careful consideration’’ to the most appropriate form of recognition for Mr Wallenberg, including consulting with the ministers for Immigration and Foreign Affairs, before making a recommendation to the Governor-General.

As the first honorary Australian, Mr Wallenberg’s memory gains the ‘‘unique recognition associated with that status,’’ but the award does not give any status or entitlements to Mr Wallenberg’s descendants, the spokeswoman said.

The Gillard government is not currently contemplating honorary citizenship for any other individuals.

Dear panelists, ladies and gentlemen of the audience,

It is a great pleasure for me to be here, as the Founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the International Angelo Roncalli Committee, chairing one of the panels at the International Conference honoring the memory of Pope John XXIII.
Angelo Roncalli was a great friend of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel, as I hope it will transpire from the presentations of the distinguished members of our Panel which will discuss Roncalli’s relationship to the Establishment of the State of Israel.

During the Shoah, Roncalli went out of his way to help as many European Jews as possible. After the war, he played a significant role in paving the way towards the establishment of the Jewish State, and as Pope John XXIII, he made a significant contribution to a closer relationship between Catholics and Jews.

I thank the organizers of this important event, especially Mr. Zaban, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the AJC, Yad Vashem and the Kantor Center for helping us keeping alive the blessed memory of Angelo Roncalli.

In a sense, I feel like closing a circle. Back in 2006, the Wallenberg Foundation held in Berlin, at the Vaterunse Evangelical Church,  an exhibition called “Ein Visum furs Leben’ (Visas for life).  This event was by hosted Pastor Annemarie Werner, leader of the congregation and head of our offices in that city, together with the then Ambassador of Israel in Berlin, Mr. Ilan Mor. On that occasion we presented the Angelo Roncalli awards to three distinguished persons who, during decades, have worked in Germany fostering of the interfaith dialogue.

One of the laureates was Dr. Michael Mertes, the incumbent Resident Representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and main host of today’s meaningful gathering.

The Wallenberg Foundation has devoted many efforts to preserve Pope John XXIII’s legacy, through street and school naming campaigns, monuments, busts, and back in 2011, by submitting to Yad Vashem the Roncalli Dossier, a mass of documentary evidences (we have brought some copies here, for your perusal) which support our claim that he should be recognized as Righteous among the Nations.

Recently, one of our latest initiatives was crowned with success as the Municipality of the City of Ashdod (the 5th largest city in Israel) has agreed, in principle, to name a street or a city public site after Angelo Roncalli/Pope John XXIII.

We feel also very encouraged by the recent election of the Supreme Pontiff, Jorge Mario Bergoglio – Pope Francis I.

We know him very well,  as he was one of the first Members of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. In such capacity and as Archbishop of the City of Buenos Aires, he helped us keep alive the legacies of Raoul Wallenberg, Angelo Roncalli and his likes.

Together with Bergoglio’s predecessor, the late Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, the Wallenberg Foundation promoted the erection of a unique Commemorative Mural emplaced at the Buenos Aires Cathedral. This Mural is a showcase that pays tribute to the victims of the Shoah and of the two terrorist attacks perpetrated in the Argentinean capital, back in the decade of the 90’s, against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish Community Center. As I said, this Memorial is singular in the sense that it is the only Jewish memorial inside a Catholic Church, let alone a Cathedral.

After Quarracino’s death, Monsignor Bergoglio succeeded him and took custody of this precious symbol, encouraging Jews to visit it and above all, fulfilling Quarracino’s last wish to be buried next to this exceptional Mural.

I believe that Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Pope Francis I will follow the magnificent path set by Angelo Roncalli/Pope John XXIII, nurturing a respectful and fraternal dialogue between Christians and Jews.

Concerning our topic, Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel, our distinguished panelists require very little introduction:
Mr. Yair Zaban is  a renowned Israeli politician,  former Member of the Knesset and Minister of Absorption in the governments of Itzhak Rabin Z’l and Shimon Peres. Few people know that as a young person, Mr. Zaban was the personal secretary of Dr. Moshe Sneh, one of the leaders of the Yishuv and someone who knew Roncalli and his involvement in the creation of the State of Israel.

Prof. Uri Bialer is a world-famous Israeli  scholar, Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International  Relations-Middle Eastern Studies, a specialist in the relationship between the Vatican and Israel. He has published a large number of articles and books, including the Cross on the Star of David – The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy 1948-67, which is very relevant to our discussion.

Last but not least, Prof. Paolo Zanini, presently a fellow researcher of the Department of Historical Studies at the State University of Milano. His main academic interests are focused on the relations between the Holy See, Zionism and the Palestine question during the Mandatory Period.

I am sure that the three panelists will enlighten us, each one with his own perspective, shedding light on this riveting aspect of Roncalli’s actions.

Thank you very much!

Monsignor Capovilla is 97 years old and due to his advanced age he was not able to attend the Roncalli Conference, but saw it fit to greet the organizers and participants of this important event, through a personal letter addressed to Mr. Eduardo Eurnekian and Mr. Baruch Tenembaum, Chairman of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and Founder, respectively.

Read the letter here.

Next June 3, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passing of a remarkable man: Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII.

Next June 3, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passing of a remarkable man: Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII.

It is a shame the Israeli public is not well aware of him, as he was one of the greatest friends of the Jewish people.

Back in the 1940s, as the apostolic delegate of the Vatican in Istanbul, Cardinal Roncalli spared no efforts to save as many Jews as possible from the Nazi extermination. He went out of his way to help the beleaguered Jews.
Among his deeds was the dispatching of “certificates of immigration” to Palestine via the Vatican’s diplomatic courier. He also overtly intervened in favor of Slovakian and Bulgarian Jews. Had he only done this, we would say “dayenu,” enough.

In February 2011, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a global-reach NGO I had the honor to found, together with the late US Congressman Tom Lantos, submitted to Yad Vashem a voluminous dossier with evidences of Roncalli’s life-saving feats during the Shoah and with our strong recommendation to have him recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Our request is still pending.

After the war, as papal nuncio in Paris, Cardinal Roncalli made another great contribution to the Jewish people. This was revealed to me independently by the late Moshe Tov, one of the founders of Israel’s diplomacy and much later by Yair Zaban, who needs no introduction.

As a young man, Zaban was the personal secretary of Dr. Moshe Sneh, a prominent leader of the Jewish Yishuv who in 1947 held the senior post of head of the political department of the Jewish Agency in Europe.

It was Sneh who confided to Zaban the kind of help he got from Roncalli. Sneh’s boss, Moshe Shertok (Sharett) was worried about the voting of the Latin American countries in the upcoming UN General Assembly that was about to address the partition plan. He was concerned about the influence of the Vatican on those countries, fearing that the Holy See would guide them to vote against the plan.

Shertok called Dr. Sneh and instructed him to persuade the Vatican not to object the voting preferences of the Latin American countries in which the Vatican wielded a considerable influence.

Eventually, through a good friend, the Jewish priest Alex Glasberg (who in 2004 was recognized as Righteous among the Nations for his rescue actions during the Shoah) put Sneh in touch with Monsignor Roncalli, who in turn arranged for the Jewish leader an audience with the then-secretary of state of the Vatican Cardinal Domenico Tardini. The meeting took place on October 3, 1947, and it turned out that Dr. Sneh was successful.

Most Latin American countries voted in favor of the motion (with the sole abstention of Cuba). Angelo Roncalli was delighted. Had he only done this, we would say “dayenu.”

His role as Pope John XXIII is better known.

He established a respectful ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Jews, as set out in the Decretum de Judaeis (“Decree on Jews”), which was drafted for the Second Vatican Council in 1962. The draft openly mentions the “wrongs done to the Jews in the past or in our time. Whoever despises or persecutes this people does injury to the Catholic Church.”

Pope John XXIII went further and in an unprecedented gesture he ordered to erase from the Good Friday Prayer a derogative sentence which portrayed the Jews as “perfidious.”

Had he done only this, we would say “dayenu.”

On April 29, I will be in Jerusalem to participate at the “International Conference – Honoring the memory of Pope John XXIII, the Shoah, the Jews and the State of Israel,” where I will chair the panel which will deal with “Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel.” This fills me with emotion. A few weeks ago, I learned that the Municipality of Ashdod has accepted the Wallenberg Foundation’s proposal to name a street of this important city after Angelo Roncalli. Perhaps Roncalli is starting to get recognition.

Later this year, together with the chairman of the Wallenberg Foundation, Eduardo Eurnekian, we shall fly to Bergamo, Italy to award a specially-coined medal to Monsignor Loris Capovilla, aged 97. Capovilla was the personal secretary of Pope John XXIII and has devoted his whole life to keeping alive the legacy of his beloved boss.

I am also very moved following the election of my fellow countryman, the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the Supreme Pontiff.

Pope Francis is one of the first members of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

I know him personally. He is a humble man with a great heart.

As successor of the late Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, he became the custodian of the Commemorative Mural emplaced at the Buenos Aires Cathedral, in memory of the victims of the Shoah and of the two terrorist attacks perpetrated in the Argentinean capital, in the ‘90s, against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center. This monument is unprecedented. In fact, it is the only Jewish memorial in a Catholic Cathedral.

Often I ask myself why this mural does not get the attention it really deserves. It has a strong symbolism and relevance, underscored by the victims of the Holocaust, the victims of the AMIA bombing (a tragedy which has resurfaced following the scandal generated by the Memorandum of Understanding between Argentina and Iran), and all this amplified by the fact that the guardian of the mural is an Argentinean who became pope.

I have a sense of comforting deja vu. A strong feeling that Pope Francis will follow the path set by Blessed Pope John XXIII. Both men share the same humility and the same love and respect for human beings, regardless of their background or religious belief.

The foundation I lead, together with our chairman, Eduardo Eurnekian, is not Jewish, but personally, as a Jew, I feel the necessity of being grateful, of recognizing goodness (hakarat hatov), which is one of the pillars of Judaism.

Therefore, we should cherish the blessed memory of Raoul Wallenberg, Angelo Roncalli and all those who stood-up against evil and made a difference.

*The writer is the founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a global-reach NGO whose mission is to preserve and divulge the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg and other rescuers.

The event, organized by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, together with the American Jewish Council (Global Jewish Advocacy) – AJC and Yad Vashem, will take place in Jerusalem, on April 29^th, 2013, at the Konrad Adenauer Conference Center, “De Botton Auditorium”.

Mr Yair Zaban, a former Israeli Minister, will chair the whole event. Together with Mr Tenembaum, many distinguished personalities will participate in the conference, including scholars, representatives from the Vatican, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate and Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, heads of NGO’s, etc.

The day-long conference will be divided in four Sessions:

Session I – Roncalli and the Shoah, chaired by Prof. Dan Michman.

Session II – Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel, chaired by Mr. Baruch Tenembaum.

Session III – John XXIII, Vatican II and Nostra Aetate, chaired by Cardinal Peter Turkson.

Session IV – The Legacy of John XXIII for Catholic-Jewish Relations – Europe and the World.

In representation of the IRWF, Mr Tenembaum will be accompanied by Pastor Annemarie Werner, head of the Vaterunse Evangelical Church and the IRWF Representative Office in Berlin, Dr. Yoav Tenembaum, Vice-President of the IRWF, Mr. Danny Rainer, head of the IRWF Representative Office in Berlin and Mr. Heroi Landsman, researcher and Ms. Evelyne Noama, office manager of the IRWF Representative office in Jerusalem.

The IRWF has also invited Ms Nieves Farina, Member of the Board of “Casa Argentina en Israel – Tierra Santa”, an interfaith NGO, affiliated with the IRWF and Rabbi Simon Mogilevsky – a distinguished Argentine Rabbi devoted to the interfaith dialogue and longtime member of Casa Argentina.

The IRWF extended a special invitation to Monsignor Loris Capovilla, former secretary of Pope John XXIII. Due to his advanced age, Mgr Capovilla cannot fly from Italy to Jerusalem but a special letter from him to the organizers and attendants of the Roncalli Conference will be read during the event.

“The lives of those he rescued are Mr Wallenberg’s greatest memorial and Australia is honoured to have survivors he rescued living in Australia today,”Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement.”

“The award of honorary Australian citizenship is symbolic recognition of Mr Wallenberg’s tireless devotion to human life during the Holocaust.”

The recognition was made to mark the centenary year of Wallenberg’s birth.

He was posted to Nazi-occupied Budapest in July 1944 and rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews by issuing them protective passports in the final months of the Holocaust.

Wallenberg, then 32, also acquired buildings to house as many Jews as possible and provide them with extraterritorial status.

He was last seen alive on January 17, 1945 as Soviet forces ousted German and pro-Nazi Hungarian troops. Mystery surrounds his fate but according to the official Soviet account he died in prison in Moscow in 1947.

“This is the first time that Australia has bestowed such an honour,” said Gillard, with Australia joining the United States, Canada, Hungary and Israel who have already made him an honorary citizen.

The documentary “Kinderblock 66:return to Buchenwald” was presented at the JCC Manhattan as part of the program ‘Saviors on the screen’ in commemoration of  Iom ha Shoah.

At the special screening, a Q&A session with the film’s producer proved to be enlightening.

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is the fiscal sponsor of the film Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald, a documentary about the lives of the children who survived Buchenwald concentration camp with the help of Antonin Kalina. Kalina was declared “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel´s world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust.

The film is also a tribute by the Foundation to the great humanitarian example set by Kalina, rescuer of hundreds of children. Sensitive and well documented, Kinderblock 66 follows the journey of the children who survived from Block 66 from their homes in Europe, Israel, the U.S., Weimar and Buchenwald.

The mission of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is to develop educational programs and public awareness campaigns based on the values of solidarity and civic courage, ethical cornerstones of the Saviors of the Holocaust.

Related  link: http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/news/tribute-to-antonin-kalina-rescuer-of-hundreds-of-children/

“We are the only two organizations in the world to honour the Righteous in all genocide cases” said Baruch Tenembaum, the creator of International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, in the opening of the encounter – held on March 19 in Milan – with Gariwo founders, Gabriele Nissim and Pietro Kuciukian. Just a few words that convey the reasons that moved him to face the long journey from Argentina with the willingness to pave the way to cooperation between the two organizations.

Born in a community of Jewish refugees fleeing 1880’s Russia pogroms base in the Santa Fe province of Argentina, Tenembaum is an energetic and jovial elderly. He gives the impression of combining a strong pragmatism with a sound humanistic education, and a glance at his biography confirms this. He studied Religious science and taught Yiddish literature and philosophy for many years. In 1964 he organized the Spinoza Congress, with the participation of Israeli prime minister Ben Gurion and writer J. L. Borges; the next year he was one of the promoters of the first visit of a Pope to Jerusalem. In 1966, he founded the international inter-confessional organization Casa Argentina, based in Jerusalem and Buenos Aires. A branch of this will become the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, named after the Swedish diplomat and philantropist passed away in 1945 – apparently captured and sent to a GULag by the Soviets – after rescuing thousands Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

IRWF, chaired by the Argentinian enterpreneur of Armenian descent Eduardo Eurnekian, was created with the aim of making the public opinion aware of the values of solidarity and civil courage, which are the ethical bulwarks of Holocaust rescuers. Yet, the founder cares about assessing “It isn’t an exclusively Jewish organization”. “We don’t lament, ours is a commitment towards the future, to the prevention of all cases of genocide and the education of the younger generations”. On his turn Mr. Eurnekian, on whom the Oslo Business for Peace Organization bestowed in 2012 the “Business for Peace Award”, underlines the need for unity – especially between Armenians and Jews – when acting to follow this engagement.

Once the common goals with Gariwo were assessed, after expressing his own enthusiasm for the ideas at the basis of the Garden of the Righteous worldwide of Milan and the European day of the Righteous, Mr. Tenembaum raised with an initial cautiousness the delicate issue which whoever tackles the topic of the Righteous must sooner or later deal with: Yad Vashem. It is a “closure position”, in his opinion, the one of the Memorial of Jerusalem keeps towards the endeavour to work through the concept of Righteous. For example it is paradoxical that “the Jews cannot receive the title of Righteous among nations” and Yad Vashem should not claim to exert its monopoly on a concept – not simply a title, as underlined by Mr. Eurnekian – that appears both in the Bible and in the most ancient European cultural tradition.

But the key element is the discussion on the term Righteous, for which purpose people shall use it and the different meaning nuances that it takes depending on translation. It is not only a matter of terminology – our interlocutors know – and one should speak the same language to understand eachother well and build common projects. Hence are the words righteous, rescuers, giusti, salvadores used to talk about whom? There are Righteous people who, without performing rescue deeds, have opposed moral resistance in the defense of human dignity, or risked their lives to witness to and report crimes. “I agree with you – said Tenembaum in conclusion – that in philosophical terms the salvadores are those who have safeguarded humanity values”.
Pietro Kuciukian, who in Yerevan has raised a remembrance wall to honour the witnesses of truth against Turkish negationism on the Armenian genocide, knows it well.

Peter Malkin, author of the portrait entitled as “With the same hands” (photo), was the Mossad agent who in May 1960 captured “with his hands” Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. A reproduction of this work was donated from our guests to Gariwo Chairman Mr. Nissim during his visit to our premises.

The foundation is named after Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved thousands of European Jews during World War II and mysteriously disappeared in 1945 after being arrested by Russian police. The IRWF is offering a reward of up to US$ 500,000 to anyone who provides relevant information about Wallenbergs last days and the possible place of his remains.)

The two IRWF leaders visited Bratislava and were accompanied by the representatives of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia to a meeting with Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič. Tenembaum and Eurnekian presented Slovak head of state with the Centennial Raoul Wallenberg Medal, mark the anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg’s birth. The medal was given in symbolic recognition of Slovaks who during World War II helped to save their Jewish neighbors from the Holocaust.