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This year marked a century since the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, the hero who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. With the cooperation of the Swedish Embassy in Israel, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation commemorated the occasion with a ceremony of bestowal earlier this month of the 2012 Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Medal at the Cymbalista Jewish Heritage Center at Tel Aviv University.

Medals were awarded to professors Haim Avni and Dina Porat, to Max Grunberg and to the city of Eilat.

In attendance were a number of ambassadors – including Swedish Ambassador Elinor Hammarskjöld – and members of the diplomatic corps of Australia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Denmark, Canada, the European Union, France, Greece and Russia, as well as a group of academics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and TAU.

The city of Eilat was recognized for its special contribution to Holocaust studies and in particular for making the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg known to all its residents. The Eilat Holocaust study center, Yad Bamidbar – in which stands a statue of Wallenberg – was founded by former consul of Sweden and Holocaust survivor Jacky Pri-Gal. Pri-Gal, who also established a Holocaust survivors’ club, accepted the award together with Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevy.

Porat, a professor of Jewish History at TAU, was awarded the medal for her work, which includes pioneering Raoul Wallenberg scholarships 25 years ago for students focusing on Holocaust studies and human rights law. Haim Avni, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University, was recognized for his research on saviors of the Jewish people.

Concerning the recognition of people as being “Righteous Among the Nations,” Avni posited that there is a distinct risk of mistakenly identifying someone who not only is unworthy of such a title, but who was in actual fact a “pursuer.” Avni mentioned Spanish head of state Gen. Francisco Franco as a prime example of a “patent anti-Semite” who posed as a savior.

In 1963, Wallenberg himself was recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

However, Yad Vashem only mentions that Wallenberg saved “thousands of Jews,” which doesn’t quite match most accounts that record that he saved well over 100,000. Danny Rainer, executive director of the Jerusalem office of the IRWF, notes, “No doubt he saved tens of thousands. But it is a historical debate.”

Wallenberg is revered as a hero and a legendary figure and has had institutions and streets named after him – as well as being granted honorary citizenship by both Israel and the United States. Nevertheless, many people – including Jews – have not even heard of him, in stark contrast with his peer, German industrialist and savior of Jews Oskar Schindler.

“The difference between Wallenberg and Schindler,” Rainer postulates, “is Steven Spielberg.”

Spielberg made Schindler a household name with his blockbuster film Schindler’s List. Rainer laments the fact that the same was not done for Wallenberg.

“Unlike Schindler, there were no economic motives for Wallenberg to do what he did,” he says.

The IRWF is a global reach NGO based in New York with representations in several capitals. According to Rainer, head of the Jerusalem office, the purpose of the IRWF is twofold: First, to raise awareness about Raoul Wallenberg the savior, and second, to arrive at some answers regarding Raoul Wallenberg the victim. Regarding the first, Rainer posits that the chief method of preserving Wallenberg’s legacy is through education.

“We hope to instill the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg in the hearts and minds of people – especially youngsters,” he says. “Last year, 5,000 senior and highschool pupils were exposed to the story of Wallenberg through our lectures. In Bat Yam we ran a literary contest about the relevance of Raoul’s legacy and we hope to do the same in Jerusalem and Ma’alot.”

PRESERVING WALLENBERG’S legacy as a hero is somewhat easier than disseminating his legacy as a victim. “Everyone looks for a hero – it stimulates the imagination of the people,” Rainer says. “Wallenberg epitomized a person who stood up against the darkest evil man has known. He plunged himself [in]to Hungary in the middle of the war just to save the lives of others.”

Wallenberg’s heroism is the stuff of movies. The calculation and brilliance with which he manipulated the Nazis has since become well-known. Yoav Tenembaum, a member of the IRWF’s executive board, posits that Wallenberg challenged the entire machinery of Germany and its Hungarian allies by employing his imagination as an “offensive weapon.” Born into a prominent banking family from Swedish aristocracy, Wallenberg served as Sweden’s special envoy to Budapest between July and December 1944. It was in this role that Wallenberg saved Jewish lives by providing shelter in Swedish “extraterritorial” buildings and issuing thousands of false protective passports.

What is perhaps less well-known is how Wallenberg arrived at that position. In 1943, a group of Jewish activists, led by future Knesset member Hillel Kook (using the pseudonym “Peter Bergson”), established the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. As a result, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt established a rescue agency called the War Refugee Board. The WRB subsequently sent an official from the US Treasury Department, Iver Olsen, to Sweden and tasked him with solving the humanitarian crisis for Jews in Budapest. Olsen, in turn, persuaded the courageous and resourceful Wallenberg to travel to Germanoccupied Budapest.

Wallenberg used bribery, blackmail and threats to stop the deportations. His driver later related how Wallenberg had jumped onto the roof of a departing train and begun handing protective passports through the doors as he was being fired at by guards.

Nearing the end of his time in Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Adolf Eichmann and Maj.-Gen.

Gerhard Schmidthuber and managed to thwart a Fascist plan to blow up the ghetto and kill some 70,000 Jews. Wallenberg wrote the following in a note to Schmidthuber: “I will personally see to it that you will be hanged for war crimes if the planned massacre in the ghetto takes place.” Schmidthuber subsequently rescinded the order.

“[Wallenberg] was so shrewd and courageous,” Rainer says. “He knew [the] Nazi psyche, knew how to cajole them. He also knew they loved colors and official documents.”

“Anyway,” continues Rainer, “All that concerns Raoul Wallenberg the savior. But he was also a victim.”

HENCE, THE second part of IRWF’s mission: To find out what happened to Wallenberg after the war.

Tenembaum writes, “His heroism was crowned by tragedy. Although the Germans and their Hungarian allies endeavored to cause an accidental death to Wallenberg, he survived this ordeal only to be subsequently arrested by the Soviet troops, who had just liberated Budapest, never to be seen alive again.

Wallenberg is, then, a hero without a grave.”

According to Rainer, the IRWF’s efforts to find out Wallenberg’s fate have been tireless. “We send letters to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and other heads of state. We are offering half a million dollars to the person able to provide information which can be verified through scientific means – such as DNA testing – that will lead us to his place of burial.”

As an afterthought, he adds, “We must assume he’s dead.”

Rainer asserts that there is no concrete evidence to indicate the reason for Wallenberg’s capture by the Soviets. “[Joseph] Stalin couldn’t grasp why such a brilliant guy, a non-Jew, would put his life at stake for a Jew, and he thought that maybe he was a spy, gathering information against [his regime]. But of course, this is all conjecture.”

Apart from a half-sister and half-brother who were dedicated to finding out what happened to their sibling, Wallenberg’s extended family was not as concerned.

“Wallenberg belonged to one of most powerful families in Sweden, but the family was indifferent [to his fate],” says Rainer. “So was the Swedish government.

It’s not for me to judge – maybe they were afraid of the Soviet Union. They are doing a lot to commemorate his legacy as a savior. But as a victim, they need to be more vocal – especially with bilateral relations with Russia. I am convinced that people in Russia know more. The Russians are withholding information.”

Dutch-born human rights campaigner Max Grunberg was one of the four awardees of the IRWF’s centennial medal. Grunberg has dedicated much of his life to the pursuit of finding justice for Wallenberg the victim.

In his acceptance speech, Grunberg made an impassioned plea to Ambassador Hammarskjöld: “Raoul Wallenberg was one of the greatest heroes of human rights,” he said. “Please, ambassador, ask your government to initiate a Swedish human rights dialogue by issuing an Interpol Yellow Notice immediately.

Don’t do it for me. Do it for Raoul. After 65 years missing, do it fast because each day counts.”

A Yellow Notice is an international request for cooperation and the sharing of information between Interpol members in order to locate a missing person.

It can only be issued at the request of one of Interpol’s member countries. Thus far, Sweden has refused to ask Interpol to issue one.

Hammarskjöld was curt in her reply as to why Sweden was refusing Grunberg’s request. “It’s a question of keeping it a political agenda with Russia,” she said.

Hammarskjöld was referring to the fact that Raoul Wallenberg is now part of a bipartisan political agenda between Russia and Sweden. Since Interpol does not intervene or act on behalf of a political character, the request to issue a Yellow Notice would run the risk of making the Wallenberg issue non-political in nature. Sweden’s Foreign Ministry maintains that in order to yield results on the case, it is imperative that Wallenberg remains a part of the political dialogue with Russia.

As the centennial year since Wallenberg’s birth draws to an end, the world is no closer to finding out what befell the Swedish diplomat. But even though his legacy as a victim remains shrouded in mystery, the work of the IRWF and other foundations ensures that his legacy as savior keeps on growing.

The ceremony took place at the Palais Provincial in the city of Arlon, province of Luxembourg, Belgium.

Messrs. Eduardo Eurnekian and Baruch Tenembaum, Chairman and Founder of the IRWF, respectively, attended the ceremony.

Among the attendants were the Governor of the City of Arlon, Bernard Caprasse; Chief of Staff, Bruno Andrieu; Ambassador Patrick Nothomb (Counsellor of the Governor); members of the Municipality of Arlon, members of the Jewish Community, Mr. Jacque Funklender, Manager of the association “L’enfant cache” and several Belgian WWII veterans.

Governor Caprasse gave a moving speech stressing the importance of paying tribute to the rescuers, today more than ever. Moved into tears he told the story of a Jewish family which during the war was helped by Caprasse’s mother, who kept it as a secret until a few years ago.

Next, IRWF Chairman, Eduardo Eurnekian, stated: “I take this opportunity to underline here the courage of Mr.Fox, a singular individual who remained unflinchingly on the side of the truth and of the most egregious values that mankind has produced in order to stretch a caring hand to persecuted people, sharing with them their struggle, their passion and their tragedy.” Mr. Eurnekian closed his speech quoting Winston Churchill’s words: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Danny Rainer, IRWF Vicepresident, spoke of the importance of recognizing rescuers such as Mr. Fox. “As human beings, we have excellent reflex to identify evil, but we are not so sharp when it comes to recognize goodness.”, he said. He also stated that gratitude and recognition never expire, and that’s how, 70 years later, “we all stand here and salute this great hero”.

Governor Caprasse and Mr. Eurnekian presented the “Wallenberg Centennial Medal” to Mr. Fox, who came with his granddaughter and greatgranddaughter. Afterwards, Mr. Fox gave his speech and said that he fulfilled his duty as human being.

Closing the ceremony, Mr. Eurnekian presented to Governor Caprasse a portrait of Wallenberg made by the late Peter Malkin, the same man that first grabbed WWII criminal Adolf Eichman, in 1960. Mr. Rainer explained the symbolism of the portrait, “With the same hands”, stating that the same hands that caught Eichmann, painted Wallenberg.

Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat stationed in Budapest who in 1944 saved as many as 100,000 Jews from the Nazis by issuing them documents that afforded them protection from Sweden.

The ceremony will be held at 50th Street at noon that day. The change was approved by the City Council in Feburary. The stretch will run from 36th Street to 60th Street, the busiest section of the heavily Orthodox commercial shopping district, lined with dozens of kosher and Sabbath-observant businesses.

“I am thrilled and grateful that Raoul Wallenberg will be honored and remembered here in Borough Park for generations to come,” aid Councilman David G. Greenfield (D-Borough Park) in a statement. The largest concentration of Holocaust survivors in the United States lives in Borough Park ,including hundreds of local families who trace their survival to Mr. Wallenberg’s heroism. I thank my colleagues on the City Council for supporting this renaming, which ensures that the name and legacy of Raoul Wallenberg lives on.”

Greenfield and his colleague, Brad Lander, lobbied the Council’s landmarks committee for the change, together with the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Commission, which is marking the diplomat’s 100th birthday this year (He was born August 4, 1912). Wallenberg was detailed by the Soviet Red Army in January, 1945, and believed to have died in July of that year.

A tree planting ceremony at a park on Viewmount Drive in Nepean took place Friday to commemorate the heroism of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.

OTTAWA — Ottawa’s Jaclyn Friedlich is part of the universe of humanity that today owes its existence to one man, Raoul Wallenberg, who sabotaged the Nazi death machine with paper and defiance during the Second World War.

Friedlich, a Grade 12 student at Ashbury College, took part Friday in a tree planting ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Wallenberg’s birth.

Her grandfather, Thomas Friedlich, was among thousands and thousands of people saved by Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued protective passports to Hungarian-Jews in 1944 as the Nazis accelerated the “Final Solution,” their plan to exterminate European Jews.

“Without him, I wouldn’t be here,” said 17-year-old Jaclyn, the daughter of Ottawa surgeon Dr. Martin Friedlich.

“I think it’s so amazing how brave Wallenberg was,” she says.

Jaclyn and her father are among 17 Canadian descendants of the four Friedlichs rescued by Wallenberg.

In March 1944, German forces invaded Hungary to install a new, more compliant government. Soon after, the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews began.

Within four months, more than 400,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, where the vast majority of them perished.

Wallenberg arrived in Hungary in July 1944 as SS officer Adolf Eichmann turned his sights on the 230,000 Jews still living in the nation’s capital, Budapest.

Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman educated in the United States, had been recruited by U.S. authorities to lead an effort to save the Jews of Budapest.

They represented the largest Jewish community left in Europe.

Attached to the Swedish embassy — Sweden was a neutral country during the war — Wallenberg began distributing Schutz-Passes in a desperate bid to safeguard the city’s Jews.

The Schutz-Pass identified its bearers as Swedish subjects and conferred upon them the protection of the embassy. The documents held no weight in international law, but they were impressive-looking — stamped with the three crowns of Sweden — and Wallenberg aggressively defended their value in repeated confrontations with German and Hungarian Nazis.

Wallenberg also arranged more than 30 safe houses to protect Budapest’s Jews.

Jaclyn Friedlich’s great-grandfather Lewis and her great-uncle Steven were taken by the Nazis to a labour camp in 1944 and forced to dig trenches for German soldiers as they battled the advancing Russians.

Lewis Friedlich lost 26 kilograms in the forced labour camp before his wife, Aurelia, obtained for each of them a Wallenberg Schutz-Pass.

It allowed them to return to Budapest where the family took refuge in one of the city’s safe houses. There, Lewis Friedlich met Wallenberg, who came each day to ensure that Jewish workers returned safely from their assignments.

“He was a very warm hearted person who helped several thousand Jews escape from the gas chambers,” Friedlich wrote in his memoirs.

Lewis Friedlich survived the war and escaped communism in 1949 by walking with his family to Austria. The Friedlichs and their two sons emigrated to Canada, where Thomas became a doctor and Steven an engineer.

The euro crisis, however, has turned the EU into something radically different. Member countries are now divided into two classes — creditors and debtors — with the creditors in charge. The EU is today held together by grim necessity. That is not conducive to a harmonious partnership. The only way to reverse the trend is to recapture the spirit of solidarity that animated the European project from the start.

To that end, I recently established an Open Society Initiative for Europe, or OSIFE. In doing so, I recognized that the best place to start would be where current policies have created the greatest human suffering: Greece. The people who are suffering are not those who abused the system and caused the crisis. The fate of the many migrant and asylum seekers caught in Greece is particularly heart-rending. But their plight cannot be separated from that of the Greeks themselves. An initiative confined to migrants would merely reinforce the growing xenophobia and extremism in Greece.

I could not figure out how to approach this seemingly intractable problem until I recently visited Stockholm to commemorate the centenary of Raoul Wallenberg’s birth. This reawakened my memories of World War II — the calamity that eventually gave birth to the EU.

Wallenberg was a hero who saved the lives of many Jews in my home city of Budapest by establishing Swedish safe houses. During the German occupation, my father was also a heroic figure. He helped to save his family and friends and many others. He taught me to confront harsh reality rather than to submit to it passively. That is what gave me the idea. We could set up solidarity houses in Greece, which would serve as community centers for the local population and also provide food and shelter to migrants.

Sweden has made migration and asylum policy a high priority, while Norway is concerned about the fate of migrants in Greece. So both countries would be prime candidates to support solidarity houses. This has to be a European project — one that eventually must find its way into the European budget.

As soon as possible, I will dispatch an OSIFE needs-assessment team to Greece to work out a plan for which we can generate public support. My goal is to revive the idea of the EU as an instrument of solidarity, not only of discipline.

George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. © Project Syndicate

The Mayor of the city of La Plata, Pablo Bruera and Eduardo Eurnekian, President of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation unveiled a bust of the Swedish hero Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of lives during World War II.

Baruch Tenembaum, founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, also participated in the event.

Bruera said he was “thrilled to have this magnificent piece of bronze which pays homage to a person who highlights solidarity and peace”.

Eurnekian stated: “It is my desire that this piece stays as a reminder of one of the greatest heroes of modern history, and preserved as a timeless symbol of actions of who extended a helping hand to the needy neighbor”.

The tribute, in the year of the centenary of his birth, took place at the intersection of the streets 51 and 10, and counted with the presence of the ambassadors Charlotte Wrangberg of Sweden and Dorit Shavit, from Israel.

The work is a piece of bronze of 75 cm height designed by the Argentine artist Gerónimo Villalba and donated by the Wallenberg Foundation to the city of La Plata.

Translation: IRWF

The City of La Plata yesterday paid tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust, as La Plata Mayor Oscar Bruera, businessman Eduardo Eurnekian and Baruj Tenembaum unveiled a memorial bust in a square located in front of the Teatro Argentino. Eurnekian and Tenembaum are the President and founder of the Wallenberg Foundation, respectively. The event was attended by Israeli Ambassador Dorit Shavit  and her Swedish counterpart Charlotte Wrangberg. Bruera said he was thrilled to have “this magnificent bronze statue that honours a person who has been a symbol of solidarity and peace.” The sculpture was designed by Argentine artist Gerónimo Villalba and was donated by the Wallenberg Foundation.

Levine will receive the medal together with four others at a ceremony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 23 October.

Paul Levine has spent many of his research years on Raoul Wallenberg’s work in Budapest 1944 and is one of Sweden’s leading authorities on the Holocaust. In 2010 he published a detailed study of Wallenberg’s short time in Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust, a study that was translated into Swedish in 2011.

Levine works as a researcher and lecturer at Uppsala University’s Hugo Valentin Centre, a unit focused on genocide research and the history of the Holocaust.

The medal is awarded by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, with offices in New York, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem and Berlin. It is one of the most important international foundations committed to education and information about Wallenberg and his memory.