Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat and Canada’s first honorary citizen, is one of the most admired heroes of World War II for saving approximately 50,000 civilian lives through issuing passports of then neutral Sweden to Hungarian Jews.
The rescues began after President Franklin Roosevelt finally created the War Refugee Board in 1944. Wallenberg’s work was funded by the board after Hitler invaded Hungary that year, because its pro-Axis government had refused to send its Jewish citizens to gas chambers.
Wallenberg demonstrated that courageous effort for good can overcome the worst in human nature. His family on his mother’s side has for seven decades since attempted without success to learn what occurred after he was arrested in Budapest by Soviet soldiers on Jan. 17, 1945. The moral duty of all responsible governments to establish the truth about what happened remains unfulfilled.
