The Budapest Gang, Part II

(Continued from here.)

Sweden
By 1944, the Holocaust was well known to those who cared to know.  In 1944, Hungary was deporting 10,000 to 12,000 Jews a day to Auschwitz.  At this time, a well-connected Swedish businessman who spoke both German and Hungarian named Raoul Wallenberg expressly asked the Swedish government to send him to Budapest as a "diplomat" to lead the rescue of Jewish refugees.   As first secretary to the Swedish Legation, Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944.


At this time, Carl Ivan Danielsson was the Swedish Minister (equivalent of Ambassador) in Budapest.  Lars Berg was an Attaché.  Valdemar Langlet served as the cultural attaché and represented the Swedish Red Cross at the Legation.  Per Anger had been the second secretary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest since 1942.    Anger described how the Swedish Legation became aware of the genocide and decided to save as many Jewish refugees as they could.

"First then everything was revealed. Mainly by stories from people who managed to escape. We sent home reports of extermination camps, sketches of the gas chambers in Auschwitz...//... We became witnesses to what we didn't think was possible: a systematic extermination of people." (Interview with Vi magazine.)


"The first days we couldn't do so much. I mean, we didn't know what was going to happen. We understood that now would be a hard time for the Jewish population and it (the persecutions) started just a few days later. So then we were forced to mobilize our powers. From that moment everything that had to do with trade with Sweden or other routine errands were of course put aside, and we concentrated... the whole legation concentrated on one thing. To save... try to save human lives."  (Interview with Dr. Paul Levine.)  (Source.)

Per Anger originated the idea to grant provisional passports (usually given to Swedes who had lost their real passports) to Jews seeking asylum.  The Swedish Legation persuaded the Hungarian government to recognize all holders of the provisional passports as Swedish citizens who would be exempt from wearing the yellow star of David.  Anger also invented special certificates for everyone who applied for Swedish citizenship that would do the same thing.  They had issued several hundred of these when Wallenberg arrived.

Building on Anger's initiative, Wallenberg and Anger designed official looking protective passes called Schutzpasse, complete with Swedish colors, stamps, seals, and signatures.  Though they had no real legal authority, Schutzpasse were respected and honored both by German and Hungarian authorities.

Then they raised money to buy and rent 32 buildings, which were all marked with oversized Swedish flags as the "Swedish Library" or the "Swedish Research Institute."  Holders of Schutzpasse were housed and fed in these safe houses until they were able to leave Hungary.  It is estimated the buildings sheltered almost 20,000 people. (Source)  Langlet and his wife, Nina were in charge of distributing food and medicine; they also issued their own protection letters under the authority of the Red Cross.

Not content with that, Anger and Wallenberg were known for daring rescues at trains bound for Auschwitz.  In an article by the Jerusalem Post:

Says Anger, ”Raoul was a born actor, capable of bluff, bluster, and bribery, using whatever means were necessary to save the Jews of the city. Shy and reserved one moment, he would be barking official-sounding orders in German the next, refusing to take no for an answer."


...Wallenberg, often with Anger at his side, would visit the Jews as they were gathered for deportation and pull many out of line, shoving the life-saving passes into their hands, admonishing them for ”forgetting their papers.”

More than once the two diplomats jumped aboard the crowded death trains and dragged dozens of Jews off, warning the incredulous Nazis not to ”get in the way of official Swedish business.”

 Anger recounts two of these incidents:

"When Wallenberg one day was somewhere else, I went to a station from where a train with Jews was about to depart. There was no time to be diplomatic with the Germans. I explained that a terrible mistake had been done because they apparently were on their way to deport Jews with Swedish protective passes. If they weren't released immediately I would see to it that Veesenmayer was notified. The German train commander didn't dare risking being reported to the feared Veesenmayer. I went in to the wagons to call for names, but only found two Jews with protective passes. With the help of the present Hungarian police officer, Batizfalvy, who in secrecy worked in cooperation with Raoul Wallenberg and me, I succeeded, in defiance of the SS commanders order, to leave the station with 150 Jews towards freedom, 148 of them without protective passes."  (Source)

“I tried to copy him,” said Anger, who also accompanied Wallenberg on death march rescue missions to the Hungarian-Austrian border. “He always found a solution, invented a new way of saving people.”  He would say to startled Jews on their way to Auschwitz, “Oh, you remember—the Hungarians confiscated your passports,” related Anger. “They remembered, and we took fifty people away.” (Source)

Another account:

... he [Wallenberg] climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it. (Account of Sandor Ardai, Wallenberg's driver)

Once Wallenberg and staff even saved Jews being murdered in the freezing Danube River:

Nagy, then fourteen years old, will always remember Christmas Eve 1944, when the residents of the safe house next door to his were rousted from their beds, marched to the Danube River, and shot by the Nazis. Jews were frequently tied together three in a row on the bank of the Danube. The middle person was shot, sending all three into the freezing water to drown. A woman from Wallenberg’s office recalled an occasion when Wallenberg heard that Hungarian Nazis were shooting women and children at the river. He asked his staff who could swim. “We went—it was a cold night—and jumped into the Danube—the water was icy cold.” They saved fifty or sixty people.

When bombed railtracks made train deportations to Auschwitz impossible, Adolf Eichmann made the Jews march 180 kilometers to the next working train station from November 10 to December 10, 1944. Wallenberg and his crew tried to help with the marches as well, though with Eichmann involved, they were able to do less.  Anger wrote in his book:

"One of the first days in December 1944 Wallenberg and I took a car ride along the road the Jews [were] marching on. We passed these crowds of miserable people, more dead than alive. With gray faces they staggered forward under chops and hits from the soldier's rifles. The road was lined by dead bodies. We had our car filled with food that we managed to distribute in spite of prohibitions, but it didn't last very long. At Hegyeshalom we saw how the ones who arrived were handed over to a German SS commando under Eichmann, who counted them like cattle. '489--correct' ('vierhundertneunundachtzig--stimmt gut!'). The Hungarian officer received a receipt that everything was in order.

Before this handing over we managed to save some hundreds of Jews. Some had Swedish protective passes, others were gotten out by pure bluffing. Wallenberg didn't give up and made renewed journeys when he in similar ways managed to reunite some additional Jews with Budapest."

One survivor, Edith Ernster, wife of Lars Ernster, a survivor on the board of the Nobel Foundation, notes with humor:

"It seemed so strange - this country of super-aryans, the Swedes, taking us under their wings. Often, when an Orthodox Jew went by, in his hat, beard and sidelocks, we'd say, 'Look, there goes another Swede.'"

Although the Swedish diplomats did not defy the orders of their governments, they acted with great risk to themselves.  Raoul Wallenberg had to sleep in a different house every night under threats of capture.  Despite the extreme danger of Soviet occupation, they all decided to stay in Budapest to guard their safe houses until the very end.

Sadly, when the Soviets arrived in Budapest in January 1945, they arrested Anger, Wallenberg, and everyone at the Swedish Legation.  They were accused of spying, presumably because the Russians could not believe the Swedes were all there simply to help Jews.  All others were released shortly, Anger after three months in prison, but Wallenberg was never seen again.  Anger dedicated the rest of his life to finding out what happened to Wallenberg.  It is generally believed that Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison in 1947.

Though it is unclear exactly how many Jews were saved by the Swedish Legation, conservative estimates run into the tens of thousands.