FSB director hands over documents re Wallenberg to chief rabbi
Nikolai Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, on Wednesday handed over to Berl Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia, copies of documents from the central archives of the Russian FSB regarding the destiny of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
“We made copies of the documents about the life of Raoul Wallenberg and events associated with him and turn them over to you,” Patrushev said.
The FSB director said Russia’s chief rabbi had earlier addressed a request to the Russian president, wishing to receive materials about Wallenberg. The request was made in connection with the Museum of Tolerance Berl Lazar founds in Moscow.
Raoul Wallenberg was born in Stockholm in 1912. He was member of the family of a Swedish banker. From July 1944 he was secretary and chief of the humanitarian department of the Swedish mission in Budapest. Using his diplomatic status he organized assistance to Hungarian Jews by issuing them with Swedish passports and by their accommodation in Swedish homes.
In January 14, 1945 he arrived voluntarily on the positions of Soviet troops, was detained and under the decrees of deputy head of the USSR people’s commissariat for defence Nikolai Bulganin was transferred to Moscow. He was held in the Lubyanka and Lefortovo prisons.
In 1957 the Soviet government officially acknowledged the fact that Wallenberg had been in the USSR after the war and had been arrested. The Gromyko Memorandum stated that the diplomat died of myocardial infarction in the prison of the USSR State Security Ministry on July 17, 1947. He was rehabilitated in December 2000 on the decision of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Russia.
This is not the first occasion of the transfer of archive materials regarding the destiny of the Swedish diplomat from the central archives of the Russian Federal Security Service. In October 1989, representatives of the USSR Foreign Ministry and of the KGB of the USSR handed over personal documents and other archive materials to the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg Society and his relatives.
It was agreed with the Swedish side in 1991 to set up the joint commission, including staffers of the Russian Foreign Ministry, KGB-FSB, Defence Ministry, Interior Ministry and the Russian Archives, as well as Russian and foreign independent experts. The results of the commission’s work were summed up in January 2001. The Swedish leaders highly assessed constructive political cooperation and readiness of the Russian side for further search in the archives.
Wallenberg’s personal documents and copies of archive documents are on view in a number of museums, also in the Museum of the Holocaust in Washington.
Nikolai Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, on Wednesday handed over to Berl Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia, copies of documents from the central archives of the Russian FSB regarding the destiny of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
