Raoul Wallenberg

1912–? Disappeared in Soviet custody

Swedish diplomat who sheltered Budapest Jews with protective passports and safe houses, then vanished in Soviet custody

Born near Stockholm, he studied architecture in the United States and from 1941 travelled often to Budapest for a trading company. Chosen in June 1944 to lead the rescue mission of the US War Refugee Board, he reached the Swedish legation in Budapest on 9 July issued “protective passports” identifying the bearers as Swedish subjects, and sheltered almost 10,000 people in 32 buildings he declared extraterritorial. Historians regard the claim that he saved 100,000 Jews as an exaggeration; Yad Vashem puts the number granted protective paperwork at about 4,500. Detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage during the siege on 17 January 1945, he disappeared; in 1957 the Soviet authorities said he had died of a heart attack in the Lubyanka in 1947, but the cause and date of his death have been disputed ever since. In 2016 the Swedish Tax Agency declared him dead.