maybe because he was so calm. “Maybe they thought I was planning to lure them into a trap.” Suddenly, overcome by their fear, the men tossed Wallenberg from the car
In June of 1933, Raoul Wallenberg stood alone in a ditch next to a wrecked car, his two suitcases at his feet . The 21-year-old had just come from working at the Swedish Exposition at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, and he was trying to get home to Ann Arbor, where he had just finished his second year studying architecture at the University of Michigan. Unharmed from the accident, his car mates had gone to find a tow-truck,
while Wallenberg — also unscathed — had stayed behind in hopes of catching another ride before the sun went down. Four men in their mid-20s stopped in a car with Iowa plates. Suspicious that they didn’t appear to have any luggage, Wallenberg warily hopped in. “How much would it be worth to you if we took you all the way to Ann Arbor?” One of the men asked Wallenberg as they sped into the night. “Nothing,” Wallenberg replied coolly, “because in that case I would have taken the bus.” Wallenberg, the scion of a powerful Swedish banking family, had been in
gage with him. Raoul Wallenberg had come to America, and to the University of Michigan, for just such an adventure. Wallenberg realized that the family money he had placed in that bank deposit box had not brought him to America to learn how “to build a skyscraper,” but rather that the money was there to help him “catch some of the American spirit,” and to catch “the desire to build” great and monumental things. The American spirit was certainly one of the many things Wallenberg took with him when
he traveled to Budapest 11 years later. He went into the heart of Hungary during the dying days of the Second World War to save Jews from Nazis.
Neutrality , the Waning War, and Hungary’s Jews By 1943, World War II’s military dynamics had shifted. For the first time, Germany was on the defensive. The battle of Stalingrad and the second battle of El Alamein in Egypt had cut a major swath of victory for the Allies. Germany was scrambling to regroup,
America since 1931 and was fluent in English. The men had no idea they’d just
yet, even as it fought to regain control, the Nazis
picked up a Swedish Rockefeller.
were rooting out Jews and sending them, en masse,
Wallenberg talked with the men calmly as they drove. But then they
to concentration camps. Germany eyed Hungary’s
turned so abruptly off the main road, down a dark country lane, that the car
800,000 Jews, the largest remaining population in
almost rolled over. The car whipped through the dark forest, until finally it
Europe, with deadly intent.
rumbled to a halt. The men forced Wallenberg out at the point of a revolver. They took all the
As Germany’s military prowess declined, Hungary’s long-ruling leader, Admiral Miklos Horthy,
money from his pockets, then had him open his suitcases. They pulled out
began to doubt his partnership with Hitler. In 1943,
the envelope containing not only all of his remaining cash, but the key to his
Horthy reached out to the Allies, and Hitler, frus-
safety deposit box.
trated, demanded that all of the Hungarian Jews be
All the money his rich family had sent along with him for college was in that bank box. Still at gunpoint, Wallenberg successfully persuaded them to return his key, that its only value was sentimental. Then, stripped of all his cash, he convinced his nervous assailants to drive him back to the highway.
20
into a ditch, sending his lug-
deported into Germany’s death camp system at once. Horthy refused. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the north, Sweden began to use its position of ostensible neutrality in the war to help Jews across Europe. From Denmark to Norway to Finland, Sweden engaged in a
In a letter to his mother written after the event, he said: “They let me sit
large-scale humanitarian effort to save Jews from
next to the driver.” By this time, they were the ones who were frightened,
death camps. The unfolding situation in Hungary
LSA Magazine / Fall 2012