Raoul Wallenbergs as The Holocaust Rescuer - Essay Example

I. Introduction Throughout the Nazi rule the Nazis singled out and incarcerated hundreds of Jews, political prisoners, gypsies and homosexuals. Within the confines of our classroom we have been taught that millions of people were persecuted in the Holocaust yet we were unable to genuinely understand and find out about the Holocaust until the story of a man named Raoul Wallenberg is related to us. Raoul Wallenberg was born on the 4th of August 1912 in Kapptsta, Sweden. He stayed down to earth, compassionate and receptive to atrocities in spite of being born from a family of wealth businessmen, civil servants and military officers. He hated witnessing hunting and killing of animals just for entertainment and sport (Handler, 1996). As an adolescent Wallenberg travelled far and wide and gained proficiency in English, German, Russian and French plus his native Swedish. He attended the University of Michigan for four years where he took up architecture. After finishing his degree he apprenticed in a Dutch bank located in Haifa, Palestine. Throughout his six months working in Palestine, he met Jews who luckily got away from Nazi Germany. The mad, sadistic, and hideous stories they narrate to him appalled and profoundly affected him not merely because of his compassionate nature, but because his great-great-grandfather was a Jew (Handler, 1996). When he went back to Sweden in 1936 he desired to work in the discipline of architecture, except that his American architecture did not meet the criteria for such profession in Sweden. Hence over the subsequent years he committed himself in different business ventures. He was hired in 1941 as the foreign sales representative for a Central European Trading Company located in Hungary. Hungary became a collaborator of Germany in 1939 because the Americans failed to rescue the pitiful and blameless Jews who were persecuted under the Nazi regime. Hence Sweden consented to send a special representative whose only objective would be to save the Jews from the evil clutches of the Nazis. For this mission the Swedish people chose Raoul Wallenberg for the reason that he spoke German proficiently and comprehend the ways of the Nazis (Tokudome, 1999). Wallenberg sensed that a number of Hungarian and German authorities were starting to be apprehensive of post war retribution for the heinous crimes they did to the Jews. He took advantage of this opportunity and immediately got the Hungarian and German authorities to reconsider their decisions and actions through encouraging them with intimidations and bribery. He concocted a new manuscript recognized as the Schutz Pass, with stamps, seals and an embossed royal Swedish crowns, the manuscript rallied round the Jews to escape Hungary and live safely in Sweden (Fischel, 1998). As a matter of fact Wallenberg organized and headed all of the nonaligned nations in the rescue mission. Aside from generating counterfeit passports he leased or acquired buildings to accommodate Jews and supply the people with basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing and medicine. He mobilized small commando troops to defend against the persecution of the Nazi. All in all Wallenberg was able to save 125,000 innocent lives. Unluckily, when the Soviets invaded Budapest he was hunted down and captured for allegedly being a German espionage and met his end in prison due to a fatal heart attack in 1947 (Fischel, 1998, 152). The Nazi rule was a hard-hitting and painful time for the Jews, political prisoners, gypsies, the mentally ill and homosexuals. As a part of the cruel history of humanity, the Holocaust should be taught in school and commemorated for future generations. As an individual with impressive courage and determination, Raoul Wallenberg should as well be remembered and immortalized. This man proved that a single person cannot change the world, but it can nonetheless change the destiny of thousands. II. The Strategy of Raoul Wallenberg Raoul Wallenberg was a legitimately secondary representative assigned to the small task force or legation of Sweden in Budapest, Hungary. A legation is a delegation of minor status since it doesn’t have an ambassador. Sweden was formally nonaligned in the Second World War. Hungary was a supporter of Nazi Germany. Wallenberg, carrying the authorization of the government of Sweden, was covertly assigned by the U.S. War Refugee Board for a particular assignment in Hungary: rescue the innocent Jews. And he successfully fulfilled the mission. From 1944, when he disembarked in Budapest, until 1945, the time Budapest was invaded by advancing Soviet army, Wallenberg rescued thousands of Jews (Block & Drucker, 1992). Hence the question is how was he able to pull it out? And could his strategy be employed again? It all relied upon a cluster of situations that may perhaps never be again present, but this strategy ought to have a review. By 1944, the wartime coalition of Hungary with Nazi Germany against the advancing Soviet troops was a growingly uncertain one. German and Hungarian squads on the eastern front were in surrender, although gradually, as the Red Army slowly approached Budapest and Berlin. For Admiral Miklos Horthy, the leader of Hungary, this troublesome state of affairs raised the apparition that an overpowered Hungary would turn out to be a Soviet satellite if not Hungary attracted some allies among the Allied Powers, specifically the United States and Great Britain, which Hungary has no wartime connection. Yet Hitler, on the other hand, desired to annihilate thousands of Jews in Hungary, a Nazi fanaticism probable to provoke the United States and British regimes if Horthy complied. Although anti-Semitism was present in Hungary as a form of cultural bigotry, it was not the racial annihilation-focused principle of Nazism. Horthy, in a personal meeting with Hitler, brusquely informed him: “The Jews cannot be exterminated or beaten to death” (Block & Drucker, 1992, 213). Hitler had been thinking the contrary and eventually lost tolerance with Horthy. But he as well predicted that the old admiral could still be valuable to him. In 1944 Hitler commanded German forces to invade Hungary but to maintain the administration of Horthy austerely in power. It is noteworthy to remember how relative was the anti-Semitic injustice bias of Horthy, since between his biases in opposition to the fanaticism of Hitler with annihilation is where the strategy of Wallenberg surfaced and operated (Handler, 1996). Months prior to the arrival of the Soviets, however, calamity struck the Jews of Hungary. In 1944, an unexpected Nazi-motivated coup d’etat ousted the administration of Admiral Horthy and substituted it with a far more callous, Nazified government, that instantly recommenced the banishment of Jews to Auschwitz. To go on with rescuing Jews in this horrible condition, Wallenberg took advantage of two legacies taken over by that new administration: the Hungarian bureaucracy and the protective pass system (Handler, 1996). When the administration of Horthy had recognized the protective pass system, it set up a legal standard, one the nonaligned task forces in Budapest maintained the new regime reputation. Every time that regime attempted to abandon the protective pass system, as it occasionally did, it instantly come across diplomatic rage that it felt compelled to pacify. Hence oftentimes did it abandon and then restore the protective pass system that its public servants and police officers became perplexed, maintaining the operation of the system since they were not certain it was non-functional. Wallenberg, in this mayhem, covertly disregarded his unbending standard for pass eligibility, decisively distributing more than of the Swedish passes as the government of Horthy permitted him (Fischel, 1998). In the meantime, as the wartime condition of Hungary became even more hopeless, Hungarian authorities became even more apprehensive, particularly when Wallenberg intimidated them with war crimes trials every time they hindered his plans. His intimidation was nothing more a trick than a truth, even in the latter part of 1944, but at times his deception worked. He was as well generous with enticements, bribing numerous public servants, police officers, and combatants with almost everything: limited goods, protective passes of Sweden to run away from the approaching Red Army, pledges of positive mention in prospective war crimes trial, and financial resources, a lot of them. Financed by the U.S. War Refugee Board and by classified Jewish associations, Wallenberg had substantial financial resources and he almost didn’t care who he paid off. He one time mentioned he would entice the Devil himself if that was the only way to save lives. Wallenberg paid off numerous individuals, including covert contacts, spies, con artists, and counterfeiters, that his set of connections contended almost any intelligence circle in wartime Europe (Handler, 1996). Nowadays, it is improbable that even a prosperous regime would allow one of its diplomatic representatives to bribe plainly anyone at will, which Wallenberg did. It is obviously too costly. Most espionage agencies like better to bribe a specific person, transforming him into a long valuable spy than try to bribe countless individuals for a mere temporary advantage. To thwart genocide nowadays, would any elected regime be eager to bribe the foreign perpetrators or even to entice masses of them? If a free press discovered this mob bribery, would it permit such bribery to carry on unpublicized? Would present taxpayers support it? However, through bribery, influence, force and at times even moral dispute, Wallenberg saved small coteries of Jews even as the new administration attempted to banish them all. One of his most important informants was the spouse of the foreign minister of the new administration. She triumphed over her husband to maintain the protective pass system official in Hungary, and for several weeks he complied. The administration as well yearned at least the chimera of far-reaching international recognition. Wallenberg, to acquire a small special consideration here and there, nourished that delusion with as much official smooth talk as he could muster, at least when he was not negating some of the anti-Semitic rules of the administration (Block & Drucker, 1992). Nowadays, nonetheless, majority of genocidal regimes appear less probable to become obsessed to the charisma of foreign ambassadors. Moreover, with respect to the several unlawful activities of Wallenberg in Budapest, it seems astonishing that he was never pronounced persona non grata or intolerable person and forced back to Sweden. Wallenberg was as well able to take advantage of an indispensable step in the system of genocide of the Nazis: the banishments. Parading his ambassadorial credentials, he would shove his way through the throngs of people in the Nazi death trains barely prior to the departure and from there rescue several Jews. When questioned by any SS or Hungarian sentinels, he would abruptly spew out some expedient trick with a threatening fury: This is an outrage! An outrage! How dare you threaten a diplomatic representative of the Kingdom of Sweden! And this, too, is an outrage! I have it on good authority that among those arrested by you for deportation are Jews protected by the King of Sweden! How dare you rob them of their freedom! Release them at once! At once! Or I’ll lodge a formal diplomatic protest with your superiors!!! (Werbell & Clarke, 1982,110) The most painful and tragic feature of the strategy of Wallenberg was that, in order to rescue at least a number of the Jews of Budapest, some had to die, or at least take care of themselves and assure their own survival. This was for the reason that if all Jews in Budapest were given an original protective pass, the already doubtful pass system of Wallenberg would have lost authority. Compelled to decide between rescuing merely a number of Jews against rescuing none at all, Wallenberg decided to rescue some. He once murmured to a fated crowd: I want to save you all but they will only let me take a few. So please forgive me, but I must save the young ones because I want to save a nation”(Werbell & Clarke, 1982, 105). III. Conclusions The man who rescued thousands of Jews all by himself had his own family, wisdom and leisure pursuits in his early life. He exposed his life to dangers through distributing passports and accommodating Jews. Then he just suddenly disappeared into Soviet penitentiaries. Some claim that they have seen him in these prisons. No one is certain, but his audacity and compassion remains planted in the hearts and minds of the Jews he single-handedly saved. When studying the life of Raoul Wallenberg it is important to take into account his early life, his rescuing of innocent Jews and his unexplained disappearance. References Block, G. & Drucker, M. (1992). Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. . Fischel, J. R. (1998). The Holocaust. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Handler, A. (1996). A Man for All Connections: Raoul Wallenberg and the Hungarian State Apparatus, 1944-1945. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Tokudome, K. (1999). Courage to Remember: Interviews on the Holocaust. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House . Werbell, F. E. & Clarke, T.(1982). Lost Hero: The Mystery of Raoul Wallenberg. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Read More