Wallenberg 'executed' by Soviets

The Soviets said Wallenberg had died from a heart attack

MOSCOW, Russia -- World War II diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from the gas chambers, was shot by the Soviets in Lubyanka rather than having died of a heart attack, a committee says.

The head of a Russian committee on rehabilitating victims of Soviet repression was quoted on Monday as saying he was sure Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg had been executed in the notorious Lubyanka prison.

The statement contradicted the former official Soviet line on Wallenberg, who helped thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust and disappeared in 1945 in Budapest after being arrested by Soviet troops.

The Soviets had said Wallenberg had died from a heart attack shortly after the war.

In 1957 the Soviets publicised a doctor's note said to be from 1947 to the effect that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack that year at the age of 34 in the Lubyanka headquarters of the NKVD secret police.

A Russian-Swedish committee has been set up to investigate what exactly happened to Wallenberg after his arrest.

"Now we have no doubts he (Wallenberg) was shot in the Lubyanka," Interfax news agency quoted Alexander Yakovlev, head of the Presidential Commission on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, as saying.

Yakovlev was considered the father of the policy of glasnost, or openness, under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

He said the panel had asked military prosecutors to investigate the case and was sure President Vladimir Putin would soon issue a decree rehabilitating Wallenberg.

"(The decree will say that) Wallenberg was a victim of Stalin's repression," Interfax quoted Yakovlev as saying.

He said some of Wallenberg's possessions had been handed over to Swedish officials.

Wallenberg, a member of Sweden's most powerful industrial family, was sent to Budapest as a diplomat with a secret mission.

The original Soviet version said that Wallenberg, regarded as a hero for his efforts to rescue Jews in Hungary from almost certain death in Nazi camps, was arrested as a spy in 1945 by Red Army counter-intelligence in the Hungarian town of Debrecen.

He was never heard of again, but suspicions of his execution have always existed.

"Sightings" of him were also reported in Soviet gulag prison camps, fuelling speculation over his fate.

Sweden and Russia agreed in 1997 to co-operate in trying to establish the truth about Wallenberg's disappearance.

"We should finally put an end to this story which has gained a serious international character and has poisoned the atmosphere for a long time," Yakovlev said.

Putin recently gave Yakovlev the go-ahead to carry out deeper probes into the fate of millions of people summarily executed or sent to the gulags by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Reuters contributed to this report.

London statue unveiled honoring Swede who saved Jews
Feb 26, 1997

Wallenberg
The History Place - Holocaust Timeline
Yad Vashem
Wallenberg memorial in Hungary
Lubyanka

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