Issuance of Death Certificate for 'Swedish Schindler'

Swedish officials have officially issued a death certificate for one of the country's heroes during World War II, who had been missing for over seven decades. Raoul Gustav Wallenberg is considered one of the most recognized figures in Sweden during World War II, known for saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from death in Nazi camps. Raoul Gustav Wallenberg was born 104 years ago near Stockholm into a wealthy family. He studied architecture in the United States and was sent on a sensitive mission to Budapest, the capital of Hungary under Nazi occupation, in 1944 when he was in his thirties. That year marked a few months since the beginning of the transfer of Jews to camps like Auschwitz, and Wallenberg went to Hungary under diplomatic cover to save the lives of the remaining tens of thousands of Jews. During this time, he reportedly issued around twenty thousand protective passports that opened escape routes for Jews. He also registered several buildings in Budapest, claiming they were Swedish territory, such as the Swedish Library or the Swedish Research Center, and used them to hide Jews. However, Wallenberg, often referred to as the Swedish Schindler, was arrested and disappeared a year later following the siege of Budapest by the Red Army. This marked the beginning of one of the mysteries and disputes between the former Soviet Union and the West in the following decades. Soviet officials, who claimed for years that they had no information about Wallenberg, stated thirteen years after his arrest that he died in 1947 in the infamous Lubyanka prison, the KGB headquarters in Moscow, due to a heart attack. However, as reported multiple times, some witnesses claimed to have seen him after this date. As a result, his family continued to search for any trace of Wallenberg. In 1989, Wallenberg's passport and some personal belongings were returned to his family, but their efforts continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a joint research group was formed by Russia and Sweden that yielded no results. Now, 71 years after Wallenberg's disappearance, following his family's request for a death certificate from the tax office, the Swedish government has officially decided to register his death. His date of death is considered to be July 31, 1952, seven years after he went missing. Raoul Gustav Wallenberg is recognized not only as a hero of World War II in Israel but also received honorary citizenship from Canada, Hungary, Australia, and Israel. Tom Lantos, a U.S. Congressman who was one of those saved by Wallenberg, proposed a bill in 1981 calling for honorary citizenship to be granted to Raoul Wallenberg.