The Hero of Budapest: The Triumph and Tragedy of Raoul Wallenberg

The story of Raoul Wallenberg - who, at immense personal risk, rescued many of Budapest's Jews from the Holocaust - is one of the most remarkable of World War II. Yet the complete account of his life and fate can only be told now - and for the first time in this book - following access to the Russian and Swedish archival sources, previously not used. Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman, recruited by the War Refugee Board to rescue thousands of Hungarian Jews. Once in Budapest, he created and distributed so called 'protective passports' among the Jewish population, thus managing to save up to 8,000 people. Through the 'safe houses' and clandestine networks that he established around the city, many thousands more were saved from the concentration camps. Yet, when Budapest was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, Wallenberg was arrested, taken to Moscow and disappeared into the Soviet prison system. Using previously unseen sources, Bengt Jangfeldt has been able to reconstruct the events surrounding Wallenberg's capture almost hour by hour and, for the first time, he is able to shed new light on why Wallenberg was arrested and what happened to him after he disappeared.