Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust by Bierman John

Author:Bierman, John [Bierman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780670922338
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

In the second week of January 1945 Wallenberg’s private intelligence service brought him word that Eichmann’s plan for the total massacre of the General Ghetto was soon to be carried out. One of Szalay’s men told him that the massacre would be done by a combined task force of five hundred Waffen SS men and an unspecified number of Arrow Cross men led by one Father Vilmos Lucska, while a force of two hundred policemen were to ring the ghetto fence to make sure that no fleeing Jews escaped the carnage.

Wallenberg hurried to see Vajna, taking Szalay with him for protection. With the usual threats and promises, Wallenberg demanded that ‘this monstrous plan’ be cancelled. But it seemed that Vajna no longer cared, even about saving his own skin. He readily admitted that he knew all about the planned operation, and that, in fact, he would be playing ‘an administrative part in it.’ He would do nothing to stop it.

There was now only one man, General August Schmidthuber, who could stop the massacre. The general was the overall commander of the SS troops and one of his detachments would spearhead the killer Kommando. For Wallenberg it was too risky to see Schmidthuber in person: the SS had begun hunting for the Swedish diplomat, and the message he wished to convey to Schmidthuber would brand him as a dangerous witness whom it would be only prudent to kill. Szalay, who volunteered to go as Wallenberg’s representative, took to Schmidthuber a message to the effect that, if the massacre took place, Wallenberg would see to it that Schmidthuber was held personally responsible and hanged as a war criminal later.

With the Russian advance guard now no more than a couple of hundred yards from the ghetto and inching forward constantly, the massacre had to be carried out quickly, if at all. There would be no time to find Wallenberg and silence him first. In a fury of indecision, Schmidthuber paced up and down his command headquarters. Finally his nerve broke. He picked up his telephone and ordered that on no account was the ghetto action to take place. Wallenberg had won his last victory.

When the Russians entered the General Ghetto two days later they found 69,000 Jews alive there. In the International Ghetto they were to find 25,000 survivors, and later on, when they captured the Buda side of the twin city, another 25,000 or so Jews emerged from their hiding places in Gentile homes, in monasteries, convents, and church cellars. In all some 120,000 had survived the Final Solution – the only substantial Jewish community left in Europe.

In the view of Per Anger, Wallenberg’s closest colleague, Wallenberg must take the credit for the deliverance of the Jews in the General Ghetto as well as those in the International Ghetto. ‘He was the only foreign diplomat to stay behind in Pest, with the sole purpose of protecting these people. And he succeeded beyond all expectations. If you add them all up, 100,000 or more people owed their lives to him.

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