STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER
PARLIAMENTARY RESOLUTION ON RAOUL WALLENBERG
NOVEMBER 1989
I move:
That, noting the continued international concern about
the fate of Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who
disappeared into Soviet hands in January 1945 following the
defeat of Nazi forces in Budapest, and recent
discussions between Soviet authorities and
Raoul Wallenberg's family about his fate, this House:
affirms its admiration for the selfless and heroic work
of Raoul Wallenberg in saving the lives of tens of
thousands of potential victims, both Jewish and
non-Jewish, of Nazi terror during the Second World War;
urges all interested parties to continue to co-operate
in a comprehensive and conclusive examination of the
circumstances relating to the detention of
Raoul Wallenberg by Soviet authorities from 1945
onwards; and
resolves through its own work on human rights issues,
to continue to apply the universal principles of
freedom, justice and humanity that so vividly manifest
themselves in Raoul Wallenberg's work.
Mr Speaker,
Next January will mark the forty fifth anniversary of the
date of Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance.
He was by all accounts a truly remarkable man.
His actions during the Second World War against appalling
odds and possibly at the cost of his own life were simply
heroic. Raoul Wallenberg's example shows the power that lies within
us all to rally in defiance and eventually to triumph over
depravity and intolerance.
He personally saved the lives of tens of thousands of people
who would otherwise have fallen victims to Nazi butchery:
ordinary people workers, mothers and grandmothers, school
children all marked for execution through the frightening
and perverse twist of Hitler's call for a Final Solution.
But tragically, having survived and helped so many others to
survive the Nazi occupation of Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg
was himself swallowed up by the bloody creation of another
dictator: lost into the clutches of Stalin's NKVD whence he
was never to emerge.
Raoul Gustav Wallenberg was born on 4 August 1912 into a
distinguished Swedish family.
After studying architecture in the United States he embarked
on various commercial ventures, and through his business
activities came to learn of developments in Nazi-occupied
Europe. By 1944, Allied leaders could no longer ignore the horrible
fact of Hitler's Final Solution and tentative international
moves were started to save Jews and other potential victims
in Nazi-occupied territories from death camps.
President Roosevelt set up a War Refugee Board for precisely
this purpose.
Attention focused on Hungary, which had at the start of the
Second World War a Jewish population of 750,000.
Discussions took place between the War Refugee Board and the
Swedish government to expand Swedish diplomatic and consular
representation in Hungary to work to save human lives.
It was in these circumstances that Raoul Wallenberg was
appointed to the Swedish Legation in Budapest.
In the period from his arrival in Budapest on 9 July 1944 to
his disappearance at the hands of the Red Army on,
17 January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg and his colleagues in the
Swedish legation saved perhaps one hundred thousand people
from certain death.
They did so through mustering every resource they had at
their disposal; sheer energy, tact, determination, forgery,
bluff, and bribery. Ever vigilant, ever present, they were
ready to issue Swedish identity papers and passports to
anyone under threat.
Joni Moser, who worked in running errands for Wallenberg,
describes one incident when Wallenberg learned that eight
hundred Jewish labour service men were being marched to the
Gestapo concentration camp at Mauthausen.
Moser and Wallenberg drove to the Hungarian frontier and
caught up with the column.
Wallenberg asked that those with Swedish protective
passports should raise their hand.
On Wallenberg's order, Moser ran between the ranks, telling
everyone to do so, whether they had a passport or not.
Moser explains:
"[ Wallenberg] then claimed custody of all who raised
their hands and such was his bearing that none of the
Hungarian guards opposed him. The extraordinary thing
was the absolutely convincing power of his behaviour"
In his work, Wallenberg was pitted against the ruthless
killing machines of the Gestapo and the dreaded SS.
His antagonists included the infamous war criminal
Adolf Eichmann.
At the very end of the Nazi occupation of Budapest, when he
learned of Eichmann's plan for a total massacre of the
69,000 or so Jews who were still alive in the so-called
General Ghetto, Wallenberg intervened in a final flourish of
threats and brinkmanship to prevent the order being carried
out. When Soviet forces took control of Budapest some few days
later, they found some 120,000 Jews who had survived the
Final Solution the only substantial Jewish community left
in Europe.
Tragically, within a week, Wallenberg himself had
disappeared. He had devised a relief plan for the Hungarian Jewish
community, and was on his way to present his ideas to
Marshal Malinovsky, the Soviet commander, and the
provisional Government.
His colleagues last saw him in.-the side-car of a Red Army
motorcycle, on his way to discharge this mission.
What happened to Wallenberg after this still lacks
satisfactory explanation.
There has been much speculation about Raoul Wallenberg's
fate, with some including, importantly, his family and his
close colleague from Budapest days, Per Anger believing
that he may still be alive.
Soviet authorities, however, have maintained that Wallenberg
died of a heart attack in 1947 at the NKVD's Lubyanka prison
in Moscow.
Only last month, Raoul Wallenberg's family went to Moscow to
get to the bottom of his disappearance.
They were given a small box containing his belongings a
blue passport embossed with the Swedish crown, some old
currency notes and yellowed note pads together with a
reiteration of previous claims about his fate.
Sadly, despite the new openness and willingness on the part
of the Soviet authorities to discuss the case, the
examination of the circumstances relating to
Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance is still not conclusive.
I for one believe that forty-five years after the
disappearance of this remarkable man, efforts should
continue to be made to clear up this matter once and for
all. But what then does Raoul Wallenberg's story mean for
contemporary Australia, so far removed in time and distance?
In the first place, he and his colleagues from the Swedish
Legation in Budapest saved the lives of many people who
subsequently made their homes amongst us.
One such person was a 19-year old woman, Anna Boskovitz, who
had recently married.
After being arrested in the middle of the day on the streets
of Budapest for " looking Jewish", she found herself released
from detention by the Hungarian fascists into the hands of a
stranger from the Swedish legation.
That stranger extended her the protection of his Government,
personified by this very passport I hold here today
protection that literally saved her life and allowed her
subsequently to establish a new life in Australia.
Anna Boskovitz, who built a professional career in Sydney
and who is now also a mother and grandmother, is with us
here today, watching this debate from the Speaker's Gallery.
Not only does Anna Boskovitz owe her life to
Raoul Wallenberg, Australia is a better place for having her
and many like her among us.
Mr Speaker, the story of Raoul Wallenberg also serves to
remind us of humanity's capacity for cruelty on the one hand
and its resources for compassion on the other.
In the words of one person who was saved by him,
" Raoul Wallenberg symbolises the ideal that one person can
make a difference"
At a time in human history when there is so much cause for
optimism, so much evidence of change, Raoul Wallenberg's
legacy demands that we not be complacent.
The violation of human rights internationally is still,
sadly, a daily occurrence.
In too many countries we see daily evidence of suffering and
oppression. In many parts of the world we continue to witness unlawful
detention, torture, starvation and poverty, the displacement
of large groups of people and refugees.
4 It would be easy to turn our backs on these problems.
It could be as easy as flicking a television switch.
But to do so in the face of Raoul Wallenberg's example would
be to betray the legacy he left us.
In the same Budapest that formed the backdrop for
Raoul Wallenberg's heroism, we have this very year seen the
determination of ordinary people to turn back the tide of
totalitarianism. And as in Budapest, so too in Warsaw and Berlin and Prague.
The universal principles of freedom, justice and humanity
that so vividly manifest themselves in Raoul Wallenberg's
work still fire the spirit of humanity today, just as the
dark forces he worked to counter still have still to be
eliminated. Earlier this year, I was honoured to preside over a tree
naming ceremony here in Parliament House in
Raoul Wallenberg's honour.
I also paid homage to this remarkable man in July this year
in Budapest, when I laid a wreath at a memorial erected to
his memory by the people of Hungary.
Today, I am pleased to commend this motion to the House.