WORLD : Soviets to Open Wallenberg Files

MOSCOW — The Soviet Union has acknowledged that Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, may not have died in 1947 in a Moscow prison, a group of scholars said today.

Members of an international commission in Moscow to investigate the case told a news conference that the Soviet Union has agreed to open its archives and all other files to discover the truth about Wallenberg’s disappearance.

“For 40 years the Soviet Union was not involved in the Wallenberg case,” said Irwin Cotler, a professor and chairman of the group. “Finally, they have agreed to look at this in an open-ended way and agreed to let us look into the files.”