Soviets Killed WWII Diplomat, Russian Says

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who disappeared after helping tens of thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary, undoubtedly was shot and killed by the Soviets, the head of a Russian presidential commission said Monday.

The statement by Alexander Yakovlev, chairman of the presidential commission on rehabilitation of victims of political repression, indicates that Russia may be on the verge of confirming allegations that Soviet authorities denied for nearly half a century.

“We do not doubt that he was shot at Lubyanka,” the Soviet secret police headquarters and prison in Moscow, the Interfax news agency quoted Yakovlev as saying.

“We must put an end to this story, which has acquired an acute international significance and has been poisoning the atmosphere for a long time,” he said, according to the report.

If Wallenberg was indeed shot, it probably would have happened before Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s death in 1953.

Yakovlev could not be reached for comment, but a commission staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the substance of the report.

The Wallenberg case also is being investigated by a separate Swedish-Russian commission, which is to issue its final report in January. Jan Lundvik, a Swedish commission member, said Yakovlev’s statement was one of the strongest from Russia so far, but he cautioned that “we have not been given documentary proof of one version or another.”

The joint commission has not been able to determine Wallenberg’s fate definitively, Lundvik said.

The Interfax report did not specify on what evidence Yakovlev’s commission based its conclusion.

The last confirmed sighting of Wallenberg was on Jan. 17, 1945, in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, when he was 32 years old. Wallenberg, a member of one of Sweden’s wealthiest industrialist families, had gone to Hungary a year earlier as a diplomat.

He distributed Swedish passports to Jews in deportation trains and on death marches, won diplomatic protection for whole sections of Budapest and organized food and medical supplies. His efforts are credited with saving at least 20,000 lives.

The Soviet army occupied Budapest in January 1945, and Wallenberg was arrested and brought to the Soviet Union. The Soviets said he was suspected of spying. They maintained that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in Soviet custody in 1947.