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Raoul Wallenberg – Not an Accidental Choice for Hungary in 1944

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Raoul Wallenberg – Not an Accidental Choice for Hungary in 1944 1 Raoul Wallenberg – Not An Accidental Choice for Hungary in 1944 Susanne Berger and Dr. Vadim Birstein On July 8, 1944, a young Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg, a member of an influential Swedish family of bankers and industrialists, arrived in Budapest, appointed Secretary to the Royal Swedish Legation (Embassy).2 In his work in Budapest, he also represented the American War Refugee Board (WRB), an organization established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944.3 The WRB’s task was to provide active aid to civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers. Although Hungary had been formally allied with Nazi Germany since 1940, on March 19, 1944 Germany had nevertheless moved to occupy the country. In a short few months, almost 500,000 Jews who had been residing in the Hungarian countryside were deported to extermination camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia. At the time of Wallenberg’s arrival in Budapest in July 1944, only 200,000 Jews living in the capital remained. Wallenberg’s initial task in Budapest was to protect a few hundred families of Jewish-Hungarian industrialists and businessmen important for the Hungarian economy. Soon his mission expanded, however. Rather than limiting the persons to be rescued to individuals with personal or business ties to Sweden, Wallenberg tried to save as many of Budapest's Jews as possible. On January 15, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg was detained by Soviet military authorities and transferred to Moscow, where he was imprisoned and investigated by Soviet military counterintelligence SMERSH.4 Presumably, Wallenberg died in Moscow's investigation prison «Lubyanka» on July 17 or shortly after – most likely, he was killed on direct orders of the Soviet leadership. A major challenge for researchers in the Raoul Wallenberg case has always been the very little original documentation about him that has survived from his adult life before 1944. Only several personal letters and other documents have been preserved. For decades, the idea has prevailed that the choice of Raoul Wallenberg for his dangerous assignment was largely accidental, the result of a fortuitous set of circumstances that settled on a smart young businessman just weeks before he left for Budapest. Only 31 years old at the time, Wallenberg has been routinely portrayed as highly intelligent, yet stuck in a rather average career path as director of a small import-export foodstuff company Mellaneuropeiska, largely cut off from his powerful second cousins, the bankers and industrialists Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg, and eager for a chance to make his own mark in the world. While much of this description is accurate, new documentation recently discovered in Hungary and Sweden suggests that Wallenberg’s background story may be more complex than 1 previously thought. For one, as early as 1943, his personal network of contacts ran deeper and broader than researchers have realized.5 This raises new questions not only about Raoul Wallenberg’s relationship with the Wallenberg business group, but also what exactly prompted his selection for the Budapest assignment. In addition, the documents add important pieces to the puzzle why Soviet authorities may have been so interested in detaining him. In 2012, Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky, the daughter of the former Hungarian Minister in Stockholm, Dr. Antal Ullein-Reviczky, contacted the current authors. Before his stay in Sweden from 1943-45, Ullein-Reviczky had been a high ranking member of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry as head of its powerfule and influential Press Department and Cultural Section.6 More importantly, he was a well-known opponent of Nazism and a key figure in the Hungarian resistance movement that included leading diplomatic and political figures around the Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay. Ever since 1942, Ullein-Reviczky had been instrumental in numerous efforts to contact the Western Allies, especially Britain, to discuss a way for Hungary to leave its alliance with Nazi Germany.7 Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky provided us with some materials from her personal archive – notes from the diary of her mother, Mrs. Ullein-Reviczky, – British born Lovice Louisa Grace Ullein- Reviczky née Cumberbatch.8 She married Antal Ullein-Reviczky in 1929. Her father, Cyril James Cumberbatch (1873-1944), was for many years British Consul in Constantinopole (Istanbul), Turkey. The Cumberbatches were well acquainted with Raoul Wallenberg’s grandfather, Gustaf Oscar Wallenberg (1863-1937), at the time Swedish Ambassador to Turkey (from 1920 until 1936), who also lived in Constantinopole.9 Mrs. Ullein-Reviczky’s records show that Raoul Wallenberg personally knew Antal Ullein- Reviczky as early as September 1943, when he was visiting Budapest on business for his company Mellaneuropeiska. Both men attended a private lunch given by József Balogh, the famous editor of several influential Hungarian periodicals and a close friend of the Ullein- Reviczky couple.10 Mrs. Ullein-Reviczky’s diary notes allow us to discuss this important circle of the Hungarian political and business elite Raoul Wallenberg was acquainted with and how these relationships might have positively influenced the decision to send him to Budapest in 1944. On September 18, 1943, Mrs. Ullein-Reviczky wrote in her diary: «Went to Balogh’s for luncheon. Met Mr. Wallenberg – old Mrs. Wallenberg’s grandson who is on business here. Very charming».11 2 Fig. 1. Excerpt of a social diary kept by Mrs. Ullein-Reviczky for September 18, 1943. Courtesy of the Antal Ullein- Reviczky Foundation, Hungary. As for József Balogh, he moved in a highly exclusive group of people, a mix of aristocrats, industrialists, politicians, diplomats and writers. They included the former Hungarian Prime Minister from 1921 to 1931 István Bethlen; Baron Móric Kornfeld and the extended family of Hungary’s powerful industrialist Manfred Weiss; Lipót (Leopold) Aschner, the managing director of Hungary’s largest electrical concern Tungsram (the United Incandescent Light and Electricity Company); the former Hungarian Prime Minister in 1917, Count Móric Esterházy; Marquis György Pallavicini, Jr., a lawyer and businessman, and many others.12 All these individuals formed the core group of anti-Nazi sentiment around the Hungarian Regent, Miklós (Nicholas) Horthy.13 The anti-German resistance group included the Regent’s son Miklós Jr., «Miki», whom Ullein-Reviczky knew well. The group had very strong ties to Britain, as well as close personal and business contacts with Sweden. The enormous Manfred Weiss industrial empire, which produced everything from airplanes, trucks, and bicycles to tinned goods and needles, had numerous subsidiaries and associations in Sweden, especially with the business group of Swedish shipping magnate Sven Salén (who owned Raoul Wallenberg’s firm Mellaneuropeiska) and Salén’s close associates, the Wallenberg brothers. The Wallenberg family, in turn, had a powerful presence in Hungary, with both their Swedish Match company and the ball bearing trust Svenska Kullagerfabriken AB (SKF) enjoying monopoly status. During the war, Hungary constituted an important market for Sweden for a variety of goods, especially for the import of foodstuffs, textiles and critical raw materials, including bauxite, flax and oil. 3 Fig. 2. Hungarian Minister Dr. Antal Ullein-Reviczky, shown here at a banquet in Stockholm's Grand Hotel, March 15, 1944. Courtesy of the Antal Ullein-Reviczky Foundation, Hungary. The introduction of the so-called «Jewish laws» in Hungary in 1938 and 1939 increasingly restricted the roles Jewish citizens could play in public life. In September 1940, Jacob Wallenberg, CEO of the family’s Stockholms Enskilda Bank (SEB), received a message from Jewish business owners who were worried about further restrictions of their activities. Some of these Jewish businessmen were looking to Sweden for “the purpose of the [temporary] ‘aryanization’ of their businesses.”14 Should Jacob be interested, the message stated, he should send a representative to Budapest. Attached to the request Jacob Wallenberg had received was a card of the Tungsram CEO, Lipót Aschner. Incidentally, most of Raoul Wallenberg’s closest aides in 1944 would come from the management ranks of just this firm.15 It is quite possible that Aschner’s approach to Jacob and the deteriorating conditions in Hungary played a substantial role in the creation of Raoul Wallenberg’s company Mellaneuropeiska. Raoul Wallenberg had ostensibly joined Mellaneuropeiska to learn the intricacies of international business, especially during the war. But aside from his regular business activity dealing with the importation of foodstuffs like Hungarian wine and geese, Wallenberg would also have been well suited to take on the role of a confidential representative, as Lipót Aschner had requested. There are indications that Raoul may have been working for Jacob Wallenberg in some confidential capacity even before he joined Mellaneuropeiska. On September 26, 1939, when German and Soviet troops were marching through Poland, he wrote to Jacob: “At our last meeting you told me that the war would perhaps lead to a number of problems and that you 4 possibly would want to use my services in connection with the solving of these problems.“16 After the war, Raoul Wallenberg's business partner in Mellaneuropeiska, Dr. Kálmán Lauer – a Hungarian Jew with good business contacts in Budapest and Germany – claimed that Raoul had worked for some time as Jacob’s personal secretary. Mellaneuropeiska was founded in 1941, mainly as a response to the severe restrictions of the transatlantic trade with the U.S., South America, as well as the Far East, after the outbreak of the war. The company was part of the Banankompaniet business group, owned by the Norwegian entrepreneur Carl Matthiessen and the Swedish businessman Sven Salén. Under the Banankompaniet umbrella, Salén ran a network of smaller firms, including Mellaneuropeiska. While the company nominally belonged to Sven Salén, it operated fully in the Wallenberg business sphere. Mellaneuropeiska was clearly created with the idea that it could fulfill an important economic role for Sweden by providing vitally needed foodstuffs and raw materials, in particular from Hungary.
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