Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect and businessman who became Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944. During those months, he issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings he declared Swedish territory, saving thousands from deportation during the Holocaust's final stage. On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest, Soviet SMERSH agents detained him on suspicion of espionage. He disappeared into the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Soviet authorities reported in 1957 that he died of a heart attack in July 1947, but a 2023 declassified document suggests he may have been executed that year over claims he aided Nazi war criminals alongside Jews. No conclusive proof exists - some reported seeing men matching his description in Soviet facilities into the 1980s. Sweden declared him legally dead in 2016. Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations in 1963, and the United States made him an honorary citizen in 1981.