Raoul Wallenberg: The Angel of Budapest

Despite fear, the risk of arrest, and the risk of dying for helping other people Raoul Wallenberg saved upwards of a hundred thousand Jewish lives from Nazis in Budapest, Hungary, earning the title “Angel of Budapest”. Wallenberg’s selfless actions defined him as an individual, not his noble, wealthy family’s actions. Without the work of Raoul Wallenberg about one hundred thousand lives would have ended in the Holocaust.
Raoul Wallenberg was born August 4, 1912, to two wealthy families from Stockholm, Sweden. According to Penny Schreiber, a renowned scholar at the University of Michigan, his father, Raoul Wallenberg I, a Swedish naval officer, died of cancer just three months before he was born (Schreiber, 1). His mother, Maj Wising, the daughter

According to Louise Borden, who wrote His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg with the help of Wallenberg’s sister, brother, and friends, “Gustaf Wallenberg wanted Raoul to find his independence, so in 1923, the year he turned eleven, Raoul left Sweden alone and unafraid, with the royal seal of three crowns stamped on his passport,” (Borden, 16). All along the way Gustaf Wallenberg had secretly paid train conductors to watch out for his young grandson.When Raoul was just 16 years old his paternal grandfather sent him to live with a clergyman, Mr. Vigers, in England for the summer and the next year sent him to live with a family member in Lake Geneva, France, for the summer where he added French to his list of spoken languages, German and Russian (18). Raoul Wallenberg, with upholding his surname, had a longing for education, success, and staying in touch with his grandfather while he was traveling.After graduating high school and completing Sweden’s required nine months in military training, Raoul Wallenberg decided to study architecture at the University of Michigan, where he graduated at the top of his

If your identification papers said you were a Jew you couldn’t get a job and could be taken into a concentration camp as soon as you were discovered where you could be worked to death or even burned to death. According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, verified by the Catholic Church, “The Hebrew term for holocaust is regularly translated in the Septuagint… the whole victim was burned up,” so the Holocaust was named for its chambers which Nazis would gather a large group of Jewish people and burn them to death, like in a sacrifice (59). Knowing this, Raoul Wallenberg began to pass out false identification papers without saying that they were Jewish. He gave out thousands of these false identification papers. According to www.ushmm.org, an official United States Holocaust Memorial museum, “With authorization from the Swedish government, Wallenberg began distributing certificates of protection issued by the Swedish legation to Jews in Budapest shortly after his arrival in the Hungarian capital. He used WRB and Swedish funds to establish hospitals, nurseries and a soup kitchen, and to designate more than 30 ‘safe’ houses that together formed the core of the "international ghetto" in Budapest.” Wallenberg was found by the Soviet Union and was arrested on January 17, 1945, and was never seen again. He is celebrated in Montreal, Canada for his great works