LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Per Anger : Still Hunting for the Truth About His Old Friend Wallenberg

For a persistent collection of people determined to learn the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, working amid the upheaval since 1989 in the former Soviet Bloc has been a bit like turning on a long-closed water tap. The rusty pipes have banged and coughed, and occasionally even spit out interesting, but unsatisfying material, the main impact of which is only to whet the appetite.

Wallenberg is the Swedish diplomat assigned at U.S. request to Stockholm’s embassy in Budapest in July, 1944, to help rescue Jews from the Nazis. He distributed Swedish identity papers to at least 20,000 and sheltered many in buildings with diplomatic protection before disappearing into Soviet captivity when Red Army troops reached the Hungarian capital in January, 1945.

A dozen years later, Soviet authorities produced a note written by the Lubyanka prison doctor, saying Wallenberg had died July 17, 1947, at age 34. But witnesses in prison with him reported seeing Wallenberg alive into at least the early 1950s, and other reported sightings have occurred since then.

In late 1989, in a burst of glasnost, Soviet officials handed Wallenberg’s passport, notebooks and identity cards to a delegation of his relatives and friends, including Per Anger, a retired Swedish diplomat who served with Wallenberg in Budapest and is chairman of Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg Assn.

If the Soviets hoped their apology for falsely arresting Wallenberg would end the matter, they were wrong. Anger--an old school and military mate of Wallenberg--only took this as proof that there was more to learn.

After last August’s unsuccessful coup attempt in Moscow, and the wholesale overhaul of the KGB that followed, the Soviets and Swedes announced a new bilateral commission to carry on the Wallenberg investigation--and more facts dribbled out. In December, just before the Soviet Union was formally dissolved, old logs and other materials were produced, revealing “absolutely secret” communications between the KGB and top Soviet Foreign Ministry officials about Wallenberg. But are there more logs? And what do Wallenberg’s interrogators know? Is the KGB still covering up? Might Wallenberg be alive?

The upheaval in Moscow means another new cast of characters. It’s frustrating, Anger, 78, said, but imperative that the search goes on.

Question: When is the next meeting of the bilateral commission?

Answer: Now we don’t know when they will meet again. They said it will be in May, but the situation is very uncertain. We never know who’s going to be the next person we’re going to talk to. Every day there’s something new.

Q: Isn’t that frustrating, to seem to be getting so close to learning the truth and then have everything change again?

A: You have to start from scratch again, yes. That’s fantastic. But then, I think that our committee, and all the other committees in the world--here in the United States and so on--can be very satisfied that, thanks to our hard work--thanks to all the interventions by your (former) Presidents (Jimmy) Carter and (Ronald) Reagan, by (former British Prime Minister Margaret) Thatcher, and (German Chancellor) Helmut Kohl, and to all this publicity all over the world about Raoul Wallenberg--it has led to where we are now. If we hadn’t done anything, even during the period of perestroika, they wouldn’t have done anything. It was the combination of this perestroika and our pushing it all the time that led to the situation where we can, in a way, say “Mission Accomplished”--because now the (Swedish) government takes over.

Q: What is the official story from the Soviet side, as you understand it?

A: They don’t have any official viewpoint. One member of their delegation said in an interview that, “I think he was executed.” (But) there is no evidence of it. There is one important mention in the (logs of KGB and Foreign Ministry communications) that, on July 17, 1947, when he supposedly died by heart attack, there was an exchange of letters between (then Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M.) Molotov and (the head of security for) the KGB about him. Some historians say it proves that he died then. But we say perhaps that the KGB man asked for instructions--let’s send him into the gulag under another name, or let’s transfer him to another prison. Anything could have happened. So our stand, and the (Swedish) government’s also, is that so long as they haven’t proved he’s dead, we take it he could still be alive.

Q: What do you think happened to him?

A: It’s a very difficult question. We have, during the years, gotten so many signs--people coming from there, hinting that they had heard from someone that he’s somewhere under complete isolation. That leads me to one alternative--namely, the sort of Solzhenitsyn “First Circle,” when they gave these scientists their “freedom” within four walls, under complete isolation, to do work. Nobody knew if they were alive, or where they were.

Raoul Wallenberg is a very talented person--he’s an architect, he’s an economist, he speaks languages. So that could be one alternative--that he is still sitting there. Another alternative is that they just let him disappear in the gulag under another name--and they can’t find him. A third alternative would be that he died a natural death by illness or in prison, or that he was brought to a mental hospital.

(You can) think of all these possibilities. So, I think, what one has to concentrate on now is to find any deportation orders--that he was deported to the gulag, that he was sent to mental hospital. Anything of that type. It’s very important to go through the (logs) just following 1947 . . . the Foreign Office archives, the Ministry of Interior archives, the military archives and the KGB archives . . . . I would be astonished if we wouldn’t find there something (from after 1947). I say to myself, “We have had patience for 47 years; we must have patience for another couple of months.”

Q: Why would the government in Moscow still be trying to withhold information about Raoul Wallenberg?

A: I am not quite sure that they are doing that. It’s possible that they can’t find it. Of course, there could be another explanation to this, and that’s . . . that something has happened to him relatively recently--that they have been aware, say, that he’s sitting in a mental hospital after torture. They can’t send him back. But, I think, that if they had found something that was during Stalin’s period, they would gladly show that.

Q: You were said to be the last person to see Wallenberg before he was taken by the Soviet troops. Is that correct?

A: Not exactly. The last time I saw him was the 10th of January, 1945, when he came over to the Buda side, where all of us were hiding because the Nazis had attacked the embassy and were trying to take prisoners and all that.

Q: Did you participate with him in saving Jews?

A: Sometimes he telephoned me and said, “I can’t now--I have to go in another direction. Could you go to the (train) station and try to save people?” So I copied his sort of approach and managed to save a couple of hundred people.

Q: What was his approach?

A: Toward the end of the war, it was very important for the Germans to continue their relations with Sweden. And especially the Germans were very anxious not to violate his diplomatic status. So he went, say, to the railroad station. He’d have a report that trains were leaving for Auschwitz. Sometimes, they would have already nailed the (box car) doors closed. He’d say to the German officer: “I’m a Swedish diplomat and there are people in here, I know, that have Swedish passports. Open the doors!”

Looking at him, an ordinary person would see an intellectual person, professor-type clothes. But he was an actor, so when he met the Nazis he changed his attitude completely--became brutal. He yelled at them and spoke the same language as they.

The officer would start to be very nervous, and he’d open the doors. (Wallenberg) would go in and say: “Are there any people here with Swedish passports?” Perhaps there would be two or three out of hundreds. So he’d say: “Have you forgotten? You were at the office the other day. Where are your passports? Have you forgotten them somewhere?” And they understood and showed receipts or anything--drivers licenses in the Hungarian language, which the Germans didn’t understand. “That’s enough” (Wallenberg would say). “That proves you got the passport the other day. Come with me.” And (he would) march out with 100 people like that and take them into those houses.

I was with him and I copied that sometimes.

Q: Do you think more could have been done by the U.S. or other countries to save Jews, if this had been repeated elsewhere?

A: Elie Wiesel, who wrote the forward to my book, asks in that forward why there were not more Wallenbergs around in Europe at that time. I like him very much, but I don’t agree with him. It would have been impossible to have that, because in no time the Germans occupied all of Europe. Like that (snapping his fingers). How could a Wallenberg operate under that situation in Poland, for instance? Impossible. But Budapest--Hungary was an ally to Germany. The Germans were eager to have this illusion that it was a completely independent country. “Let them work and act for themselves.” The Germans let us have this deal with the Hungarian government at that time.

Q: Assuming that Wallenberg is indeed dead, there are those who say, why keep up the campaign? What’s the point now?

A: The point is to get the truth. We can’t live in this uncertainty of what happened to him. (One former Soviet official) said, “Look here--we have so many who died or who have disappeared. My son was killed in action. We don’t know where they are. Why do you make such a fuss about this man?” I think the great difference is that here was a man who was a great humanitarian--who became a symbol of the fight for human rights in the whole world. So he is not only Raoul Wallenberg, but the symbol of Raoul Wallenberg. I think we ought to know what happened to him.

Q: Do we need symbols like that today?

A: Absolutely. I think it’s necessary for young people to know that there could be persons like Raoul Wallenberg. It’s very important to tell everybody what he did and how he did it. It gives hope.

Q: When will the truth of what happened to Wallenberg come out?

A: That is a good question. I hope in a couple of months, if it goes on as it has. The problem is that today we don’t know exactly what is happening there. But suppose that there will be a relatively normal situation and they could go on working as they did before. Then, I think, we will get to know the truth. There is also not only the documents, but also there is at least one KGB officer who we know was one of those that interrogated Raoul Wallenberg. And he has, until now, still not said so much. I think they are trying to get the truth out of him, to find out what he knows. So it’s a combination of the documents and all the people who have something to say.