Wallenberg, Raoul

Wallenberg, Raoul ( 1912 – 47 )
Swedish diplomat. While working as a businessman in Budapest in 1944 , he was entrusted by the Swedish government with the protection of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. Wallenberg helped some 95,000 Jews to escape death by issuing them with Swedish passports. When Soviet forces took control of Budapest in 1945 he was arrested, taken to Moscow, and imprisoned. Although the Soviet authorities stated that Wallenberg had died in prison in 1947 , his fate remains uncertain and there were claims that he was still alive in the 1970s.