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RAOUL WALLENBERG

Unknown Swedish prisoner may provide clues to Wallenberg mystery

A so far unidentified Swedish prisoner in Soviet captivity in the 1950s may provide historians with more clues as to the fate of missing WWII diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, argues historian Susanne Berger.

Published: 15 March 2012 17:01 CET

Unknown Swedish prisoner may provide clues to Wallenberg mystery

The Moscow prison where Wallenberg is believed to have spent his last years.

In 1957 a former German prisoner of war by the name of Ludwig Hunoldt provided intriguing information about a Swedish citizen he had encountered in the Soviet captivity.

According to Hunoldt, this meeting took place under rather grim circumstances in 1950, in Vladimir prison, the Soviet Union’s most forbidding isolation facility, located some 150 kilometres northeast of Moscow.

In a formal interview with former Swedish diplomat and foreign ministry cabinet secretary Leif Leifland, conducted in Bonn, Germany on July 15th, 1957, Hunoldt explained that he had been arrested by Soviet troops in January 1945.

After an odyssey through various Soviet prisons, he arrived in December 1948 in Vladimir. Leifland’s protocol outlines the story from there:

In January 1950, after suffering an epileptic seizure, Hunoldt had been taken to cell 57 of Vladimir’s hospital section. After some time, another prisoner was brought in who had just undergone surgery on his gall bladder.

This prisoner, who remained in cell 57 for five days, told Hunoldt that his name was “Eriksson” and that he was a Swedish citizen, married and that he had earlier resided in Uppsala.

He had been arrested in the autumn of 1944 in Sofia, Bucharest or Budapest – Hunoldt could no longer recall “Eriksson’s” precise statement about this – together with two other Swedes who were apparently also being held in Vladimir.

He did recall that “Eriksson” had said that he and the other two Swedes had worked on behalf of a Red Cross organisation to handle the transfer of the German diplomatic representations in the Balkans (“mit der Abwicklund der deutschen Gesandschaften betreut”).

In this connection, they had been arrested by Soviet organs and had been taken to Lubyanka and later to Vladimir, after having been sentenced to 25 years for espionage.”

Hunoldt reported further:

“’Eriksson’ expressed his amazement and bitterness over the fact that Soviet authorities should keep him – a citizen of a neutral country and a representative of the Red Cross – detained year after year.”

As far as Hunoldt could recall, “Eriksson” had not mentioned the names of the other two Swedes who supposedly had been arrested with him.

According to Leifland, Hunoldt described “Eriksson” as about 52-years-old, with “light blue eyes, an oval face, short shaved hair and broad shoulders.”

He spoke German fluently and it appears that his mother was German. It is possible that he was a German citizen who was married to a Swede, but that – in spite of his statement to Hunoldt – he did not possess Swedish citizenship himself.

“Eriksson” is quite clearly not identical with Raoul Wallenberg or any other Swede known to have spent time in Soviet captivity after 1945.

“Eriksson’s” case profile, however — a Swede arrested in Eastern Europe while working in an official capacity for the Red Cross or similar aid organisation — could have easily led to confusion with Raoul Wallenberg.

Hunoldt told Leifland that “Eriksson’s” physical condition was very poor and that he was removed from his cell after a few days. It is not clear if Hunoldt’s recalled “Eriksson’s” last name correctly.

Another witness described meeting a man some years later in a Russian prison camp whose personal story and physical description appears strikingly similar to the man Hunoldt encountered in “Vladimir”.

The witness gave that man’s last name as “Johansson”, with his wife residing in either Uppsala or Lund.

In his personal comments about the witness statement, Leifland stressed that Ludwig Hunoldt made a very reliable impression.

Swedish officials had not learned of Hunoldt’s experience directly, but through a fellow prisoner named Hans Schmidt who had been interviewed by Swedish authorities in connection with his stay in Vladimir prison.

Schmidt told investigators that Ludwig Hunoldt had told him already during their time together in Vladimir prison about his meeting with “Eriksson”.

In 2001, two independent experts to the Swedish-Russian Working Group which formally investigated Raoul Wallenberg’s fate in Russia, Dr. Makinen and Ari Kaplan, conducted a thorough database analysis of foreign prisoners held in Vladimir for the years 1945-1973.

They confirmed Hunoldt’s stay in Vladimir prison in 1950 and they further confirmed that on several occasion he had been held alone in a cell.

No prisoner card with the name “Eriksson” was found in the central prison registry.

If Hunoldt’s account is true, this would suggest that the card for “Eriksson” is missing or that it was intentionally removed.

Such removal of cards has been confirmed for several other prisoners known to have been imprisoned in “Vladimir”.

Requests to Russian authorities to provide information about “Eriksson” and his colleagues have yielded no results. The Swedish foreign ministry has also been unable to identify the men.

It has been confirmed that in the autumn of 1944, Swedish diplomatic representatives in Bulgaria and Romania oversaw the planned departure of German diplomatic personnel from these two countries to destinations such as Turkey.

The International Red Cross and other aid organizations monitored and assisted the transfer.

Most of the German and Italian diplomats under Swedish protection at the time were nevertheless arrested by Soviet forces before reaching Turkish territory and they were taken to Moscow where they spent years in imprisonment.

Therefore, “Eriksson’s” claim that he was detained in connection with such transfers appears credible.

If he lived as an expatriate German or Swedish resident in Eastern Europe, his disappearance would possibly not have attracted much attention in his home country (Sweden or Germany).

Inquiries to the Red Cross have also not provided any conclusive information. However, it is not clear from Hunoldt’s statement if “Eriksson” indeed was employed by a “Red Cross organisation”.

Proper identification of “Eriksson” and his colleagues would be of great help to researchers studying the fate of Swedish citizens in Soviet captivity after 1945.

Susanne Berger

Susanne Berger is a US-based German historian heavily involved in research into the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who helped prevent the arrests of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Second World War.

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Why I decided to sue the Russian FSB in a quest for the truth about Raoul Wallenberg

A monument in memory of Raoul Wallenberg in his hometown of Lidingö. Photo: Mark Earthy/TT

In spite of repeated requests for clarification, Russia continues to withhold key information about an unidentified “Prisoner no.7”, who was questioned in Lubyanka Prison together with Raoul Wallenberg's driver Vilmos Langfelder on July 23rd, 1947 for more than 16 hours. It remains unclear what Swedish officials may have known about the issue and why this and other important information was not shared with an official Working Group that investigated the Wallenberg case for ten years during the 1990s.

In November 2009, the archivists of the Central Archive of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) informed two researchers who had been investigating Wallenberg’s fate for many years – Vadim Birstein and Susanne Berger – that on July 23rd, 1947, a still unidentified “Prisoner No. 7” had been interrogated for over 16 hours in Lubyanka Prison.

Based on circumstantial evidence, the FSB archivists concluded that “Prisoner No.7” with “great likelihood was the missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg”. However, FSB officials refused to provide a copy of the actual entry for “Prisoner No.7” as it appears in the Lubyanka interrogation register, nor did they permit researchers to review this page in the original. Instead, the FSB released only a heavily censored copy of the page in question. It showed that two other prisoners had been questioned together with “Prisoner No. 7”, on the same day, for more than 16 hours. They were Wallenberg's driver, Vilmos Langfelder, and Langfelder’s cellmate, Sandor Katona. Clearly, something quite dramatic had occurred to warrant such a lengthy interrogation.

Photo: Marie Dupuy

On those two days of July 22nd and 23rd 1947, close to a dozen prisoners were questioned and immediately placed in strict isolation, most of them for many years. As it turns out, all the men had a direct connection to Wallenberg.

Wallenberg had been arrested by Soviet forces in Budapest in January 1945, after he had saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. He was taken to Moscow where he was imprisoned for at least two-and-a-half years. Soviet authorities announced in 1957 that Wallenberg had died suddenly of a heart attack in his cell on July 17, 1947, but the full circumstances of his disappearance have never been clarified.

The proper identification of “Prisoner No. 7”, therefore, goes to the heart of the Wallenberg case, in particular the question of whether he really died on July 17th, 1947 or if, in fact, he survived some time after this date – as FSB archivists allege.

In December 2013, I decided to file my own request for access to the register, as Wallenberg's niece. I received a formal reply from the FSB Central Archive in which archivists informed me that, unfortunately, a review of the original Lubyanka interrogation register for July 22-23, 1947, “is not possible”. They provided no specific reason for their refusal.

Once again, the FSB officials failed to present a full copy of the requested register pages or a detailed description of the entry for this mysterious “Prisoner No.7”, as I had specifically asked for in my letter. I repeated my requests several times, the most recent application being denied earlier this year.

Naturally, I wonder what the FSB is hiding.

Certain notations on the page? Names of other, still unknown prisoners held in Lubyanka Prison in 1947? The name of the interrogator for “Prisoner No.7”? The entries are by now 70 years old and should no longer be subject to the official Russian 30-year secrecy requirements.

Russian privacy laws, too, should not apply to this particular entry, since the full identity of “Prisoner No.7” would remain shielded, plus Russian officials have regularly revealed the name of MGB (Ministry of State Security) investigators that appear in these very registers. Even the 75-year rule governing “personal documents” should be waived in this case, since – according to both Russian and international law – victims of repression and their families have legal Right to the Truth about their ordeal. Consequently the records of victims of repression may not be kept classified.

If not Wallenberg, who could this “Prisoner no. 7” held in Lubyanka in July 1947 be? An unknown cellmate of Raoul’s in Lubyanka Prison, perhaps? Someone who had been active in Hungary in 1944-45? The matter must be fully clarified, because it could provide vital clues to our investigation. For a variety of reasons I have become quite sceptical about the FSB’s claim that no positive identification of this prisoner is possible.

I wonder even more when the FSB refuses me access to documentation that was clearly available to Russian officials as far back as 1991, at the start of an official, bilateral Swedish Russian Working Group that went on to investigate the question of my uncle's fate until 2001.

The information about a “Prisoner No.7” being questioned for 16 hours, together with two other persons very closely associated with Wallenberg, should have been thoroughly examined in the course of that 10-year investigation. Yet it was not, since Russian never formally disclosed the information to their Swedish colleagues. Russian officials simply verbally informed the Swedish side of Langfelder's lengthy interrogation, but never mentioned a “Prisoner no.7” or produced a copy of the relevant page.

For still unexplained reasons, the Swedish side failed to insist on obtaining such a copy. The Chairman of the Swedish side of the Working Group, Hans Magnusson, was allowed to review all register records, but apparently did not notice the entry for July 23rd, 1947.

The information should and would have received serious scrutiny because the Working Group had received an important statement from Boris Solovov, a former investigator in the MGB’s 3rd Main Directorate, 4th Department, which in 1947 oversaw the Wallenberg case. In several interviews Solovov had told Swedish and Russian officials that at some point in 1947, he had been asked by his superior officer to deliver a package to the MGB archives. This package carried the label: “Contains materials related to ‘Prisoner No.7’”. It was to be opened only by the “head of MGB” (Viktor Abakumov).

Even more interesting is the fact that Solovov had indicated explicitly that he knew in 1947 that Wallenberg was this particular “Prisoner No.7”. Solovov further testified that his superiors had prepared a complex diagram designed to keep track of prisoners whom they wanted to place in isolation because they knew of Wallenberg’s presence in Soviet captivity. In fact, Solovov stated that “Prisoner No.7” was included in this diagram.

[It is important to understand that Solovov made these statements many years before the release of the more recent information from 2009, concerning an interrogation of a “Prisoner No.7” on July 23rd, 1947.]

In retrospect, it upsets me greatly that Russian officials apparently intentionally withheld this highly relevant information during the official inquiry in 1991-2001. My late father, Guy von Dardel, fought for over six decades to learn the full circumstances of Raoul’s disappearance. He had agreed to join the Working Group as an official member, trusting that the investigation would be conducted in good faith, from both sides.

Instead, we are now left with the obvious question of what other documents and insights Russian and possibly Swedish officials shave not shared and why. Since the end of the Working Group, a number of other documents have emerged that were not previously shared with researchers. As it turns out, Russian officials repeatedly lied when they stated that the formal Archival-Investigation file of Wallenberg's longtime cellmate, the German diplomat Willy Rödel, had not been preserved.

Some years ago it became clear that the documentation has, in fact, survived. In spite of numerous requests we have yet to see a special MGB file that contains this very documentation about Rödel and other foreign diplomats who died in Soviet imprisonment during the years 1945-1947. Is Wallenberg's case among this collection? Over the strenuous protests of researchers, Swedish officials never insisted on access to the material. The issue attains added urgency in light of the miraculous “discovery” of Raoul's personal possessions in September 1989 – a few weeks before members of our family travelled to Moscow, on the invitation of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

I took the step of filing a formal legal claim against the FSB very reluctantly and only after all other efforts of obtaining the requested information failed. Neither I nor anyone in my family holds any resentments towards Russia. Those who worked with my father know how he enthusiastically and unreservedly embraced the Russian people.

Last September, I and other members of Raoul's family traveled to Moscow to personally submit a comprehensive catalogue of all currently unanswered questions to Russian representatives from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) and the FSB. Our requests concern records that Russian officials can and must share before the question of Wallenberg's fate can be fully laid to rest. So far, we have not received any satisfactory answers or access to the requested documentation.

While Russia clearly holds the key to the Wallenberg mystery, I want to emphasize that the Russian government does not stand alone when it comes to restricting access to information. Important gaps also remain in the Swedish case record. Time will tell why Sweden's passivity in the case was so extreme, what Swedish (as well as possibly U.S. and British) authorities knew about his fate and if there was perhaps an unspoken understanding [with Russian counterparts] to keep the official Wallenberg inquiry within ‘safe’ parameters – and if so, why?

Members of Wallenberg's family and researchers will meet on September 14th-15th in Stockholm to address these and other unsolved questions at the third Raoul Wallenberg International Roundtable. They will be joined by other families of Swedes disappeared, past and present, members of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, as well as international legal experts, historians, journalists and human rights defenders.

Together we will explore options for how we can more effectively enforce the Right to the Truth, which includes finding new ways of obtaining access to still classified documentation in both Russian, Swedish and other international archives. This includes the submission of a catalogue of unsolved questions to Swedish authorities in the Wallenberg case. More than 70 years after Wallenberg's disappearance, it is high time that justice is done and all facts about his ordeal finally come to light.

This is an opinion piece written by Marie Dupuy, niece of Raoul Wallenberg.

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