Wallenberg, Raoul

Typed document signed ("R Wallenberg") as Secretary of the Swedish Royal Embassy, Budapest, 1 page (11 x 8 1/8 in.; 280 x 206 mm), Budapest, 22 October 1944, on letterhead of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest, certifying, in Hungarian, that the Schutzpass [protective passport] in Dr. Vámbéri Lászlo's possession is a valid passport, with official Embassy ink-stamp; browned, minor fold separation along top margin. Together with: A printed Hungarian identity card  (4 1/8 x 2 7/8 in.; 107 x 73 mm). accomplished in manuscript, issued to Lászlo in Budapest, 27 June 1945, identifying his occupation as lawyer.

A fine example of the very rare signature of the Swedish diplomat and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg, documenting his efforts to help a Jewish Hungarian lawyer to survive the Holocaust. At the outbreak of World War II, Wallenberg worked for a trading company owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian-born Jew. As Hungary joined the Axis Powers and began to restrict Jews from working in certain professions, Wallenberg began to travel to Budapest in Lauer's stead. In March 1944, German troops occupied Hungary and Hitler installed a military governor who began a mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Wallenberg was recruited, at the suggestion of Lauer, by the War Refugee Board to organize a rescue operation for the Jews remaining in Hungary. Under pressure from the United States, Sweden assigned Wallenberg to its diplomatic legation in Budapest, from which position he issued protective passports, or Schutzpass, identifying their bearers as Swedish citizens awaiting repatriation. (While official looking, the protective passports actually had no legal standing.) It is believed that by issuing the Schutzpass and through his other efforts, Wallenberg was responsible for saving tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. The identity card issued to Vámbéri Lászlo in June 1945 shows that Wallenberg's intervention saved Lászlo's life.

Wallenberg himself died in still-mysterious circumstances: he was arrested by the Soviet Union on suspicion of espionage during the siege of Budapest by the Red Army, January 1945. He was not heard from again, and there is a consensus that he died in July 1947 while in KGB custody in Moscow. Raoul Wallenberg is one of the very few people to have been made an honorary citizen of the United States; he is also an honorary citizen of Canada, Hungary, and Israel.

Rare: only a single example of Wallenberg's signature is recorded in American Book Prices Current: on a typed business letter written before he went to the Swedish embassy, which was sold more than twenty years ago.