Swedes Dropped Ball In WWII Probe

A Swedish commission criticized the government Tuesday for its handling of the 1945 disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat captured by Soviet troops at the end of World War II after helping thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary.

A lack of leadership in the Foreign Ministry after the war resulted in poor internal communication and a failure to adequately investigate leads that could possibly lead authorities to the Swede, who was captured in Budapest, Hungary, the report said.

"Whatever the explanation, this passiveness in the first months is not defensible (and) deserves criticism," commission chairman Ingemar Eliasson said at a news conference in Stockholm.

Citing documents found in the government archives, the report said Foreign Ministry officials assumed that Wallenberg was killed after his arrest by Soviet troops in January 1945.

Moscow later claimed Wallenberg died of a heart attack in 1947 while in Soviet custody.

Some researchers have said Wallenberg did not die in 1947, but was imprisoned under a fake name in a Soviet Gulag. Former prisoners claimed to have seen Wallenberg alive in the 1970s and 1980s.

Eliasson said that the Soviet Union and later Russian governments were ultimately responsible for providing "full clarity" into Wallenberg's disappearance.

Wallenberg's supporters in Sweden and abroad welcomed the commission's findings.

His half-sister, Nina Lagergren, said her family was frustrated by the lack of commitment from the Swedish government at the time of Wallenberg's disappearance.

"It was horrible not feeling that you're getting support and help from the Foreign Ministry," she told Swedish Radio.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said the report seemed to confirm Sweden's "gutless" attitude toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Wiesenthal Center tracks Nazi war criminals and documents the Holocaust.

"The fact remains that the elite of Sweden never really understood what motivated Raoul Wallenberg or how incredible his achievements were," Cooper said.

Wallenberg — a member of one of Sweden's wealthiest families — is credited with saving 20,000 Hungarian Jews by issuing them Swedish passports and securing diplomatic protection for entire neighborhoods in Budapest.

He disappeared after being arrested on charges of espionage after the Soviet army entered the Hungarian capital in January 1945.

In 2001, Russia acknowledged for the first time that Wallenberg and his driver were imprisoned for political reasons until they died, but didn't say how, where or when they died.

That year, Swedish members of a joint Russian-Swedish panel did not rule out the possibility that Wallenberg lived beyond 1947.

Eliasson's commission was appointed in late 2001 to examine the Swedish government's efforts to solve the mystery.