THE RAOUL WALLENBERG COMMITTEE
OF THE UNITED STATES
15 West 16th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.raoulwallenberg.org
917-606-8260

CHRONOLOGY OF THE RAOUL WALLENBERG CASE

Compiled by Diane Blake

January 17, 1945: Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder , left Budapest for a meeting with the Russian Commander, Marshal Malinovsky, in Debrecen, Hungary. On the way, he and his driver were taken into "protective custody" by the Soviet NKVD, the secret police later known as the KGB. The Soviet deputy foreign minister, Vladimir Dekanosov, notified the Swedish Ambassador in Moscow that Wallenberg was in Russian hands; "The Russian military authorities have taken measures to protect Raoul Wallenberg and his belongings," said the note.

January 21, 1945: (Wallenberg and his driver were placed in separate cells in Lubianka Prison in Moscow.) Wallenberg was placed in cell 123. His cell mate was Gustav Richter, a police attache at the German embassy in Rumania until the Russian takeover. Richter was moved on March 1, 1945, thus ending his contact with Wallenberg.

February 1945: Wallenberg and his driver were placed in separate cells in Lubianka Prison in Moscow. Maj von Dardel, Wallenberg's mother, was informed by the Russian ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Kollontai , that her son was safe in Russia and would be back soon. The family was asked not to make a major issue of Raoul's absence. His safe return was assured. (Note: Ambassador Kollontai was recalled and never allowed to leave the U.S.S.R. again).

March 8, 1945: Soviet controlled radio in Hungary falsely reported that Wallenberg had been murdered in route to Debrecen, probably by Hungarian Arrow Cross or still at large agents of the Gestapo.

June 1945: A German, Erhard Hiele, meets Wallenberg in prison. He confirmed this fact to Swedish authorities in 1955 upon his release.

January/February 1947: Bernard Rensinghoff communicates with Raoul Wallenberg in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. Rensinghoff was in cell 161 while Wallenberg and his cell mate Willi Roedel were in Cell 203. They communicated by knocking on the wall. Wallenberg told Rensinghoff of his work in Budapest and his capture. He gave his address as Stockholm. A great deal of time was spent by Rensinghoff helping Wallenberg write a memorandum in French to Stalin. Wallenberg, pointing to his diplomatic status, requested that he be given the opportunity to contact the Swedish Legation in Moscow. Some time later, Wallenberg received a message acknowledging that his petition had been received. At Wallenberg's interrogation (the first in two years since his arrest), the KGB commissar told him that his case was quite clear. He was a "political" case. If he considered himself innocent, the onus was on him to prove it. Their proof that Wallenberg was guilty was based on the fact that the Swedish government and the legation in Moscow had done nothing on Wallenberg's behalf. Wallenberg requested that he be able to contact the Legation or the Red Cross - at least to write to them. This request was denied on the basis that they had long since forgotten him and didn't care about him. Wallenberg was also told that, for political reasons, he would never be convicted. After tapping a message about this interrogation, Wallenberg's final message was, "We are being taken away".

February 24, 1947: The chief of the 4th section of the third main department of the MGB , Colonel Kartashov, wrote in his order on this date: "I am asking to transfer the war prisoners Roedel, Willi and Wallenberg, Raoul who are kept in cell number 203 of Lefortovo Prison to Inner Prison (Lubianka Prison) of MGB and to put them together in cell number 7 and to receive food rations on the nutritional level of an Officer War Prisoner" (the highest food level in the hierarchy of prisoners in Lefortovo)

July 17, 1947: Russian date of Raoul Wallenberg's death of a heart attack at age 34.

July 22, 1947: All prisoners who had shared a cell with Wallenberg were questioned by the NKVD, asked with whom they had talked about Wallenberg, and then placed in solitary confinement for a year or more. All were warned never to speak of Wallenberg again.

August 18, 1947: Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Vishinsky, formally informed the Swedish government that a "search of prisoner of war camps and other establishments had turned up no trace of Wallenberg. In short, "Wallenberg is not in the Soviet Union and is unknown to us". The note concluded with the "assumption" that Wallenberg had either been killed in the battle for Budapest or kidnapped and murdered by Nazis or Hungarian Fascists.

December 1947: Andrei Skimkevitch, a Soviet prisoner from 1930 to 1957 and stepson of sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, tells of being in a cell with Raoul Wallenberg in December 1947.

April 1945-April 1948: Claudio de Mohr, released Italian diplomat, told of being in a cell next to a Swede named Wallenberg with whom he communicated by tapping code messages on the wall in Lefortovo Prison.

August 1948: Corpus II hospital block of Vladimir Prison, a Swiss prisoner named Brugger "talked" by tapping code on his cell wall. "The Swede in the next cell identified himself as Wallenberg, First Secretary Swedish Legation, Budapest, 1945." He asked Brugger to contact any Swedish embassy or consulate and report this information, if he ever was released.

1948/1949: There are a many reported sightings of Raoul Wallenberg having been incarcerated in the labor camps in the area of Vorkuta or in the village of Khalmer-Yu to the north of Vorkuta. Menachem Meltzer , an Austrian Jew, in a report filed by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated enroute to Israel in the 1970's that as a prisoner physician in the village of Khalmer-Yu in 1948, he treated Raoul Wallenberg. Evidentiary statements have been obtained from former German prisoners of war incarcerated in labor camps in Vorkuta about seeing Raoul Wallenberg in Vorkuta in the late 1940's. These individuals are Helmut Schneider, Aurel von Juchen, Dr. Hugo Bischoff and Kurt Steinke. Theodor von Dufving, a German prisoner of war has provided evidentiary statements that en route to Vorkuta in February of 1949, in the transit camp in Kirov, he encountered a prisoner with his own special guard and dressed in civilian clothes who stated that he was a Swedish diplomat and was there "through a great error."

1951: Abraham Kalinski, former Soviet prisoner, was told of Wallenberg by another prisoner, David Vendrovsky, a Jewish author who had shared a prison cell with Wallenberg. Vendrovsky reported that Wallenberg was both very interesting and exceedingly sympathetic.

February 1952: Swedish communique to Russians demanding an explanation and further information on Wallenberg. This note was based on the evidence provided by Claudio de Mohr from 1945 to 1948 in Lefortovo Prison.

1952: Stalin ordered the arrest of a group of prominent Jewish doctors, his plan was to stage a show trial of "imperialist, Zionist agents". Raoul Wallenberg was to be the main defendant, according to former high-ranking Hungarian communist officials now living in the West. Until Stalin's death in March of 1953, hundreds were interrogated by Colonel N. Abrasimov , the top Soviet "advisor" to the Hungarian secret police. Abrasimov is quoted as having said: "It is most important for us and for you to get adequate proof, supported by testimonies, that Raoul Wallenberg was an American agent." Many such "testimonies" were produced. They said that Wallenberg, the man who saved the lives of some 100,000 Budapest Jews, really wanted to save only influential Jews who could serve as agents of the "capitalist West". When Stalin died, preparations for the trial stopped. Abrasimov was recalled to Moscow and later executed. A new contingent of Soviet "advisors" arrived in Budapest, headed by a secret police General V. Ischenko. He spent months re-interrogating those who had earlier "confessed" that there was a capitalist/Zionist conspiracy and that Wallenberg played a leading role in it. Since Wallenberg was to be tried in 1953, he cannot have died in prison in 1947 as the KGB had stated to the Swedish Government.

1952-1953: On July 2, 1964, Rudolf Hendrich-Winter von Schwab gave a statement to the Swedish Government about his imprisonment with Wallenberg in the special political prison in Warchne-Uralsk in the South Urals. He first met Wallenberg on December 12, 1952. Wallenberg told him that he was a Swede and to the question of how long he had been imprisoned, he stated "1945, end of the war, 25 years "Saotschno" (secret judgement from Moscow, no appeal)" Von Schwab was then taken away from Wallenberg. He mete Wallenberg again in mid September of 1953 in a sick cell. Wallenberg stated that he had been operated on in "Magnitka" and had lain there for about eight weeks of convalescence alone. One of the remarks made by Wallenberg to von Schwab was: "They had never operated on me before and now, after Stalin's death, they have operated on me and take care of me. Since they did not let me die during the operation, that is a good sign for me."

1953: Abraham Kalinski saw Wallenberg several times exercising in the prison yard with other prisoners.

1953: General G. Kuprianov, a hero of the Soviet Union, (jailed during the Stalinist purges of 1948 and released by Khrushchev in 1956), met Raoul Wallenberg for the first time during a prison transfer. Kuprianov meet Wallenberg again in 1955 while being transferred to Vladimir Prison.

January 1955: Abraham Kalinski reports having seen Wallenberg during a prisoner transfer to Vladimir Prison. They were on the same train.

January/February 1955: An Austrian informs the Swedes of having been in a cell with Wallenberg for one night in Corpus II of Vladimir Prison. Wallenberg told him that he had spent years in solitary confinement. He asked the Austrian to contact any Swedish diplomatic mission should he be released and say that they had met. "If you forget my name, just a Swede from Budapest and they'll know who you mean". Prison officials removed the Austrian the next morning and warned him not to talk to other prisoners about seeing Wallenberg on pain of life imprisonment.

1955: Rigid investigative procedures pertaining to the Wallenberg case were established in Sweden:

1. Hearsay evidence is excluded.
2. Only information from direct contact with Wallenberg or Langfelder is acceptable.
3. Each witness is kept in ignorance as to the testimony of all other witnesses.
4. All statements have to be given under oath and are scrutinized by a veteran criminal investigator.

1956: Kuprianov meets Wallenberg again, but couldn't speak to one another at the prison dentist's office.

1956: Kalinski became a cell mate at Vladimir Prison of Simon Gogoberidse, a Georgian Social Democrat, who had been kidnapped from Paris by the KGB where he was a political refugee. Gogoberidse told Kalinski of sharing a cell with Wallenberg. (Wallenberg was always made to share cells with Soviet citizens serving long sentences, never with foreigners. This reduced the risk of evidence about him getting out.

March 10, 1956: A Swedish note was sent to the Kremlin stating that "complete evidence" existed, and that it was clear Wallenberg had been held as a suspected spy by the USSR. This was accompanied by a statement signed by two Swedish Supreme Court justices saying that "all conditions seemed fulfilled to enable the Russians to trace Wallenberg and send him home".

March 19, 1956: Russian reply to the Swedish inquiry was that a thorough investigation had confirmed that Wallenberg was not, and never had been, in the Soviet Union. The Kremlin added, "that it was impossible to accept the testimony of war criminals whose information was in disagreement with the results of their own thorough investigation."

Easter 1956: Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander met with Nikita Khrushchev. In spite of Soviet opposition, he raised the Wallenberg question and handed over copies of the testimony gathered by the Swedish Government over the years. He received the stock answer that Wallenberg was not and never had been in the USSR.

April 1956: A German Prisoner named Mulle, sent to Vladimir prison in 1956, shared a cell with Gogoberidse, who told him that Wallenberg had been in solitary for several years as of 1956. He also said that after Prime Minister Erlander's visit to Russia, a prison political officer said, "They'll have to look for a long time to find Wallenberg".

April 1956: Rehemkampf, another German prisoner later released, reports that the same story about Wallenberg was given to him that month by Gogoberise. This information was given separately from Mulle's report.

April 5, 1956: A Russian communique to the Swedish Government stated that the USSR agreed to study the Swedish documentation and added that if Wallenberg was in the USSR, he would "naturally" be allowed to return home.

July 14, 1956: Soviet Ambassador Rodinov informed the Swedish Foreign Office that results could soon be expected.

February 2, 1957: In a note to the Swedish Government signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the Soviets claimed that Wallenberg had died on July 17, 1947. The note contained a handwritten report by a Colonel Smoltsov, head of Lubianka Prison's health service, to Viktor Abakumov, minister of state security. Supposedly written on July 17, 1947, the note stated:

February 19, 1957: Sweden's Ambassador to Moscow, Rolf Sohlman, delivered a very strongly worded response to the Soviets, holding them responsible for Wallenberg's fate and urged a continued investigation.

February 1957: Evidence by the unnamed Austrian and his report of having shared a cell with Wallenberg in 1955 was acquired.

March 1959: Abraham Kalinski wrote a postcard in Yiddish to his sister in Haifa, Israel. He mentioned a Swede.

August 1959: Kalinski again wrote his sister, this time in Polish, "that the only foreigners now left in the prison, apart from myself, are one Italian and one Swede who saved many Jews in Rumania during the War".

1959: Swedish/Russian communiques: The Swedish Government, responding to the testimony of the German returnees Mulle and Rehemkampf (April 1956), sent several strongly worded notes to the Russians merely to reiterate the story of Wallenberg's death in 1947. They also accuse elements of trying to poison Swedish/Soviet relations.

1960: Another Swedish communique to the Soviets. Signed by two Supreme Court justices, the message states that evidence clearly points to Wallenberg's survival, at least up to early 1950.

1961: In early 1979, the Soviet dissident Uri Belov passed through Vienna on his way out of Russia. He went with Simon Wiesenthal to the Swedish Embassy. Belov said that Wallenberg had staged a hunger strike in Moscow's Butyrka Prison in

1961. As a result, he was transferred to a psychiatric clinic.

1961: American student from the University of Pennsylvania arrested for espionage while touring the Soviet Union in the summer of 1961, Marvin Makinen, is imprisoned at Vladimir Prison for twenty months. While at Vladimir, Makinen's cell mate is a Latvian prisoner, Kruminsh, who had also been a cell mate of Gary Powers. Upon arriving at a labor camp in

August 1963, Makinen was questioned about his former cell mates by an older political prisoner. When Makinen mentioned Kruminsh's name, the older prisoner was disgusted. "Kruminsh, that son of a bitch. He got to sit with all the foreign prisoners", the man grumbled. "He got to sit with Powers, he got to sit with you, Marvin, and he got to sit with the Swedish prisoner Vandenberg". It wasn't the first time Makinen had heard about a Swedish prisoner. Both an earlier cell mate and even Kruminsh had mentioned that a Swedish prisoner had been held in Vladimir Prison. A year after his release in October of 1963, Makinen was invited to the Swedish embassy in Washington to recount how he learned about the Swedish prisoner. This time, he was informed that Vandenberg had been a Swedish diplomat in Budapest who had helped Jews escape the Nazis, and that the man had not been heard from since Soviet troops moved into Budapest in 1945 That man was Raoul Wallenberg.

January 27, 1961: Professor Nanna Svartz of Sweden has a routine meeting in Moscow with Professor Aleksander Miashnikov. Professor Svartz, a physician from Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital (where Wallenberg's stepfather served as administrator) was a close friend of the von Dardel family. Wallenberg's mother, Maj von Dardel, was her patient. Professor Svartz and Professor Miashnikov often discussed medical matters of a highly technical nature together after the conferences. Their language of choice was always German. Dr. Svartz asked on January 27, 1961 to discuss "a matter close to my heart and the hearts of other Swedes." She gave an account of Raoul Wallenberg and asked the Russian doctor if he knew of him and his whereabouts. Dr. Miashnikov replied in a low voice, "that the person inquired about was in a mental hospital." Dr. Miashnikov also told her that he had personally examined Wallenberg. A Russian colleague was called in for consultation, and it was decided that Dr Svartz should proceed through diplomatic channels. Dr. Svartz returned to Sweden and informed Prime Minister Tage Erlander, an old friend, of her conversation concerning Wallenberg.

February 9, 1961: A personal letter from Erlander to Khrushchev is delivered by the Swedish Ambassador: "I now wish to inform you that I have been informed by Swedish physician, Professor Nanna Svartz, who visited Moscow at the end of January 1961, that Wallenberg was alive at that time and that he was a patient at a mental hospital in Moscow. His health was not good. Dr. Svartz got this information from an internationally known prominent representative of Soviet medical science".

March 1961: Dr. Svartz returned to Moscow. She saw Miashnikov and asked to see Wallenberg in the hospital. He said that this would have to be "decided in higher quarters, unless he is dead". Dr. Svartz then answered that this must have happened quite recently if it had occurred. Dr. Svartz sensed that all was not well. Miashnikov, who was so important that he was chairman to Khrushchev's personal physician, said that Dr. Svartz should not have told the Swedish Government of their conversation. He told Dr. Svartz that he had been summoned before Khrushchev, who had been furious, pounding on his desk and finally ordering him out of his office. Miashnikov now claimed to know nothing of Wallenberg, and declared that his poor German (which they had used together for years) had caused the misunderstanding. May 1962: Dr. Svartz again met Professor Miashnikov at a medical congress. When Wallenberg was again mentioned, he said that no further private talks on the subject could be held.

August 17, 1962: Second Erlander letter about Wallenberg to Khrushchev. No reply.

1962: Efim Moshinsky, a Soviet emigre living in Israel, stated that he had seen Raoul Wallenberg as a prisoner with other secretly kept prisoners on Wrangel's Island in 1962. Similar information was also given through files released by the CIA in December of 1994.

1963: Ex-British spy, Greville Wynne, told BBC audiences of an incident in Moscow's Lubianka Prison in early 1963. "One day when taken in the tiny cagelike lift to the roof for solitary exercise, Wynne heard another cage coming into the next pen. As the gate opened, he heard a voice call out 'Taxi'. Given the filthy condition of the lifts, this piece of defiant humor was greatly appreciated. Five days later when it happened again, Wynne called out, 'Are you an American?' The voice answered, 'No, I'm Swedish.'" Nothing further could be learned. Guards restrained both prisoners. 1962-1964: Dr. Svartz is unable to renew any contact with Dr. Miashnikov.

April 1964: Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visits Stockholm. Erlander again presses for an answer and suggests a meeting between Dr. Svartz and Miashnikov.

April 29, 1964: Letter from Miashnikov to Dr. Svartz denying any knowledge of Raoul Wallenberg.

May 28, 1964: Dr. Svartz writes a letter to Dr. Miashnikov reminding him of all their untroubled conversations in the 1950's as well as untroubled discussions after their January 27, 1961 meeting. She also recalls in detail that conversation once again.

1964: Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander, turns down an offer from the Soviet Union to trade Raoul Wallenberg for Soviet spy Stig Wennerstrom then in prison in Sweden. The offer was made by the Soviet KGB and was first made to Swedish authorities in the autumn of 1965. This offer was confirmed in 1991 by the participants in this offer, Otto Danielsson and Carl Persson of the Swedish Government and the go-between with the Soviets, Carl Gustav Svingel, who now lives in Berlin. The seriousness of this proposed spy swap was also confirmed by the late Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander. When Svingel asked his Soviet counterpart if Wallenberg lived, he was informed that "We usually don't negotiate about dead people." Col. Stig Wennerstrom was sentenced to life in prison on June 12, 1964 and was an important spy for the Soviet Union. According to Danielsson, the Swedish Government felt that if they gave up Wennerstrom to the Soviets, who then gave him a good pension, then he would be a heavy argument at the recruitment of new spies. As Wallenberg was not a spy, the Swedish Government was not going to barter for him. While the Cabinet of Sweden decided against the swap on the grounds that they would not deal with the KGB, the fact that it was proposed by Soviet agents clearly establishes THAT WALLENBERG WAS ALIVE AFTER THE SOVIET SUPPOSED DATE OF DEATH IN 1947. The KGB offer was also confirmed in May 1992 by Finnish and by German (following the reunification of Germany) sources. The Swedish press released the news of this release effort in April 1991.

July 1965: A meeting was arranged in Moscow between the two doctors. It was held in the presence of Swedish Ambassador Gunnar Jarring and two representatives of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, one of whom acted as interpreter. A three hour discussion conducted in Swedish and Russian (no German) produced no new results. Miashnikov again said that Dr. Svartz must have misunderstood his syntax.

September 1965: A "White Book" was published by the Swedish Foreign Ministry making public the recent inter-changes with the Soviet Union, including the Svartz affair. The Swedish public and Swedish press were outraged by the disclosures.

November 1965: Dr. Aleksandr Miashnikov died suddenly. He had appeared to be in good health and was in his early sixties.

January 1970: A young Hungarian visiting Stockholm read about Wallenberg for the first time in a Swedish newspaper. He went to Maj von Dardel and told her of a lunch with a woman friend whose father was a senior Hungarian Government official. (The Swedes confirmed the existence of both the official and his daughter). At lunch, the father mentioned that a Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg, who had been active in Budapest during the War, was at the time in a Soviet camp in Siberia.

1974: An unnamed informant said that he had seen Wallenberg in Vadivovo camp near the Siberian city of Iskutsk from 1966-1967. He was old looking with then, white hair and had been very ill. He was called "Roniboni" by the other prisoners.

November 1977: Jan Kaplan was released from prison after only 18 months of a four year prison sentence. The former administrator of an operatic studio in Moscow was 66 years old in 1977. He had been jailed for "economic crimes"; namely, currency offenses and the illegal purchase of diamonds in preparation for emigration from the Soviet Union. A telephone call from Jan Kaplan in Moscow to his daughter, Anna Kaplan Bilder, a dentist is Jaffa, Israel. When questioned about prison conditions by his daughter, he assured her that conditions were not too difficult. "Why when I was in Butyrka Prison Hospital in 1975, I met a Swede who told me he had been in Soviet prisons for thirty years, and he seemed reasonably healthy to me".

1978: Conid Lubarsky, a Soviet dissident living in Munich, reported the following information from a reliable source in Moscow: "In 1978, in Blagovischnsk special psychiatric hospital, one old Swede was held. His physical state was very bad. He had been in confinement for a long time, maybe since World War II. His name was unknown to my informants, but they speculated that this man could be Wallenberg."

May 1, 1978: A young Soviet Jewish immigrant to Israel, who wished to remain anonymous because of his family in the Soviet Union, tells of a party at the Moscow home of a senior KGB officer on May Day 1978: "Much vodka was drunk and the younger men at the party began to speak of dissidents and the rough time they must have in prison. The KGB officer burst out and said, "Don't you believe it; things aren't so tough nowadays as they used to be. Why I have a Swede under my charge in Lubianka who's been inside for over 30 years!" The young Russian heard of Wallenberg in Israel for the first time and then went to the Swedish Embassy in Israel where he filed a report.

October 1978: Abraham Kalinski, the Polish emigre who had reported seeing Wallenberg from 1955 to 1959, heard about Anna Bilder's conversation with her father via the Russian emigre grapevine. He met her and she gave him a detailed account of the conversation.

December 1978: From the United States, Kalinski telephoned the Kaplan home in Moscow. Kaplan's wife, Eugenia, took the call and said her husband was not available. She did confirm his report of meeting a Swede in Butyrka Prison in 1975.

December 20, 1978: Abraham Kalinski met with two Swedish Foreign Office representatives at the Swedish Consulate in New York. He told his own story and then repeated Jan Kaplan's story.

December 1978: The Swedish Foreign Office in Tel Aviv contacted Anna Bilder and invited her in for an interview.

1979: General Kuprianov, now free in Leningrad, learned that Wallenberg had not yet been released. The General was surprised, as he knew that Wallenberg had been sentenced to 25 years in prison in either 1945 or 1946 and should thus have been released no later than 1971.

January 1979: Sweden formally re-opened the Wallenberg case based on this newest evidence.

January 3, 1979: Swedish note to Russians requesting an investigation of new information.

January 24, 1979: Russian reply: "There is not, and cannot be, anything new regarding the fate of Raoul Wallenbeg. As already stated on innumerable occasions, he died July 1947, and the assertions that he was in the Soviet Union as late as 1975 are not in accordance with facts."

February 1979: An article about Kuprianov's meeting with Wallenberg appeared in a Russian emigre newspaper in the United States. Kuprianov was interrogated by the KGB and warned to have no further contact with Western journalists.

February 3, 1979: Jan Kaplan's home was searched and Jan Kaplan is arrested again.

February 1979: Anna Bilder learns that her sick father is again in prison. She receives three anonymous phone calls (two in Russian) warning her not to speak of Wallenberg for her father's sake.

May 1979: A Swedish newspaper picked up the Kuprianov story about Wallenberg.

May 1979: General Kuprianov is interrogated a second time. The KGB accuses him of collaborating with Western journalists. A KGB colonel demands that Kuprianov help refute these "American/Israeli provocations." Kuprianov refused to deny his statements. The KGB told him that "no doubt he would be ready to give in at the next questioning".

May 1979: Kuprianov said to I.L. (a friend who later informed Simon Wiesenthal), "I do not know if I will be able to manage that questioning". The KGB recalled the general a few days after his conversation with I.L.

May 1979: Mrs. Kuprianov was sent for by the KGB and told that the general had died of a heart attack. While she was at the interrogation center, her apartment was searched and all the general's papers and documents were removed.

May 1979: At Lubianka Prison on a visit to her husband, Eugenia Kaplan was told by the KGB colonel in charge that her husband was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda in Israel. He also said that Jan Kaplan's health and fate depended on Anna Bilder's behavior.

June 14, 1979: Eugenia Kaplan in Moscow writes to her daughter. Anna Bilder receives the letter in July of 1979 in Israel. The letter says that Jan Kaplan was again in prison because he tried to smuggle out a letter to his daughter about Wallenberg. The letter was discovered by the KGB.

July 23, 1979: Anna Bilder disclosed the contents of her mother's letter to American author John Bierman. Mrs. Bilder consulted Abraham Kalinski and together they took the letter to the Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv. It was photo-copied and the original went to Sweden by diplomatic pouch. Sweden's experts, after careful study, were fully convinced of its authenticity.

August 22, 1979: Swedish Prime Minister, Ola Ullsten, intervened personally and sent a letter to Soviet Prime Minister Alexi Kosygin, requesting that the Wallenberg case be reopened and that a Swedish embassy official be allowed to interview Kaplan, if necessary in the presence of Soviet officials.

August 28, 1979: Again, the Russians stuck by their 1947 story. Prime Minister Ullsten issued a statement calling the Soviet attitude deplorable. He also said that the whole truth of Wallenberg's disappearance was still not at hand and that Sweden would continue its pursuit of the truth. 1981: A report was filed by Kronid Lyubarsky, living at that time in Munich, that an elderly Swede was imprisoned in the hospital of the Blagoveshchensk Prison and Psychiatric Facility. This report was later confirmed by Swedish businessman, Kenne Fant, who met an eyewitness in the 1980's who described an elderly Swede imprisoned in Blagoveshchensk who had to be treated for frostbite.

1981: Yaakov Menaker, a former Soviet army officer who later emigrated to Israel, claimed that Leonid Brezhnev, (then leader of the Soviet Union), was responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of Wallenberg in 1945. In 1984, Ukrainian religious and national rights campaigner, Josyp Terelya, wrote to the Wallenberg Committee in Stockholm and also placed the responsibility for Wallenberg's fate on Leonid Brezhnev.

October 5, 1981: President Ronald Reagan signs into law a bill making Raoul Wallenberg an honorary citizen of the United States.

February 8, 1985: Josyp Terelya is arrested and sentenced on August 20th to seven years in labor camps and five years exile. He had already spent over 18 years in prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals. In a letter to his wife, Olena, he wrote about being questioned by KGB agent Korsun. At the end of the interrogation, agent Korsun said, "Terelya, we can do anything. Look at Raoul Wallenberg for example. Even in the Swedish Government, there are people who are tired of the clamor around his name. And who are you? There isn't even any sense in giving you a long sentence. A year's enough, but where is the guarantee that one of the criminals won't cut your throat? And if it's necessary, we'll throw you into a cell with Raoul Wallenberg. There you could help each other."

August, 1987: Wallenberg reported being seen in a prison camp 150 miles from Moscow. He had the flu in the summer of 1987 and was well again by October 1987. This information came from sources in Eastern Europe and was given to the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States in New York in February 1988.

October 1989: Raoul Wallenberg's sister, Nina Lagergren, his brother, Guy von Dardel, Ambassador Per Anger and Sonya Sonnenfeld from the Swedish Raoul Wallenberg Committee visited Moscow at the invitation of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was their first visit to the USSR to discuss the fate of Raoul Wallenberg with officials since he disappeared. During the meeting, they were given the following items connected with Raoul Wallenberg's case: A report on his purported death on July 17, 1947 and his cremation written by Dr. A. Smoltsov (then head of medical services at the KGB Lubianka Prison), a diplomatic passport, two identification documents, two food ration cards, notebooks, a sum of money in American , Swiss, Swedish and Hungarian currency, and a number of personal items. The KGB claimed to have discovered these articles "by accident... During this meeting, Nina Lagergren was given a piece of paper to sign. She was told by the KGB that it was a receipt for Raoul's belongings. Mrs. Lagergren does not speak or read Russian, but Sonya Sonnenfeld does. Sonya looked at the paper and was shocked. It was not a receipt at all. Instead it was a statement saying that Raoul Wallenberg's family agrees that the Soviet Union has done all they can on the Wallenberg case and that the family agrees that the case is closed. (This was told by Sonya Sonnenfeld at the annual meeting of the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the U.S.) Needless to say, Mrs. Lagergren did not sign the paper.

Three days later, officials gave them a prison registration file (dated February 6, 1945) which they claimed had been discovered only since the family arrived in the USSR.This card identifies Raoul Wallenberg as a Swedish citizen and diplomat and indicates his official arrest to have been made on January 19, 1945 by SMERSH. This was the first acknowledgement that Raoul Wallenberg had indeed been arrested by Soviet authorities. During their meetings, Soviet officials are aid to have expressed their condolences about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg and to have repeated the claim made in 1957 by then Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, that Raoul Wallenberg died in 1947. They also claimed that all other supporting evidence had been destroyed and that all the individuals responsible for his incarceration have since been executed or have died. Many have expressed doubt about these claims. Andrei Sakharov, for instance, expressed the view that documentation on a foreign diplomat would almost certainly have been kept from destruction. Others have questioned how the Smoltsov report alone could have been kept intact. The Soviet bureaucracy kept meticulous files. The files were kept in three tiers: Personal (placement, transport, food rations, medical, personal letters of appeal), Interrogative (interrogations and sentences, with or without tribunal or court proceedings) and Operative files (files comprised of information provided to the authorities by cell informants).

July 1990: Guy von Dardel is informed through the Soviet Embassy in Geneva that his request was approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to organize an investigatory commission of independent experts to examine the archives of Vladimir Prison for evidence of Raoul Wallenberg's imprisonment there. The commission is called the Soviet/International Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg. The work of the Commission was unprecedented. A number of major discoveries were made which for the first time were documented by records and had been previously only assumed or rumored. Although direct evidence of Raoul Wallenberg's fate beyond 1947 was not found, several important discoveries directly relevant to his case were made:

1. The KGB employed a system of assigning numbers rather than names for special prisoners and prison authorities, including the prison physician, did not know the true identity of the prisoner who was addressed simply as "prisoner number ..".

2. During interrogations, prisoners were often registered under false names.

3. Two prisoners, Gustav Richter (the German police attache in Bucharest) who was one of Raoul Wallenbeg's first cellmates in Lubianka Prison in February 1945, and Heinrich Grossheim-Krysko, (alias Henry Thompsen), who worked as an agent in the Swedish legation in Budapest and was arrested in Budapest in 1945 by SMERSH, were sentenced to strict isolation in Vladimir Prison because they had been "associated with a very important prisoner".

4. The cell which Raoul Wallenberg was first brought into at Lubianka Prison in February 1945, in addition to Gustav Richter, had a third prisoner who was a cell spy for the prison authorities. This person was an Austrian by the name of W.A. Schlutter who was given the false name of W.A. Scheuer.

5. Prisoners such as Gustav Richter, who like Raoul Wallenberg, had diplomatic standing, were incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without an official court trial or sentence. Gustav Richter was arrested in 1944 and held in Moscow prisons until 1951 when he was finally sentenced by the Special Tribunal to 25 years and transferred to Vladimir Prison.

6. The passport and valuables of the prisoner at the time of detention were always kept as an integral part of the prisoner's personal file. Nevertheless, Soviet authorities have maintained that they have found no records of the personal or interrogation files on Raoul Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder.

7. Hans (Jan) Loyda, a German-Czech prisoner and a partisan fighting Nazi soldiers, had been a cellmate of Vilmos Langfelder, Raoul Wallenberg and Willi Rodel, a German diplomat arrested in Bucharest. Hans Loyda had written a complaint to the Director of Vladimir Prison about the harsh prison conditions under which he was kept and stated that he believed that he received this treatment because he had been kept with these two diplomats. He had signed an agreement not to speak to anyone about his imprisonment with the two diplomats. Up to this time, the only known cellmate of Raoul Wallenberg released from the Soviet Union was Gustav Richter who had informed Swedish authorities about his imprisonment with Raoul Wallenberg upon his repatriation to Germany in 1955.

8. On February 7, 1947, an order had been written to transfer the prisoners Raoul Wallenberg and Willi Rodel from Cell 203 of the Lefortovo Prison to Lubianka Prison and to place them in Cell 7. Up to this time, the Soviets had never volunteered any information about the imprisonment of Raoul Wallenberg except for the Smoltsov report. The copy of this order was found in the personal file of Horst Kitschman, who as a German prisoner of war, was transferred according to the same order from Cell 7 of the Lubianka Prison together with Otto Hatz, a Hungarian army officer, to Cell 203 of the Lefortovo Prison. Kitschman was Gustav Richter's cellmate in the Vladimir Prison.

9. A number of German prisoners-of-war provided evidentiary statements about Raoul Wallenberg to Swedish authorities upon their repatriation to Germany in 1955-1956 as a result of the Adenauer-Khrushchev Treaty. These statements provided information about the conditions, i.e., the cell locations, dates, and other prisoner cellmates, under which they had learned about Raoul Wallenberg, had "knocking contact" through cell walls with him, or had heard about a Swedish diplomat held as a prisoner. By analysis of the prisoner registration cards in Vladimir, each of which provided a chronological listing of cell assignments for each prisoner, the Soviet-International Commission verified that. at least for 85 to 90% of the accounts, the information on the cards directly corroborated the statements made earlier by these prisoners.

January, 1991: Approval for the continued work of the Commission is rescinded. The Commission was rudely informed by the Soviets, "We will research the case of Katyn ourselves". This coincided with a period of tightening of control within the Soviet government. Vadim Bakatin was replaced by Nikolai Pugo. The changes in the Soviet government brought the work of the Commission to a standstill. Further archival research on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg continued only after the "Putsch" of August 1991. With the changes in the Soviet government after August 1991, Vadim Bakatin was appointed head of the KGB. It was then proposed that a Swedish/Soviet Commission of government representatives be appointed to continue archival research on Raoul Wallenberg. Archival research by the Swedish/Soviet Commission proceeded on the basis that Swedish representatives prepare a list of questions or requests for information, and their Russian colleagues respond by providing reports describing efforts of locating documents, providing copies of documents, or written summaries of interviews, etc., with former SMERSH, KGB, NKVD, or Foreign Ministry workers. Approximately one half of the questions and requests for information communicated to the Russians still remain unanswered or only partially answered. Among the main findings that have come forth from the work of the Swedish/Soviet Commission are the following:

1. There is no accounting in the registry journal of the head guard of Lubianka Prison of the death of the prisoner Walenberg (sic) or Wallenberg the night of July 16, 1947.

2. There are no registration records of Raoul Wallenberg or Vilmos Langfelder for cremation in 1947 at the Donskii Crematorium, the only functioning crematorium in the Moscow area at the time.

3. A former interrogator of the Ministry of State Security has been uncovered who interrogated Raoul Wallenberg. This person has been interviewed on several occasions by members of the Working Group, privately by Vadim Bakatin, who had requested him to reveal all information and who assured him of immunity when he was Chief of the KGB, and separately by Professors von Dardel and Makinen on five different occasions. For fear of reprisals and being held responsible for the Wallenberg matter, he has steadfastly refused to acknowledge any direct contact with Wallenberg or knowledge of his fate.

4. An order was transmitted over the signature of Nikolai Bulganin, then Deputy Soviet Minister of Defense, to the Soviet army command (Second Ukrainian Front) in Budapest on January 17, 1945 which directed the military to arrest Raoul Wallenberg, transport him to Moscow and use whatever means necessary for fulfillment of this order, and report time of arrival and name of accompanying person. This document was discovered in the archives of the Ministry of Defense. It was stated that no other documents have yet been found that explain the reason for issuing the order for arrest.

5. A document was found in the archives of the Foreign Ministry asserting that Vilmos Langfelder had died in March of 1948. The Foreign Ministry worker who researched files in the 1950's to prepare this document has been found. He has also provided the name of another assistant who worked with him on this matter, but that person has refused to speak about the matter.

6. After two years of archival research and insistent requests for information by Marvin Makinen , documents were finally located concerning Willi Rodel (Wallenberg's last known cellmate in the Lefortovo and Lubianka Prisons in 1947). These consist only of his passport and other personal identification papers; a copy of a physician's examination of him in the Lubianka Prison in September 1947, finding him in a very weakened and sick condition; a typed summary of an oral report that he had died in transit on October 15, 1947, on the way to Krasnogorsk Camp for Special Prisoners outside of Moscow; and a copy of the autopsy report stating that he had died of "paralysis of the heart".

May-June, 1992: Members of a United States humanitarian aid mission brought two train-car wagons of food and medication to Vorkuta, an isolated town in the far north of the Russian Federation, famous for its coal mines and POW camps. In Khalmer Yu, 70 kilometers north of Vorkuta at the extreme northern terminus of the Russian Northern Railway, team members were told by the Mayor of the community that among other foreign prisoners, primarily POWs, Raoul Wallenberg had also been in Khalmer Yu in the 1950's. This information was provided at a meeting in the American Embassy in Moscow of Professors Makinen and von Dardel with Colonel Michael Simenec, Jr., a member of he U.S. -Russian Joint Committee on POW/MIA's on April 21, 1994.

January, 1993: During a trip to Stockholm, Simone Lucki, a Belgian attorney, gave a copy of a photograph to Diane Blake of The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States. The photograph, dating from 1955, was given to Ms. Lucki by Natalia Scinkarenko, a Ukranian who was imprisoned in a Communist prison. She identifies one man in the photo as Wallenberg. Around the beginning of 1955 she and others heard from a German prisoner that he had encountered Raoul Wallenberg in another prison. Later that year, the prisoners were treated to a concert in which other men prisoners in Baltic folk costumes played and sang. One was identified to her as "Valenbergis". When she was released in 1961, she received a photograph of the group from a priest who was also in it and she has kept it all these years. She heard about Wallenberg again in 1989 when the Soviets permitted information about him on the radio. Not until she moved to Brussels did she reveal the photo. The photograph was sent by the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States to Mr. Horace Heafner, an age progression specialist, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Arlington, Virginia to provide a comparison between the face of Raoul Wallenberg (31 years old) and the face of the person in the picture. While Mr. Heafner felt that there were many similarities between the prison photograph and the picture of Raoul Wallenberg at 31 years of age, the quality of the prison photograph made it impossible for the identification to be conclusive.

April 1997: A ten year campaign by The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States to have a stamp issued in Wallenberg's honor comes to fruition. Thousands of members of the organization eagerly responded to a request from Rachel Bernheim, President of the Committee, that they sign postcards and petitions to the United States Postal Service asking for the stamp. The campaign had one major diplomatic hurdle to overcome: The U.S. Government has a rule that no living person may be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp. Because many believe that Wallenberg might still be alive, the Postal Service could not be asked to issue a "commemorative" stamp because that would imply that Wallenberg is dead. Rather, the postal service was asked to honor Wallenberg's wartime heroism. An exception was made and the stamp was issued.

1997: Two more post 1947 sightings surfaced. Varvara Larina, now 72, was a cleaning woman in Vladimir Prison. She was shown photographs of five men the same age as Wallenberg at the time of his imprisonment, and when asked to point out anyone she recalled, she placed her finger firmly on the face of Wallenberg. She remembers him not by name but by cell number - 49 - where he was held in isolation. He is locked in her memory as a chronic complainer. "He was tall, had dark hair, was growing bald," she said in an interview with U.S. News. "He was always scolding. Always unhappy". Larina recalls leaving his soup on the cell door ledge. The prisoner with the brooding eyes would declare the soup too cold and demand to see the guard or a high prison official. Another post 1947 sighting was in the Siberian camp of Bratsk. After his repatriation to Poland, one inmate, Boguslaw Baj, read a newspaper report about Russian declarations of Wallenberg's death in 1947 and recognized the name and face. Baj recalls befriending a Swede who said his name was Wallenberg and that he had been arrested in Budapest. "We talked pretty often," Baj says. "We even wanted to take him into our Polish brigade, where he would have felt better than among the Russians, who laughed at him because he spoke no Russian". But the camp commander refused. Baj's friend, Jozef Kowalski recalls first meeting Wallenberg at a Christmas Eve service, held clandestinely at the camp. A Polish priest said a prayer and the assembled sang carols. During a 1950 rail transfer of prisoners, Kowalski says Wallenberg sat near him, but was taken off the transport before its final destination. Kowalski, Baj and a third Home Army vereran, Jerzy Cichocki, have all separately picked out Wallenberg from an array of photographs.

January 12, 2001 - The White Papers: After a ten year investigation, the White Papers were released. They were released in the form of two reports, one from the Russian side and the other from the Swedish side. One reason for this is that, despite their common approach to gaining clarity on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, the two countries have different views on the need for material that reveals the actual background to the events and interprets some of these in different ways. Another reason is that the conclusions are not identical in every detail. The Swedish report establishes that it is not possible to draw any definite conclusion about the real fate of Raoul Wallenberg. It is clear, however, that the events which took place in 1947 were decisive for Raoul Wallenberg. The main conclusion of the Russian report is that Raoul Wallenberg died in 1947 and that to continue to search for him is pointless. Both sides have taken into account each other's opinions, but the group has not suceeded in establishing any common, legally indisputable conclusion on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg. Testimony about Raoul Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed. The burden of proof regarding the death of Raoul Wallenberg lies with the Russian Government. The working group has established many previously unknown facts and has discovered the unfortunate disappearance of a series of key documents from Russian archives. This suggests that efforts have been made to cover the tracks of illegal actions by the Soviet authorities. Thus, there are still contradictory versions concerning the fate of Raoul Wallenberg. There are still many unanswered questions. Prime Minister of Sweden, Goran Persson, stated "We must continue with our efforts to obtain new facts which would throw light on Wallenberg's fate. These efforts must be based on the assumption that Raoul Wallenberg may have lived long after 1947. As long as there is no unequivocal evidence of what happened to Wallenberg - and this is still the case - it cannot be said that Raoul Wallenberg is dead".

February 28, 2009 - Journalist Josh Prager reveals that in February of 1979 both Raoul Wallenberg's mother and stepfather committed suicide in despair over their inability to achieve the return of their son. Both Nina Lagergren (Raoul's sister) and Guy von Dardel (Raoul's brother) promised that they would keep fighting for their older brother, and presume him living, until 2000.

August 28, 2009 - Guy von Dardel passed away without achieving his lifelong dream to get Raoul back home. An unprecedented kaddish at the Jerusalem Western Wailing Wall was held for him.

April 1, 2010 - The latest round of discussions between the Federal Security Services of the Russian Federation (FSB) and independent researchers Susanne Berger and Vadim Birstein yielded a resounding surprise. In a formal reply to several questions regarding Russian prison registers from 1947, FSB archivists stated that "with great likelihood" Raoul Wallenberg became Prisoner #7 in Moscow's Lubyanka prison some time that year. The archivists added that Prisoner #7 had been interrogated on July 23, 1947 which - if confirmed - would mean that the Soviet era claims of Wallenberg's death on July 17, 1947 are no longer valid. Never before have Russian officials stated the possibility of Raoul Wallenberg's survival past this date so explicitly. In depth verification of the new information has to take place before any final conclusions can be drawn, but if indeed confirmed, the news is the most interesting to come out of Russian archives in over fifty years.

July 31, 2011 - Russian archivists publish new material from a German officer, Willy Roedel, imprisoned after WWII who shared a cell with Raoul Wallenberg. From the start, researchers sought information about Wallenberg's known cellmates but Russian officials "routinely insisted that no records of Roedel's interrogations had been preserved. This is the clearest sign yet that Russian archives still contain critically important documents in the Wallenberg case that have not been released.

September 7, 2011 - For as yet unexplained reasons, Russian officials chose to mislead for decades, not only the public but, an official Swedish-Russian Working Group that investigated the Wallenberg case from 1991-2001. Russia did not merely obscure inconsequential details of the case but instead failed to provide documentation that contains information which goes to the very heart of the Wallenberg inquiry. These are, the above mentioned Willy Roedel material and copies of the Lubyanka prison register from July 23, 1947. This shows that a "Prisoner No. 7" was interrogated on that day (six days after Raoul Wallenberg's alleged death). Russian officials did not show this page to Swedish investigators during the Working Group, citing "privacy" concerns. They have since acknowledged that "Prisoner No. 7" almost certainly is identical with Wallenberg.

January 2, 2012 - On the centennial of his birth, the Swedish government has announced that it will designate 2012 as the official "Raoul Wallenberg Year".

January 16, 2012 - A document has been found by German researcher, Susanne Berger, that backs claims that the KGB stopped the Raoul Wallenberg probe. The September 16, 1991 memorandum from the Swedish Embassy in Moscow cites the former head of the Soviet "Special Archive", Anatoly Prokopenko, as telling Swedish diplomats that the KGB instructed him to stop a search for documents by researchers working for the first International Wallenberg Commission. Prokopenko also said the KGB wanted copies of all documents that the researchers had already viewed. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by the Foreign Ministry. Prokopenko said he complied because he was working to open the archives to the public, taking advantage of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's liberal reforms, and realized that open disobedience would lead to his immediate ouster. "I had to make a sacrifice for the sake of uncovering numerous other secrets of the archive," Prokepenko said. He added that following a brief period of openness before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union authorities have grown increasingly reluctant to allow public access to the archives.

January 18, 2012 - Sweden has announced it will hold a new inquiry into Raoul Wallenberg case. Hopefully, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the official chairman of the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial will insist on full information from Russia's leaders who lied to an official Working Group in 2001, instead of meekly asking, once again, for an open archival policy.

 

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