(Vatican Radio) Hungary has commemorated Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who
has been credited with saving the lives of as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews during
World War II, with the opening of a renovated memorial park named after him. The opening
of the park comes amid international concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Hungary.
Stefan Bos reports from Budapest. Listen:
The Vatican’s
ambassador to Hungary, Apostolic Nuncio Alberto Bottari de Castello, was among hundreds
remembering a man that speakers called one of the greatest heroes of the 20th century.
While serving as Swedish envoy in Budapest from July 1944, Raoul Wallenberg
gave Hungarian Jews Swedish travel documents and set up safe houses for them.
Wallenberg
is also credited with dissuading German officers from massacring the 70,000 inhabitants
of Budapest’s main Jewish ghetto.
This way, experts say, he saved the lives
of at least tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as one hundred thousand Hungarian
Jews.
PARK IN COURTYARD
Late Sunday, church and other officials
along with Holocaust survivors attended the opening of the renovated Raoul Wallenberg
Memorial Park in the courtyard of Budapest’s Dohány Street Synagogue.
The
director of the federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, Gusztáv Zoltai, made clear
that Wallenberg should never be forgotten.
He said Raoul Wallenberg’s “life
and deeds of action serve as a model for all Jews in Hungary” who view them as among
the “most heroic” in history.
The ceremony at what is Europe’s largest
synagogue was a highlight in the ‘Raoul Wallenberg Year’, organized by Hungary and
Sweden to commemorate the diplomat’s centennial birth.
Yet Israeli ambassador
Ilan Mor made clear to participants he had attended the event with mixed feelings
following a new wave of anti-Semitism here.
GRAVEYARDS DESTROYED
The
diplomat indirectly referred to attacks on Jewish graveyards and Holocaust memorials
as well as threats against the Jewish community and rising far-right wing groups.
However
Hungarian President János Áder stressed there can be no space for extremism in Hungary,
which was a close ally of Nazi-Germany during most of World War II, when about 600,000
Hungarian Jews were killed.
The president made clear that “nobody can
use any ideology or political belief to attack fellow citizens.” He stressed a peaceful
society, in his words, “prohibits discrimination” or exclusion of anyone.
He
added that in Wallenberg’s memory, his nation had accommodated thousands of refugees
from the Balkan wars and Jewish people from the former Soviet Union on their way to
Israel.
Wallenberg’s niece, Louise von Dardel, said her family would continue
to search into his life and death, which remains both an inspiration and a mystery.
Moscow claims he passed away in Soviet captivity in 1947. But historians
have their doubts as former detainees of Soviet-era camps and prisons claimed to have
seen him even in the 1980s.