January 17, 1945: The Arrest of Raoul Wallenberg

January 17, 1945: Raoul Wallenberg is arrested -- not by the Nazis, as might have been expected, given his activities during World War II, but by the Soviets.

Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912 in Lidingö, one of the islands that makes up metropolitan Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. He studied architecture in Paris, and then at the University of Michigan. He worked for an import-export company in Hungary, which became friendly to Nazi Germany, joining the Axis in November 1940.

Being 1/16th Jewish, and having Jewish business partners, Wallenberg saw the 1941 film Pimpernel Smith, starring Leslie Howard as a man who saved 28 Jews from arrest by the Nazis. This inspired him to do the same. While serving as neutral Sweden's special envoy in the Hungarian capital of Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings which he declared as Swedish territory. He is estimated to have saved about 4,500 people.

On January 17, 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Soviet Union's Red Army, agents of SMERSH detained Wallenberg on suspicion of espionage. He was never seen in public again. In 1957, 12 years after his disappearance, he was reported by Soviet authorities to have died on July 17, 1947, of a suspected heart attack while imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the prison at the headquarters of the NKVD secret police in Moscow. However, given that he was just 34 years old and appeared to be in good health at the time of his arrest, this is considered unlikely.

In 1981, Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, an immigrant from Hungary, and one of those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making him an honorary citizen of the United States. He was only the 2nd person to receive this honor, after Winston Churchill. The only people to receive it since have been Pennsylvania founders William and Hannah Penn, Mother Teresa, and 3 Europeans who aided the American cause during the Revolution: The Marquis de Lafayette, Count Casimir Pulaski, and Bernardo Gálvez y Madrid, 1st Count of Gálvez, for whom the Texas city of Galveston is named.

Wallenberg was also named an honorary citizen of Canada, Britain, Australia, Hungary, and Israel. Israel also granted him the highest honor they give to a non-Jew: "Righteous Among the Nations."

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January 17, 1945 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Chicago Stadium.