Home Town Kid Makes Good

Ben Olander Lecture in Stockholm

We attended a lecture today sponsored by the English Speaking Community Club of Stockholm on the humanitarian work of Raoul Wallenberg. The lecture was presented by Ben Olander, a native born Swede who has taken to lecturing and music in a late-in-life career.

Raoul Wallenberg

Olander’s lecture contained well-deserved doses of Swedish pride in the retelling of the heroism of a fellow Swede who achieved international fame during World War II, a worldwide occurrence that most Swedes witnessed from a neutral sideline. The lecture was also part of a personal retelling of Olander’s childhood encounter with anti-Semitism and his recurring theme that “evil thrives on others passivity.”  

Prior to the lecture, our personal understanding of Raoul Wallenberg was no more than a thin veneer applied to the enormity of the holocaust. Heartfelt renderings of tales of rescue shared by Olander increased our emotional connection to Wallenberg. We now wanted to understand more of the historic background of his work.

The short narrative is that Wallenberg was born into affluence near Stockholm in 1912.  He received a degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1935. He was linguistically talented, speaking Swedish, English, Russian, German and French, which aided in his business partnership in a food import/ export business with Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew. As Hitler’s European domination advanced, Wallenberg became the travelling partner and witnessed firsthand the injustice of the Nazis.  

Protective Pass Issued
by Wallenberg

Bronze Briefcase on Foundation of
Wallenberg's Birth Home

Propelled out of passivity and with financial backing from the US War Refugee Board, Wallenberg traveled in June 1944 to Budapest as part of the Swedish legation. There he tirelessly issued Swedish protective passes from his now famously memorialized leather briefcase and literally saved thousands of lives. He disappeared in January 1945 as Soviet troops expelled the Germans from Hungary.

The shifting political considerations in Hungry that opened fissures in Nazi control that enabled Wallenberg’s bravery to thrive are equally interesting.

Hungarian and German troops both suffered great losses in the failed siege of Leningrad that ended in January 1944.  Hitler left Leningrad with a desire to press on; Hungarian leadership opened separate peace talks with the West. Working with neutral countries such as Sweden to save Jews was both humanly and politically expedient. Even German leader Heinrich Himmler imagined a post war role would be better advanced by less Jewish persecution in Hungary. 

Hungarian and German soldiers
 arrest Jews in Budapest - October 1944.

Hitler was less inclined to post-war considerations and sent troops in October 1944 to occupy his now recalcitrant ally. Chaos ensued. Wallenberg responded and established “Swedish houses” in Pest, protecting 30,000 Jews under Swedish- flagged legation buildings. In January 1945, Wallenberg relocated across the Danube to Buda in the Jewish ghetto that had been targeted for a final solution. Bribery, chutzpah and Wallenberg’s threat to personally pursue a post-war crime execution of the commanding German, General Schmidthuber, saved 120,000 Jews.

So despite some skipped historic facts, we hope that Olander will continue to pour Swedish pride into his lectures aimed primarily at Swedish teenagers. All generations, no matter how removed from events, need role models that forsake passivity in the face of evil.