In the midst of our summer fascination with dark superheroes like Batman and Spiderman, why not instead step into the sunshine and celebrate a real hero?
August 4th marks the 100th birthday of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, whose efforts during WWII rescued an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the hands of the Nazis.
It's a story of life-affirming heroism, and I have always wondered how it happened. Wallenberg wasn't experienced as a diplomat or as a spy. How did he get to Hungary? How were all those Jews whose passports he stamped housed and fed? What is the back story? In the movies we see the forces at work: how the hero came to be, and in the background, glimpse his support team, but seldom in real life.
For the Wallenberg story, the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum web site supplies the illuminating details:
"Having studied in the United States in the 1930s and having established himself in a business career in Sweden, he was recruited by the US War Refugee Board (WRB) in June 1944 to travel to Hungary. Given status as a diplomat by the Swedish legation, Wallenberg's task was to do what he could to assist and save Hungarian Jews."
The entry goes on to say:
"With authorization from the Swedish government, Wallenberg began distributing certificates of protection issued by the Swedish legation to Jews in Budapest shortly after his arrival in Hungarian capital. He used WRB and Swedish funds to establish hospitals, nurseries, and a soup kitchen, and to designate more than 30 "safe" houses that together formed the core of the "international ghetto" in Budapest."
Our films often show us secret government agencies whose experiments go awfully awry. Here, our hero was supported by a little known player: a U.S. agency, whose efforts to aid the civilian victims of the Nazis, though belated, were successful.
In the late fall of 1943, another plan was heading towards Roosevelt's desk as well. A group of U.S. senators led by Guy Gillette of Iowa responded to a proposal to save Jews put forth by Jewish activists Peter Bergson and other members of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.
"The senators introduced a resolution that called for a government rescue agency. At the same time, Will Rogers, Jr. introduced an identical resolution into the House. Although the proposal got caught up in protracted and controversial House hearings, a vote in the Senate, scheduled to take place on January 24, 1944, seemed almost guaranteed to approve the measure. By mid-January a poll indicated the resolution would also pass in the House. Two days before the Senate ballot was to take place, Roosevelt set up the War Refugee Board. The President had seized the initiative."
Not to be left out of the story was Elbert Thomas, a Democratic Senator from Utah, who earlier in his life had visited Jerusalem. According to a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, in the 1940's:
"Thomas became deeply concerned about the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe. He joined the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, a lobbying group led by Jewish activist Peter Bergson.
"Thomas played a key role in advancing a Bergson-initiated congressional resolution calling for creation of a government agency to rescue Jews from the Nazis."
So how do heroes come to be? There is no taking the individual heart and courage out of the picture. Wallenberg is the one who risked his life, and near war's end was captured by the Soviets, and presumably died in their hands. He's the one whose image is on a U.S. postage stamp, and whose likeness is found around the world on sculptures dedicated to his courage and memory.
But consider what's going on in the background here. Before anything happens in Hungary, two Democratic senators, each from a state with a small Jewish population, a Jewish activist and Irgun leader Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), an American entertainer and populist, Will Rogers Jr., and a skilled politician, Henry Morgenthau combine forces to force the hand of a hard-to-convince president.
Raoul Wallenberg will always be the superhero of this story--Happy 100 Raoul-- but in the closing scene where you blow out the candles, the sidekicks will be there too, cheering you on.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
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