Hjälten och offren : Raoul Wallenberg och judarna i Budapest

Sammanfattning: AbstractIn the summer of 1944, Raoul Wallenberg was sent to Budapest as a representative of the Swedish Foreign Office. His assignment was to save Hungarian Jews with connections to Sweden. His rescue action has been handed down to posterity as one of the greatest humanitarian operations ever, and Raoul Wallenberg’s personality has been much glorified. Finally, he was appointed an American honorary citizen in 1981, and he is claimed to have saved no fewer than 100,000 Jews. Now, was this possible?In his thesis, Attila Lajos investigates “what really happened” in the rescue actions being carried out in Budapest towards the end of World War II. He puts Raoul Wallenberg’s activities in a wider context, and shows that there were also many other rescue actions in Budapest going on at the same time. Especially Hungarian Jews took part in these operations. Lajos discusses anti-semitism in Hungary, and he shows how both Swedish and Hungarian foreign and domestic politics towards the end of the war was adjusted to a situation where the allies probably would win and decide over post-war conditions. It was mainly this adjustment that created necessary prerequisites for successful rescue actions in Budapest. Moreover, certain Hungarian and German Nazis in Budapest tried to adjust to this coming situation, and made some attempts at cooperating with the rescuers.In his conclusion, Attila Lajos discusses to what extent Raoul Wallenberg was a real Hero and whether the Hungarian Jews were pure helpless victims. He does this within a wide theoretical framework, presented at the beginning of the thesis.