Autor/Autorin
The Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative (RWI-70) welcomes and supports the decision of Marie Dupuy, niece of Raoul Wallenberg, to file a lawsuit against Russian authorities in Moscow to obtain unrestricted access to FSB (Federal Security Agency of the Russian Federation) documents. The documents are the official prison registers of two Moscow prisons, the Inner (Lubyanka) Prison and the Lefortovo Prison, for the years 1945 to 1947. The entries concern Raoul Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, who was arrested together with Wallenberg in Hungary in January 1945. They also concern prisoners with a direct connection to the Wallenberg case, including Wallenberg’s long-time cell mate, the German diplomat Willy Rödel.
The Russian authorities published heavily censored copies of these documents in 1991. Despite countless requests from Mrs Dupuy, historians and Swedish diplomats, the Russian authorities have refused to allow an independent review of the original documents for more than two decades. This constitutes a violation of both Russian and international law. The information contained in the requested documents could enable researchers to identify a currently unknown ‚Prisoner No.7‘ who was interrogated together with Vilmos Langfelder on 22 and 23 July 1947 – six days after Wallenberg’s official date of death (17 July 1947). In 2009, FSB archivists publicly claimed that this ‚prisoner no. 7‘ was „very probably Raoul Wallenberg“. Apparently, in 1991, Russian authorities deliberately concealed important documents on the Wallenberg case and specifically on ‚Prisoner No. 7‘, a decision for which no full explanation has yet been provided.
Contact
Susanne Berger, Coordinator
RWI-70, 6045 25th Rd N, Arlington, VA 22207 USA
E-mail : sberger37@hotmail.com
Phone: 001 571 594 1701
26 July 2017
This morning, I instructed my lawyers (Team 29 ) to take legal action in Moscow to obtain access to certain documents that could clarify the fate of my uncle, the Swedish diplomat Raoul G. Wallenberg, who disappeared in Russia in 1945. I hesitated for a long time to take this step and only did so after numerous requests to Russian authorities, both public and private, over two decades – from myself, historians and Swedish diplomats – were unsuccessful. In September 2016, together with other members of our family and a delegation of researchers, I travelled to Moscow to meet in person with representatives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) and the Federal Security Agency of the Russian Federation (FSB). At this meeting, we presented a comprehensive catalogue of unanswered questions and research proposals. Until these questions are answered, the search for Raoul Wallenberg’s fate cannot be completed. So far we have not received a satisfactory answer.
Raoul’s family – his parents, Maj and Fredrik von Dardel, and his siblings, Guy von Dardel and Nina Lagergren – have been fighting for over seven decades to find out what happened to him in Soviet custody in Budapest after his abduction by Soviet military units in January 1945. The lawsuit filed today continues the research work my father, Guy von Dardel, carried out with Russian and international researchers and other Wallenberg experts in the 1990s. In recent years, it has become apparent that Russian archive collections contain important documents relevant to the search for Raoul, which neither our family nor independent experts have been allowed to see. In order to solve the Wallenberg case, we urgently need access to these documents.
The family is of central importance to us. For this reason, we will continue our search until we know exactly what happened to Raoul Wallenberg and why.
Contact
Katya Alalykina, Press Officer
Team 29
E-mail: ktrkvm@gmail.com