Lawsuit filed by the niece of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Marie Dupuy, against the FSB. In January 1945, Wallenberg, who was involved in rescuing Jews in Budapest, was arrested by the Soviet security forces. By official version He died in custody of a heart attack. But the originals of the documents were never made public - until now, only censored copies were provided to the family. The refusal to provide the documents to the FSB was explained by the fact that they mention personal data and other people. Wallenberg's death documents will be declassified between 2020 and 2022, according to a spokesman for the department. The diplomat's relatives want to find out what really happened to Wallenberg. Dupuy's interests are represented by the law firm Team 29.

In 1981, newly elected U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos (1928-2008) pushed through a bill granting Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg honorary U.S. citizenship. Prior to Wallenberg, only Winston Churchill had received such an honor.

Trying to pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, Tom Lantos was guided not only by universal, but also by purely personal considerations. Lantos is a Hungarian Jew by origin, in 1944 in Nazi-occupied Budapest he was sent several times to labor camps, the return from which was by no means guaranteed. 16-year-old Lantos escaped and returned to the city several times - only to be recaptured by the Nazis.

The captures and escapes stopped only when Lantos, together with his aunt, took refuge in the "Swedish House" - a building rented by Raoul Wallenberg and enjoying the privilege of extraterritoriality. Lantos soon joined the ranks of Wallenberg's assistants: using his completely Aryan appearance, he became a courier delivering food and medicine to Jews hiding in various places throughout Budapest. When, after the liberation of the city by the Soviet troops, the young man returned home, he learned that his mother and all the rest of the family had been killed during the siege.

The history of Tom Lantos and tens of thousands of other Jews rescued by Wallenberg in Budapest is known to the smallest detail. The story of their savior, Raoul Wallenberg, is still a secret with seven seals: after he was arrested by SMERSH in Hungary in 1945, no one saw him at large again. Numerous stories of former Soviet prisoners testify that at least until 1947 he was kept in Moscow prisons. The next is silence.

In 1956, the USSR Foreign Ministry announced to Sweden that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947, but archival research conducted in the 1990s by historians Vadim Birshtein and Arseniy Roginsky showed that Wallenberg was alive for at least a few more days and after 17 July 1947. The circumstances of his death have not been clarified since. In 1979, Raoul Wallenberg's mother and stepfather May and Fredrik von Dardel, who devoted their whole lives to searching for him, committed suicide. They believed to the end that Raul was alive. “People look at me like I’m crazy,” Frederik von Dardel told a journalist in 1970.

The search for Raoul Wallenberg was continued by his half-sister and brother, and later by his nephews. Wallenberg was officially declared dead in Sweden only in October 2016. On July 26, 2017, Raoul Wallenberg's niece Marie von Dardel decided to file a lawsuit against the FSB of Russia, demanding that the family or independent research be given access to the originals. archival documents related to the fate of his uncle.

The mysterious story of Wallenberg's disappearance and the shameful story of hiding the truth about his death are of little interest to anyone in Russia. If only because not everyone knows what the “Swedish diplomat” Wallenberg did in Budapest in 1944-45 and why he has monuments all over the world. And this is just known.

What's up with Budapest

In World War II, Hungary - a kingdom under the rule of Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy - fought on the side Nazi Germany. Starting in 1938, anti-Jewish laws were enacted in Hungary, in general repeating the so-called Nuremberg racial laws adopted in Nazi Germany in 1935. In Hungary, Jews were deprived of civil equality, guaranteed to them by the laws of 1867, it was forbidden to hold public office, work in certain professions and marry non-Jews. At the same time, the laws did not prohibit Jews from serving in labor battalions, and starting from 1941, thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent to Eastern front, where they were supposed to ensure the victory of the Reich by rebuilding destroyed roads and digging trenches under the direction of German officers.

In Hungary itself, the Jews continued to enjoy the right of free movement, did not wear the yellow star, and stubbornly refused to believe in stories about death camps located somewhere in Poland. Regent Miklós Horthy and Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kallai successfully resisted German pressure and did not carry out mass deportations. According to the data for 1941 (the latest available statistics), the number of Jews in Hungary in its new borders - expanded at the expense of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - was 860 thousand people.

On March 19, 1944, Hitler, unable to achieve sufficient obedience from Regent Horthy, occupied Hungary. Literally a few days later, Adolf Eichmann, the genius of organizing mass deportations, took up the job. Few had any doubts that the Hungarian Jews were doomed. Deportations to Auschwitz began in May 1944. About 12,000 people went to the ovens every day. There was a year left before the Allied victory.

And the allies understood this very well. At this stage of the war, attempts to save from death the Jewish population of at least Hungary alone began to be actively undertaken with different sides: the American and British leadership got involved, Catholic Church led by the pope, neutral powers and the International Red Cross. One of the most active performers of these international plans Swede Raoul Wallenberg became the rescuer of European Jews who were still alive.

“People like me cannot be broken”

Raoul Wallenberg was born in 1912 near Stockholm into a wealthy and very influential Swedish family. His father, naval officer Raoul Oskar Wallenberg, died three months before his birth. Little Raoul was raised by his grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, a diplomat, in different years representing the interests of Sweden in Japan, Istanbul and Sofia. In 1918, Wallenberg's mother married a second time - to the diplomat Fredrik von Dardel, in this marriage a son and daughter were born, Wallenberg's half-brother and sister Guy von Dardel and Nina, married Lagergren.

Raoul Wallenberg knew he was 1/16 Jewish - one of his maternal great-great-great-grandfathers was Michael Benedks, one of the first Jews to move to Sweden in 1780. He converted to Lutheranism and fully assimilated into Swedish society. It is even possible that he overestimated this Jewish component in himself. An army colleague of Raoul Wallenberg, Ingemar Hedenius, recalled that in 1930 Wallenberg said: “A man like me, half Wallenberg, half Jew, cannot be broken.”

As a child, Raoul Wallenberg mastered German, English and Russian, then spent a year in France studying French. Higher education- Diploma in Architecture - he received at the University of Michigan in the United States.

Wallenberg did not succeed in working as an architect in Sweden: an American diploma required additional confirmation, and he did not want to do this, and his grandfather, a diplomat, came up with various things for his grandson: he sent him to South Africa to work in a company that traded building materials, then he got a job in a bank, headquarters -whose apartment was located in Haifa - in Palestine, which was then under the British mandate. In Haifa, Wallenberg met Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and was deeply moved by their stories.

Life, which consisted of short-term jobs, did not get better until Wallenberg met Kalman Lauer, the owner of the Central European Trading Company, in Stockholm. Lauer, a Budapest Jew who was engaged in the supply of various goods from Central Europe to Sweden, with the adoption of anti-Jewish laws in Hungary, lost the opportunity to travel freely to his homeland and to the countries occupied by the Nazis. Wallenberg soon became his junior trading partner. He liked Budapest very much and began to learn Hungarian with enthusiasm. Which would be very useful to him later.

Office of War Refugees

In 1944, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Office of War Refugees to rescue Jews and other potential victims of Nazi persecution. After the partial occupation of Hungary by the Nazis on March 19, 1944, Hungary became a priority field for the administration. The Office decided to ask the neutral countries to increase the staff of their diplomatic missions in Hungary and to oblige their diplomats, guided by considerations of "elementary humanity", to warn the authorities of this country against "further acts of barbarism." There were five neutral countries: Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Turkey.

Only Sweden reacted positively to the US proposal, perhaps in order to atone for the concessions made to Germany at the first stage of the war, when Stockholm allowed the Nazi army to transit through its territory to Norway and Finland. In addition, Sweden never completely stopped trading with Germany, and the Americans had something to put pressure on.

Initially, Folke Bernadotte, a relative of the Swedish king and president of the Swedish Red Cross, was chosen as the executor of the mission to save the Hungarian Jews. The Hungarian authorities, however, for reasons not yet clear, rejected this candidacy. Then Kalman Lauer, who was among the people who discussed this appointment with the Americans, proposed the candidacy of his young companion, Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg agreed, but set his own conditions for the Swedish Foreign Ministry, giving himself maximum freedom of action. In particular, after two weeks of correspondence with the ministry, he received the go-ahead to act by any means, including blackmail and bribery, the right to enter into contacts with anyone, including sworn enemies of the crown, and the right to issue people their own (supposedly Swedish passports) and provide their holders with asylum on the premises of a diplomatic mission. Naturally, these demands had nothing in common with generally accepted diplomatic practice. Wallenberg himself believed that he was actually carrying out a humanitarian mission on behalf of American management for war refugees. Communication with the Americans was carried out, however, through Stockholm.

With such powers, the newly appointed First Secretary of the Swedish Legation arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944. It is possible that on the way his train passed a train of closed boxcars carrying the last batch of Hungarian Jews from the provinces to Auschwitz. Wallenberg had yet to figure out the intricacies of the Hungarian deportation.

Eichmann's Hungarian Plan

The Nazi master of mass deportations, Adolf Eichmann, was also very fond of Budapest. He set up his headquarters at the Majestic Hotel and developed an extremely vigorous activity. With the forces of the Hungarian gendarmes, he ensured the detention of Jews in all the provincial cities and villages of Hungary, methodically moving from east to west. The operation went off without a hitch - from May 14 to July 8, 148 trains with 437.5 thousand Hungarian Jews left for Auschwitz. It remained only to “liquidate” the capital.

The Budapest Jews - and there were more than 200 thousand of them in the city by that time, were supposed to be captured within a day. For the sake of this, huge forces of the local gendarmerie were gathered in the capital. The operation was scheduled for the end of July. If Eichmann's plan had come to fruition, Wallenberg would have had absolutely nothing to do in Budapest.

But then regent Miklós Horthy intervened. He hoped for a separate peace with the Allies, and ordered an end to the deportations. Thousands of provincial gendarmes brought to Budapest had to be sent home. But Eichmann was furious and began to complain to Berlin, where, however, he did not find much support, because everyone there was busy with the consequences of the assassination attempt on Hitler, which broke at the end of June.

Eichmann had to content himself with petty confrontations with the local Jewish committee. On July 14, in defiance of Horthy's order to stop the deportations, Eichmann sent an SS detachment to the internment camp at Kishtarch, where 1500 well-known and wealthy Jews were being held. All were loaded into wagons and sent to the east. Upon learning of this, the members of the Jewish Committee contacted Horthy's son, also Miklos, who informed his father about the incident. Horthy immediately gave the order to return the composition back, which was done. A few days later, angry Eichmann summoned the entire Jewish committee to his office and kept him in his waiting room all day. During this time, the SS men again arrived in Kishtarcha, disarmed the Hungarian guards and nevertheless sent all the internees to Auschwitz. By the time the members of the Jewish committee learned of this, the train had crossed the Hungarian border. This episode gives a good idea of ​​what followed next.

Wallenberg plan

Having dealt with what was happening in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg was filled with optimism. The Hungarians firmly resisted German plans on deportation, the Germans were afraid to put pressure on them, fearing the loss of oil supplies from the Hungarian province of Zala (after the loss of Romania as an ally, this was important). Rumors circulated around town that Horthy was concluding separate peace with allies. Eichmann was recalled from Budapest altogether. On October 15, 1944, the regent's address was read over the radio, in which the people of Hungary were informed that the war was over for them.

But then the worst began. A military coup took place in the country with the support of German troops. The Nazi Arrow Cross movement led by Ferenc Salashi (they are also called “nilashists” - from the Hungarian word for “arrow”) was put at the head of the country, the son of Miklós Horthy was kidnapped, and he, having learned about it, immediately surrendered to the Germans. The next day, Eichmann reappeared in Budapest.

Wallenberg did not sit idle either. First, he rented about thirty houses in Budapest, placed signs on them like "Swedish Library" or "Swedish Cultural Center" and declared these areas extraterritorial. The Jews of Budapest hid there all the coming winter. Secondly, he handed out the so-called "Swedish protection passports", which claimed that their holders were under the protection of a neutral power. These papers had no legal force, but Wallenberg managed to convince (through his wife) the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Gabor Kemeny, that the Hungarian authorities should recognize these papers. It was necessary to act mainly by blackmail: the victory of the allies was obvious to everyone, including Kemeny, and Wallenberg - if he agreed - promised to stand up for him before the allies in the future. Thirdly, Wallenberg involved about 350 people in his work. One of Wallenberg's active aides was Laszlo Samoshi, a resourceful young Jewish activist with an Aryan appearance who lived in Budapest and moved around the city with a false identity. Soon he will "hire" himself to work in the Spanish embassy, ​​which will also, quite shamelessly, begin to issue Spanish protective passports, forge Swedish ones and take more and more people under its protection.

Wallenberg was determined to save everyone that could be saved.

Wallenberg against everyone, eyewitnesses say

“On the very first night after the putsch,” Wallenberg reported to the Swedish Foreign Ministry, “there were numerous pogroms and arrests, and from one hundred to two hundred people were killed. The Nilashists immediately forcibly evicted the tenants of several Jewish houses. Several hundred are missing." From that moment the nightmare began.

The new Hungarian authorities created a ghetto in the Jewish district of Pest, where they ordered the entire Jewish population to move. Residents of "Swedish houses" could not follow this instruction. However, neither in the ghetto nor in the “Swedish houses” could people feel safe: drunken nilashists burst in here and there, whenever they pleased, and fired until everything that was in their field of vision stopped moving. The police organized constant raids on the streets, and the Jews caught in this way were led to the Danube, handcuffed in threes and one was killed. The dead man fell, dragging the other two with him to the Danube. In terms of such entertainment, the Nilashists were very enterprising.

The Soviet army continued to advance on Budapest, the Nazis understood that they had little time. There were two things they could still do: organize Jewish "death marches" from Budapest to the west, as was the case with the death camps in Poland, and exterminate the inhabitants of the Pest ghetto. Wallenberg's task was to prevent the implementation of these plans.

On November 8, the first "death marches" began to depart from Budapest, 120 miles long - to the Austrian border at Hedeshhalom. Wallenberg, his colleague Per Anger and other assistants cruised along the road between Budapest and Hedeshhalom, bringing food, medicine and warm clothes to the columns. Wallenberg had with him a notebook with a list of those who had Swedish passports, and fresh forms, which were filled out and issued on the spot.

This period is described in the memoirs of Per Anger, published in 1979, after his resignation from the post of Swedish ambassador in Ottawa:

“On one of the first days of December 1944, Wallenberg and I drove by car along the road along which the Jews were being led. We passed groups of unfortunates who looked more like the dead than the living. At Hedeshhalom, we saw how those who had already arrived were handed over to a team of SS men led by Eichmann, who counted people by their heads, as if they were cattle: “Four hundred and eighty-nine is good!” The Hungarian officer received a receipt from him confirming that he was all right. By this time, we had already managed to save about a hundred people. Some had Swedish passports, others we bluffed out. Wallenberg did not give up and made several more trips along this road, as a result of which he returned some more Jews to Budapest.

One of those saved in this way, Zvi Eres, recalls:

“As we approached Hedeshhalom, we saw two men standing at the edge of the road. One of them, wearing a long leather coat and fur hat, said that he was an employee of the Swedish embassy and asked if we had Swedish passports. If we don’t have them, he continued, then probably only because they were taken from us and thrown away by the Nilashists? By this time, we were almost falling from fatigue, but nevertheless we caught his hint and admitted that this was exactly what happened to us, although in fact none of us had a Swedish security passport. He wrote down our names, adding them to his list, and we moved on. At the station we saw Wallenberg again, he was standing with several of his assistants, as I later learned, members of the Zionist youth movement, posing as representatives of the Red Cross, as well as several representatives of the papal nunciate. Opposite was a group of Hungarian officers and Germans in SS uniforms. Wallenberg waved the list, apparently demanding that everyone named on it be released. The conversation was in raised tones in German and from time to time turned into a shout. They were too far away and I didn't hear what in question, but, obviously, the dispute between them was heated. In the end, to our amazement, Wallenberg got his way, and about 280 or 300 of us were allowed to go back to Budapest.”

According to Wallenberg's own calculations, during the death marches he saved about two thousand people. But it was not only the death marches that had to be watched. One of Wallenberg's drivers, a member of the Jewish underground, Sandor Ardai, recalls how he drove Wallenberg to the Jozsefváros station, from where, as he learned, the train to Auschwitz departed. The SS officer ordered Wallenberg to leave, but that order was ignored. Ardai says further:

“He climbed onto the roof of the car and began handing out passports through the doors that were not yet closed. Wallenberg ignored the orders of the Germans to go down. Then the nilashists started shooting and yelling at him to get away. He paid no attention to these threats either, and continued handing out passports to the hands reaching out to him. As soon as Wallenberg handed out all the passports he had, he ordered those who had Swedish passports to get off the train to the cars parked nearby, painted in the national colors of the Swedish flag. I don’t remember exactly how many people he saved from that train, but there must have been at least a few dozen of them - the Germans and Nilashists were so amazed at his behavior that they did not interfere with him!

According to eyewitnesses, in the case of the Germans, Wallenberg played on a sense of discipline, patiently explaining that by carrying out the order given to them, they were violating an even higher order, and sometimes simply bluffed, slipping documents in Hungarian to the Germans, knowing full well that they did not have anything there. understand. In the case of the Hungarians, Wallenberg pressed on patriotism, talking about a special treaty between "the kingdoms of Sweden and Hungary."

Among the Jews, Wallenberg’s work managed to become an occasion for jokes: “Sometimes, when a typical orthodox Jew in a hat, with a beard and sidelocks passed by, we said to each other: “Look, there’s another Swede coming,” recalled Edith saved by Wallenberg Ernster.

The Nazi plans to destroy the Pest ghetto were thwarted mainly by the Soviet offensive. Eichmann planned to personally shoot the members of the Jewish Committee, and then leave the inhabitants of the ghetto at the mercy of drunken nilashists. But it did not work out - immediately on the night before the implementation of these plans, Eichmann was forced to leave his beloved Budapest. When the city was liberated, 120,000 Hungarian Jews survived. It is impossible to establish what proportion of them Wallenberg saved. But this is the largest Jewish community left in Europe after the war.

No one else saw Wallenberg

On January 17, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg and his chauffeur Langfelder left accompanied by Soviet soldiers from Budapest to Debrecen, where the headquarters was located Soviet leadership. None of his former acquaintances saw him on the loose again.

It is now considered indisputable that Wallenberg was transferred to Moscow, where he was held first in the Lefortovo and then in the Lubyanka prison. How exactly he was killed (presumably it happened in 1947) is still not known. The death certificate, issued by Moscow to the Swedish government in 1956, names, as archival research has shown, the wrong date of death.

Wallenberg's family continued to believe that he was alive and somewhere in a Soviet prison - especially since the testimonies of people who allegedly met Wallenberg in different Soviet dungeons there was no shortage. As in amazing rescue stories: one Hungarian prisoner of war was found in the vastness of Russian psychiatric hospitals already in 2000 - for decades the staff took his Hungarian speech for the delirium of a madman.

It is now clear that Wallenberg was indeed assassinated in 1947. Only one mystery remains: no one can understand why the FSB refuses to disclose the relevant documents. “They are hiding something very persistently,” says historian Vadim Birshtein, who dealt with the fate of Raoul Wallenberg in the 1990s, in an interview with Dmitry Volchek. Hopes that the Wallenberg family and the tens of thousands of people he saved and their descendants will someday know the truth are dwindling.

how the then living Simon Wiesenthal tells about the history of the search for Wallenberg in 1986.

Raoul Gustav Wallenberg(Swedish Raoul Gustav Wallenberg, August 4, 1912, Stockholm - disappeared in July 1947, formally the legal date of death by the Swedish tax authorities is set as July 31, 1952, Lubyanka prison, Moscow) - Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in period of the Holocaust. After the occupation of Budapest by the Soviet army, he was detained by SMERSH and secretly transferred to Moscow. Presumably died in a Soviet prison in July 1947. On October 31, 2016, Wallenberg was officially declared dead by Sweden.

Biography [ | ]

Youth [ | ]

Raoul Wallenberg was born on 4 August 1912 in Kappsta, commune of Lidingö, near Stockholm, Sweden. Wallenberg's parents married shortly before his birth. Father - Raoul Oskar Wallenberg, served as an officer in the Swedish Navy, he died of cancer, three months before the birth of his son. Mother - Mai Vising Wallenberg, daughter of a professor of neurology Pera Visinga .

Raoul Wallenberg in his youth

On his father's side, he belonged to the well-known Wallenberg family in Sweden, from which many famous Swedish diplomats and financiers came. His grandfather - Gustav Wallenberg, was a diplomat, at the time of Raul's birth he worked as the Swedish ambassador to Japan.

On his mother's side, Wallenberg was a descendant of an early representative, a Jew named Bendix, who became a goldsmith and converted to Lutheranism.

In 1918 his mother remarried, to Fredrik von Dardel, who was then working for the Swedish Ministry of Health. In this marriage, two children were born - Nina and Guy von Dardel (English) who later became a nuclear physicist. Raul was also lucky with his stepfather, who treated him like his own children, loved him very much and replaced his father who died early.

Raoul Wallenberg was raised by his grandfather. First, he sent his grandson to military courses, and then sent to France to study French. Before being sent to France, Wallenberg already knew Russian, German and English. As a teenager, Wallenberg became interested in architecture, so in 1931 he went to study architecture in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan. He graduated from the university with honors, for which he was awarded a medal.

Work in business[ | ]

Despite the wealth and position of his family in Sweden, in 1933 he went to Chicago, where he worked in the Swedish pavilion of the Chicago World's Fair. (English). In the summer of 1934 he visited his relatives in Mexico.

In 1935, Wallenberg returned to Stockholm, put his swimming pool design in a competition and took second place. Since before leaving for the USA he promised his grandfather, who dreamed of seeing his grandson a successful banker, to do business, Wallenberg goes to Cape Town (South Africa). Here he goes to work in the company of a familiar grandfather. Raoul was selling Construction Materials, on the business of the company, he traveled all over the country. Before leaving, he received a brilliant reference from the employer.

In 1936, Wallenberg visited his grandfather in Turkey, who served as the Swedish ambassador to that country. Gustav Wallenberg finds his grandson new job in the "Dutch Bank" in the territory of Mandatory Palestine, in the city of Haifa. In Haifa, he meets young Jews who have fled Nazi Germany. This meeting made a deep impression on him. John Birman, a researcher who wrote a book about Wallenberg, notes that this could be due to Raoul's awareness of involvement in the Jewish people.

Wallenberg was proud of belonging to the Jews, he himself spoke of himself at that time as follows: "A man like me, half Wallenberg and half Jew, cannot be broken" .

In 1937, his grandfather Gustav died. Now Raul could do what he wanted. He could not become an architect due to the fact that an American diploma required confirmation to work in Sweden, and Wallenberg did not want to go back to study, he believed that it was already too late to study at twenty-five. In addition, due to the "Great Depression", little was built in Sweden. Then he decided to go into business by making a deal with a German Jew who invented the new kind zippers. The enterprise failed, after which Raul turned to his uncle Jacob for help. Jacob suggested that he develop a project that he was going to use on the territory of his plot of land. Due to the outbreak of the war, all construction in the country was suspended, Raul was again left idle.

Uncle Jakob got him a job with the Central European Trading Company, owned by the Hungarian Jew Kalman Lauer. Eight months later, Wallenberg became Lauer's partner, one of the directors of the company. During this period, he traveled a lot around Europe, and lived in Stockholm, at the Larkstad Hotel, had many friends and acquaintances. Adhering to liberal and general humanistic views, Raoul Wallenberg was horrified by the Nazi order in Europe, but could not change anything. Despite the excellent performance of work duties, he did not like his work.

Actress Viveka Lindfursh recalled that one evening Wallenberg told her about what was happening in Europe. With vehemence, he recounted to her how the Nazis brutally persecuted the Jews.

Diplomatic Service[ | ]

In July 1944, Wallenberg was appointed first secretary of the Swedish legation in Budapest. Using his diplomatic status, he issued Swedish "protective passports" to many Jews, giving the holders the status of Swedish citizens awaiting repatriation. The former director of the Special Archive of the USSR claims that Soviet intelligence, with the help of a recruited agent, was spying on Wallenberg in Budapest, a dossier he discovered in 1991 in the main archive of the KGB.

He also succeeded in persuading some German generals, through threats of punishment for war crimes, to disobey Hitler's orders to take Jews to the death camps. In this way he prevented the destruction of the Budapest ghetto in last days before the advance of the Red Army. If this version is correct, then Wallenberg managed to save at least 100,000 Hungarian Jews. In the Budapest ghetto alone, at the time of the arrival of Soviet troops, there were 97,000 Jews. In total, out of 800,000 Jews who lived in Hungary before the war, 204,000 survived. Many of them owe their salvation to Raoul Wallenberg.

There are several versions later life Wallenberg. After the occupation of Budapest by Soviet troops on January 13, 1945, he, along with his driver V. Langfelder, was detained by a Soviet patrol in the building of the International Red Cross (according to another version, he himself came to the location of the 151st Infantry Division and asked to meet with Soviet command; according to the third version, he was arrested by the NKVD in his apartment). After that, he was sent to the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front R. Ya. Malinovsky, to whom he intended to tell something. But on the way, he was again detained and arrested by officers military counterintelligence Smersh. According to another version, after being arrested at Wallenberg's apartment, he was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet troops.

Professor Bengt Jangfeldt claims that in Wallenberg's car, when he was arrested, a lot of gold and jewelry were found, which were entrusted to him by the Jews. According to Youngfeldt, this could be the reason for the arrest, since the Soviet authorities could believe that this was an attempt to export Nazi gold. Yangfeldt believes that all these valuables were stolen by the Soviet counterintelligence, since they were not registered as Wallenberg's property at the time of his arrest. In addition, he points out that in Budapest Soviet troops then ransacked the Swedish embassy.

On March 8, 1945, the Budapest Radio Kossuth, which was under Soviet control, reported that Raoul Wallenberg had died during street fighting in Budapest.

Imprisoned in the USSR[ | ]

It is considered proven that Wallenberg was taken from Budapest to Moscow, where he was kept in the Lubyanka prison. There are testimonies from German prisoners who were in prison at the time, in which they state that they communicated with Wallenberg via the prison telegraph until 1947. After, according to them, Raul was sent somewhere.

Since Wallenberg's disappearance, Sweden has made several inquiries about his whereabouts, but Soviet side She stated that she did not have such information. And in August 1947, A. Ya. Vyshinsky officially announced that there was no Wallenberg in the USSR and that the Soviet authorities knew nothing about him. But in February 1957, the Soviet side admitted that Wallenberg had been arrested and taken to Moscow, where he died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947. P. A. Sudoplatov in his memoirs indicates that the senior MGB officer Daniil Grigorievich Kopelyansky was engaged in interrogations [ ], subsequently dismissed from the authorities in connection with suspicions of Zionism [ ] .

A note by A. Ya. Vyshinsky (No. 312-B dated May 14, 1947) to V. M. Molotov was found in the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in which the following consideration is expressed: “Since the Wallenberg case continues to remain motionless to this day, I ask you oblige comrade. Abakumov to submit a statement on the merits of the case and proposals for its liquidation. On May 18, 1947, V. M. Molotov wrote a resolution on this document: “Comrade. Abakumov. Please report to me." On July 7, 1947, A. Ya. Vyshinsky sent a letter to V. S. Abakumov, in which he asked for an answer in order to prepare a response to the next appeal from the Swedish side. A letter from Abakumov addressed to Molotov dated July 17, 1947 was registered in the document registration logs of the secretariats of the USSR Ministry of State Security and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it was not found in the archives.

After the collapse of the USSR[ | ]

Wallenberg and Langfelder in January 1945, being employees of the Swedish mission in Budapest, and Wallenberg, in addition, having the diplomatic immunity of a neutral country that did not fight against the USSR, were detained and arrested under the guise of prisoners of war and kept long time until their death in Soviet prisons, being suspected of spying for foreign intelligence services.

The conclusion of the Prosecutor General's Office was criticized. Historian and journalist Vladimir Abarinov believes that the prosecutor's office could not have stated what exactly Wallenberg and his driver were suspected of, indicate the status in which they were held in prison, and draw conclusions about the groundlessness of repression if they had not actually discovered the case materials.

In April 2010, American historians S. Berger and V. Birshtein suggested that the version of the death of R. Wallenberg on July 17, 1947 was false. While working in the Central Archive of the FSB, they found out that on July 23, 1947, the head of the 4th department of the 3rd main department of the USSR Ministry of State Security (military counterintelligence) Sergei Kartashov interrogated a certain “prisoner number 7” for 16 hours, as well as Wilmos Langfelder and Shandor Katona. Langfelder was Wallenberg's chauffeur. It is assumed that "prisoner number 7" was most likely Raoul Wallenberg.

However, the diaries of I. A. Serov, discovered in 2016, also contain a statement about the death of Wallenberg in 1947. According to his memoirs, the arrested Abakumov admitted during interrogation that the order to liquidate Wallenberg came from Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

September 22, 2016 coordinator of the international research group RWI-70 (Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative-70) Suzanne Berger reported that Wallenberg's relatives and researchers had approached the FSB with a request to provide them with previously unavailable documents, including the protocols of Abakumov's interrogations, as well as the originals of a number of documents (which were previously provided in a partially redacted form). The FSB refused the request, after which the claim of Wallenberg's relatives against the FSB in the Meshchansky Court of Moscow was also dismissed on September 18, 2017.

Memory of Wallenberg[ | ]

Wallenberg is one of the most famous people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. One of his biographers Paul Levin wrote:

Raoul Wallenberg was one of a relatively small number of Europeans of the Christian denomination who, in 1933-1945. really tried to come to the aid of Jewish brethren.

named after him[ | ]

In culture [ | ]

Raoul Wallenberg became the character of several films. In 1985, the TV movie Wallenberg: A Hero's Story was filmed, the main role was played by Richard Chamberlain. The director made another film about Wallenberg - “ Good evening, Mr. Wallenberg ”(Eng. Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg), which was released in 1990, starring Stellan Skarsgård.

Also, several documentaries were made about the fate of Wallenberg. One of them was filmed in 1983 David Harel, he received the name "Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive" (Eng. Raoul Wallenberg Buried Alive). Another film - Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (eng. Wallenberg: A Hero's Story) was filmed in 1985 by Lamont Johnson. In addition, the films Raoul Wallenberg: Between the Lines (eng. Raoul Wallenberg: Between the Lines) - Karin Altman, 1986 and "Searching for Wallenberg" (eng. Searching for Wallenberg) - Robert L. Kimmel, 2001 . In 2011 director Grigory Ilugdin filmed from a script by Sergei Barabanov documentary"Solo for Lone Owls".

Family [ | ]

R. Wallenberg's mother Maj von Dardel and stepfather Fredrik von Dardel committed suicide in 1979 out of desperation caused by the reluctance of the Soviet authorities to reveal the circumstances of Raul's death.

Notes [ | ]

Notes Footnotes

1. Sweden declares Raoul Wallenberg dead 71 years after disappearance(English) . The Guardian (31 October 2016). Retrieved May 13, 2018.
2. Orjan Magnusson. Raoul Wallenberg har dodforklarats(Swedish). SVT Nyheter (October 31, 2016). Retrieved November 14, 2016.
3. Decision of the Prosecutor General's Office on Raoul Wallenberg (indefinite) . Interfax (24.12.2000). Retrieved August 4, 2012. Archived from the original on August 5, 2012.
4. "Sweden declares Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg officially dead"
5. Swedish diplomat Wallenberg officially declared dead (indefinite) . interfax.ru (October 31, 2016). Retrieved November 1, 2016.
6. , with. 13-19.
7. Vladimir Isachenkov. Archivist questions Kremlin's version of Wallenberg case (indefinite) . InoSMI (The Associated Press) (01/27/2012). Retrieved May 11, 2013. Archived from the original on May 13, 2013.
8. wallenberg hade bilen full av guld (indefinite) . Svenska Dagbladet. Archived from the original on August 17, 2012.
9. Report on the activities of the Russian-Swedish working group to clarify the fate of Raoul Wallenberg (1991-2000) (indefinite) . Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Retrieved July 19, 2014.

The memory of the Swedish after Raoul Wallenberg (1912-1947) is immortalized in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Monuments to him stand in many parts of the world: Stockholm, Moscow, New York, Budapest, Tel Aviv, etc. On account of Wallenberg, tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews saved during the Holocaust. With such merits, traces of the diplomat are lost somewhere in the dungeons of the KGB, and the case against him is kept in the archives of this organization. Exist different versions about why Raoul Wallenberg was arrested in 1945 and how he could end his days.

Activities in Hungary

In July 1944, Wallenberg came to Hungary as secretary of the Swedish legation. By this time, 400,000 Jews had already been exterminated in the country. The Germans planned to liquidate another 200 thousand living in the Hungarian capital. The operation was led by Adolf Eichmann. Wallenberg was not a professional diplomat, but he could use his position to save persecuted Jews.

He gave them blue and yellow "protective passports" with the coat of arms of Sweden on the cover. They could not be real passports of the Kingdom of Sweden, but they made an impression on the Germans. The so-called "Swedish houses" were also opened, in which Hungarian Jews were under the patronage of Sweden. Thanks to all this activity launched by Wallenberg, many tens of thousands of representatives of the nation being destroyed by the Nazis were saved.

Very often, Wallenberg acted at his own risk, without any authority to do so. So he protected the Jewish ghetto from an explosion and saved more than 100 thousand people in early 1945, threatening the commander of the operation, General Schmidthuber, with a court after the war. Wallenberg had no more arguments. Nevertheless, it worked.

Arrest of Wallenberg

The arrival of Soviet troops in Budapest was greeted with jubilation by Hungarian Jews. They did not even know what fate awaited their savior Wallenberg. He was arrested on January 13th. After that, traces of him are lost. On March 8 of the same year, Budapest radio announced that a Swedish diplomat had died in battle during the Soviet offensive.

There are three versions of how the arrest could have happened. According to one of them, Raul was detained by the Red Cross patrol, and after that by the Soviet counterintelligence. According to the second, he voluntarily came to the Soviet rifle division and demanded a meeting with its commander. According to the third version, SMERSH agents arrested the Swedish diplomat right at his home, in an apartment in Budapest.

The further fate of the savior of the Jews

According to some reports, a lot of gold was found in Wallenberg's car, entrusted to him by the Jews during the occupation of Budapest. These values ​​were not registered anywhere. After the arrest of the ambassador, they disappeared. Most likely, they "settled" in the pockets of all the same counterintelligence employees.

Immediately after the war, Sweden made many inquiries to the USSR regarding the whereabouts of its subject. She was told that there was no such thing on the territory of the Land of Soviets. Only 10 years later, Sweden received a different answer: Wallenberg was arrested as a spy and transferred to Moscow. He died on July 17, 1947, allegedly from a heart attack.

Reasons for arrest

The arrest warrant signed by Bulganin N.A. does not say anything about the reasons why Raul was arrested in 1945. Everything was done with the secrecy present in SMERSH. Later it was proved that the Swedish diplomat ended up in the Lubyanka prison after that. Bulganin reported directly to Stalin and acted only in agreement with him.

According to the discovered documents, Wallenberg's activities in Budapest were monitored during the war years. It seemed suspicious to the Soviet counterintelligence that Sweden was issuing those same “security passports” to various “unverified persons”. SMERSH suspected that in this way anti-Soviet spies were trying to hide from reprisals.

Swedish businessman and diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912 in one of richest families Sweden. He studied at the University of Michigan (USA), where he received a diploma in architecture, since 1936 he has been doing business in Haifa (Palestine). Returned to Sweden in 1939, became a partner in Kalman Lauer's Hungarian export-import firm. In the summer of 1944, with the passport of a Swedish diplomat (first secretary of the Swedish mission), Wallenberg went to Budapest, where German troops were introduced in March 1944. Using his diplomatic status, Wallenberg saved, according to various sources, from 20 to 100 thousand Jews. He gave them Swedish passports, placed them in houses specially purchased by him, which he declared Swedish property protected by international law, bribed German and Hungarian officials, promising large deliveries in exchange for the lives of Jews.

On January 13, 1945, Wallenberg was detained by a Soviet patrol in the building of the International Red Cross in Budapest (according to another version, he himself came to the location of the 151st rifle division and asked to meet with the Soviet command, according to the third version - he was arrested at his apartment). After the trial, he was sent under guard to Debrecen to meet with the commander of the Second Ukrainian front Rodion Malinovsky, to whom he intended to make some kind of proposal or to inform something. On the way, he was again detained and arrested by military counterintelligence agencies (according to another version, after being arrested at the apartment, he was sent to the headquarters of a group of Soviet troops).

On March 8, 1945, in Budapest, the Soviet-controlled Radio Kossuth reported that Raoul Wallenberg had died during street fighting in Budapest.

It is believed that Wallenberg was transferred from Budapest to Moscow, where he was kept in a prison on Lubyanka. There are testimonies from German prisoners who were in prison at the time, in which they state that they communicated with Wallenberg via the "prison telegraph" until 1947. After, according to them, Raul was sent somewhere.

After a series of inquiries from Sweden in January 1947, the USSR Foreign Ministry informed the Swedish ambassador in Moscow that the search had not yielded any results, and in August 1947 it was officially announced that Wallenberg was not in the USSR and the Soviet authorities knew nothing about him.

In 1957, the Soviet government officially recognized the fact of Wallenberg's arrest and stay in the USSR after the war. In the "Gromyko memorandum" it was stated that the diplomat died in the internal prison of the USSR Ministry of State Security on July 17, 1947 from a myocardial infarction.

In 1991, a joint Russian-Swedish working group, whose task was to identify documents about Raoul Wallenberg. The group ended work in 2001. As a result of work Russian part The group concluded that, firstly, all circumstantial evidence confirms that Raoul Wallenberg died or most likely died on July 17, 1947. Secondly, the responsibility for the death of Raoul Wallenberg lies with the then top state leadership of the USSR, since no other authority at that time could decide the fate of the Swedish diplomat, a representative of a neutral state, a member of the "House of Wallenberg", well known both abroad and in the Soviet Union. leadership.

In December 2000, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate Raoul Wallenberg. The Prosecutor General's Office ruled that he was repressed by the Soviet authorities for political reasons.

In September 2007, the leadership of the FSB in relation to Wallenberg was sent to Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, which became the first state contribution to the exposition of the Museum of Tolerance being created.

Around the fate of Wallenberg lined up a lot of all kinds of versions. According to some versions, Wallenberg may have been alive as early as 1989 and was kept in prisons (where he was allegedly seen in 1951, 1959 and 1975) and psychiatric hospitals in the USSR (in particular, in the Moscow region). There is also an assumption that in Moscow they tried to recruit him, but were refused and therefore "liquidated" by poisoning him with poison. There is a hypothesis that they tried to exchange Wallenberg for Soviet defectors. The Soviet side at one time spread information that Wallenberg was German agent who smuggled German intelligence officers abroad under the guise of Jews, later - that he was an American spy associated with the international Zionist center. There is a version that Wallenberg, on the instructions of the Americans, was specially involved in the export of Hungarian Jewish scientists involved in the development of nuclear weapons. One of the versions says that in exchange for the Jews, Wallenberg supplied weapons and other military products to Germany, which was the reason that the Swedish embassy was not persistent enough in its requests for the release of Wallenberg, including at a meeting with Stalin in 1946.

The story of Raoul Wallenberg's feat inspired the whole world and became a living reminder of the need for an unceasing fight against fascism and anti-Semitism. For services to humanity, Wallenberg was posthumously awarded the title of honorary citizen of the United States, Hungary, Canada, Israel and Australia. Today, the diplomat is one of the most famous Swedes, after whom the streets and squares of many cities of the world are named and about three dozen monuments are installed.

On July 26, 2012, Wallenberg was awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his achievements and heroic actions during the Holocaust.

The search for new evidence and archival documents in the case of Raoul Wallenberg continues to this day. September 5, 2013 that US President Barack Obama promised to ask the Russian authorities for help in investigating the disappearance of a diplomat in 1945.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Raul Wallenberg. The Lost Hero Alander Doug Sebastian

WHO IS RAUL WALLENBERG?

WHO IS RAUL WALLENBERG?

Herr Wallenberg, children! Children! Let's go soon!

A woman who broke into the Swedish embassy in Budapest collapsed on the floor, exhausted. Raoul Wallenberg quickly left the table and bent over her.

What happened? - he asked.

Children! she moaned through her tears. - The Nazis took the children!

Raul jumped up and quickly ran out of the office. The people waiting in the hallway pressed closer together to let him pass.

Vilmosh! Raul called to the driver. - To Tatra street, to orphanage! Quicker!

Vilmos Langfelder pressed the gas with all his strength, the car struck the bottom of the asphalt and quickly disappeared into the darkness. A few minutes later they stopped at house number 15 on Tatra Street. In this building, Raoul Wallenberg organized an orphanage for Jewish orphans. He hung a Swedish flag at the front door so that the Germans and the Hungarian Nazis would know that the house was under the protection of the Swedish embassy.

Now the flag, torn to shreds, lay on the ground. Weeping people stood on the dark sidewalk.

What happened here? shouted Wallenberg.

Nilashists, - explained the director of the shelter. - Came here on a truck half an hour ago - about ten people - smashed the door with axes, grabbed the children and threw everyone out into the street.

"Nilashists" ("crossed arrows") - the so-called Hungarian Nazis: on the sleeve they wore a bandage with the image of two crossed arrows, reminiscent of the German swastika.

There were tears in the director's eyes.

One teacher tried to stop them - she was shot right in the children's bedroom.

An elderly woman approached Raul.

I was standing on the street,” she began to say, “and I saw how they threw the children into the truck. The kids seemed to be numb, those who screamed, the nilashists hit on the heads with butts to silence them. Some were killed on the spot. Such horror!

The woman covered her face with her hands. Raoul was trembling, as if in a fever. He entered the house. It was quiet and empty inside, toys and clothes scattered everywhere. Not a single child remained in the orphanage.

Where were they taken? - he asked.

Down to the Danube ... and thrown into the river, - the young woman whispered barely audibly. - They drowned all the children.

Raoul stared at the floor. At his feet lay a naked doll with its head torn off. He knelt down and covered his face with his hands: he no longer had the strength to hold back the tears. After a while he got up. It seemed like an eternity had passed. Wallenberg silently looked at those who stood nearby. I saw their pleading, feverish looks. Felt their fear.

He got out and got into the car.

Home? Langfelder asked.

No, back to the embassy! Raoul replied. - We still have a lot to do. This is just the beginning.

Who was he, Raoul Wallenberg?

What did he, a Swedish subject, do in 1944 in Budapest, at the height of the war?

Why was he almost the only one who fought the Nazis to save the Jews?

How did he dare?

Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912. He bore the name of his father, whom he had never seen. Raul's mother Mai was widowed when she was not yet twenty-two years old: her husband died of cancer a few months after their marriage. Mai gave birth to a child, when she first saw her little son, she burst into tears - both from joy and from grief.

Raul spent his childhood with his mother and grandmother in house number 9 on Linnegatan Street, not far from Humlegorden Park in Stockholm.

When he was four years old, he began to ask why he did not have a dad, like other children. Sometimes he cried, thinking about how sad it was.

We won’t be sad anyway,” he said after a minute, wiping away his tears.

On walks, he collected flowers to put in a vase in front of a photograph of his father.

But Raul had a grandfather. He often wrote to his grandson from China and Japan. It was wonderful: Raul sat on his mother's lap, and she read aloud to him aloud - each letter twice. At such moments, the boy thought that he still had a dad.

Raoul Wallenberg was the great-grandson of Andre Oscar Wallenberg, a major financier, founder of the Stockholm Private Bank, which still exists today. The bank played a huge role in the period when Sweden was becoming an industrial country.

André Oskar Wallenberg had twenty children. But subsequently, only two sons - Knut, and then his half-brother Markus Wallenberg - were engaged in banking. Markus' older brother, Gustav, chose a career as a diplomat. He was the Swedish ambassador first to Japan and China and then to Turkey.

Gustav Wallenberg set himself the goal of opening these countries to Swedish trade. He was convinced that in the future Asia would become the world's largest market and dreamed of establishing his own bank, which would be called the "East Bank". Gustav counted strongly on Marcus's help, but Marcus Wallenberg was a very cautious man: he was more willing to invest in Swedish industry than in trade with distant countries.

Gustav's disillusionment was reflected in his attitude towards his homeland - and in his plans for a grandson, whom he had to take care of.

Raul must receive an upbringing and education that will open his way to Big world, - explained Gustav Wallenberg. - There is nowhere to turn around in Sweden.

At that time, a trip from Sweden to Japan took several months. Grandfather was able to come to visit only on Easter 1916. Raul was impatient to see his grandfather, because he had long dreamed of meeting him.

Look, it's grandpa! he shouted to his mother, showing a photograph in the weekly newspaper.

What are you, it's not him, - May laughed. - This is our king.

But he looks so much like a grandfather! - Raoul stubbornly.

Yes, it’s true, my mother agreed. - The king also has a beard and a uniform - just like grandfather. But wait, grandfather will come, and you will see for yourself that he is completely different.

When grandfather Gustav finally arrived, Raul was shocked. Grandpa really didn't look like anyone else! The boy followed on the heels of his grandfather. He liked to sit on his lap, play with his pocket watch chain, listen to his stories, or even just the sound of his voice.

Raul decided to show his grandfather his favorite game. He took out a box with a designer and began to assemble a house from wooden cubes. Raul liked to watch the builders, he often asked them about what they were doing. So he knew exactly how to build!

Grandfather watched his grandson with interest. However, when Raul began to attach a cardboard roof to the house, Gustav stopped the boy:

Houses must be strong, Raul, otherwise the wind will destroy them. The roof must also be made of wood.

No, the roof will hold on like that, - Raul stubbornly.

The house really turned out to be a feast for the eyes, Raul was pleased. But grandfather decided to teach his grandson a lesson, who did not want to listen to his advice. To teach him a lesson, he slightly raised himself in his chair and blew hard on the house - the roof flew off in an instant.

Look how easily the storm took the roof off! Gustav said.

The boy bit his lip. "Grandpa shouldn't see me cry," he thought.

Gustav Wallenberg began to look for something in the construction box, glancing at his grandson:

Now let's take these boards and build a new one.

Soon Raoul and grandfather were sitting on the floor together and rebuilding the house. In the end, a whole town turned out. Raoul hasn't had so much fun for a long time - and grandfather Gustav too.

Raul also liked to travel by train and tram. He especially liked to ride on the big and heavy Jurholm train, the route of which at that time ran from Engelbrektsgatan street and the Humlegården garden to the Royal Library.

For his birthday, Raul received money from his grandfather Gustav, as much as ten crowns in one bill.

Now you can ride as much as you want and see everything properly, - said grandfather. - It is useful to know the world.

Raul began to ride the Jurholm train more often. He was very proud of his first "travel" money and each time insisted that he would pay for the ticket himself.

Once, when Raul was already at school, his mother came to him.

I have important news for you,” she announced.

I'm getting married to Uncle Fredrik, Mai said. I wanted you to be the first to know about this.

It seemed to Raoul that the ground was slipping from under his feet. Mai looked at her son with concern. At that moment, he rushed to her and hugged her tightly.

Mother Mother! was all he managed to say.

Raoul wanted to show how much he loves his mother. And she hugged her son and did not let go for a long time. The boy felt neither joy nor sorrow, but he understood that his life would never be the same as before. Previously, he was the center of a small world, consisting of mom, grandmother and nannies. Now everything will be different.

Fredrik von Dardel was a good family friend. In 1918, when Mai and Fredrik got married, they moved to house number 6 on Tegnergatan Street. Soon Raul had a brother Guy and a sister Nina. But he himself was already too old to live in a nursery.

At school, Raul studied well, but he did not like mathematics. He was very sociable and his friends liked him. Almost every summer, grandfather sent Raoul abroad, so the boy was especially good at languages.

Grandfather often repeated that the whole world fits in a book. And one day Raul decided to find out everything about everything.

Why not?

Raoul took the first volume of the Scandinavian Family Directory. On the spine of a heavy book with an image of an owl on the cover was written: "A - Armati." The boy turned to the last page.

“Armati, Salvino, a Florentine, invented glasses at the end of the 13th century,” he read in a loud voice.

Wow, but I didn’t know, ”said May.

You see now! - Raoul was proud and pleased with himself. - Here you can learn about everything in the world. Just like Grandpa said.

The boy sat down in a large armchair. Time passed, the clock on the wall struck. Raul was so carried away by the world that opened before him that he eventually fell asleep with a book on his lap.

But before the volume, which told about the city of Istanbul, the capital of Turkey, where Raul's grandfather served as an ambassador, it was still far away. Grandfather promised his grandson that he would also be able to go there. Myself!

Mai woke her son up and took him to the bedroom. Raul immediately fell asleep again. He dreamed of the exciting adventures of the letter "A" in big city Istanbul.

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