EVENT DETAILS:
Raoul Wallenberg Day
Raoul Wallenberg is a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jewish people’s lives during the Second World War when he stablished a Swedish embassy in Budapest in 1944, at a time when 400,000 Jewish men, women and children had already been deported by the Nazis. It was under the safeguard of the embassy that he provided special protective certificates called Schutz-Passes for 4,000 Jewish people, which granted them immunity from deportation.
In six months, he helped save more than 100,000 Hungarian Jews from persecution, more than any individual, organization or government. When they were forced to take part in death marches in the fall of 1944, Wallenberg personally intervened on multiple occasions to rescue as many Jewish people as he could.
During this time, Raoul Wallenberg also helped establish hospitals, nurseries, a soup kitchen and more than 30 safe houses to conceal and protect Jewish people.
On January 17, 1945, Wallenberg was arrested by Soviet forces as they drove the Nazis out of Hungary. Although the circumstances and timing of his death are unknown, his mark on the world remains. For his courageous acts, Raoul Wallenberg was named Canada’s first-ever honorary citizen in 1985.