The Other Side of the Wall

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swede with an international background. The son of a famous banking family, he had taken a degree at the University of Michigan. worked in Palestine, South Africa, and traveled extensively in the Balkans. In 1944, when the Nazi liquidation of Europe's Jews was at its peak, President Roosevelt's War Refugee Board asked Wallenberg to undertake a lifesaving mission to Hungary. As the third secretary of the Swedish legation, Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in a windbreaker and heavy skiing boots, carrying three knapsacks and a bedroll. He immediately set up a large office and began issuing protection passports to refugees. Working with the Swedish Red Cross, he distributed food and clothing, arranged for the evacuation of hundreds of children to Switzerland. Negotiating directly with the SS and the Hungarian authorities, he prevented the deportation of thousands of Jews. On more than one occasion he went down to the railroad station and, under the rifles of the SS, took refugees out of the boxcars. He organized an undercover group of young Jews, who raided Nazi prisons and released Jews held in custody.

Completely Unknown. In February 1945, Marshal Malinovsky's Second Ukrainian Army liberated Budapest. A couple of NKVD officers called on Wallenberg, who told his aides: "I am going to General Malinovsky's headquarters, whether as a guest or a prisoner I do not know yet." Malinovsky sent a cable to Moscow: "Swedish Diplomat Wallenberg will be taken care of by army authorities." The cable was retransmitted to Stockholm by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Dekanozov. A few weeks later, Madame Kollontay, Russian Ambassador to Sweden, notified Wallenberg's mother that her son was in good hands.

That was the last official news of Raoul Wallenberg. Eleven times the Swedish Foreign Office asked Moscow to explain, without answer. A petition addressed to Stalin, signed by 1,600,000 Swedes, went unacknowledged. In 1947 Moscow told Stockholm that Wallenberg was completely unknown to them.

In cell 152 in Moscow's Lefortovskaya Prison that year was Dr. Claudio de Mohr, adviser to the Italian legation in Sofia, who had been arrested and imprisoned when the Red army liberated Bulgaria. Released after six years behind bars, De Mohr returned to his native Italy. Last week, in a series of articles in Stockholm's daily Dagens Nyheter, De Mohr added fascinating details to the mystery of Raoul Wallenberg. One day Dr. de Mohr heard new prisoners being put into cell 151. Afraid they might be stool pigeons, he waited a few days, then he began tapping the wall between the two cells. He soon had an acknowledgment. In the time-honored code of all prisons (one tap: A; two taps: B; etc.), the men in cell 151 spelled out their names: ROEDEL, secretary of the German legation in Bucharest, and WALLENBERG, third secretary of the Swedish legation in Budapest.

For one year the tapping went on. Wallenberg told De Mohr the story of his arrest, made without witnesses, and without a charge. Then the Russians got wind of the tapping, punished De Mohr, and moved Wallenberg to another cell. The Italian does not know whether his old neighbor in cell 151 still lives.

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