The Wallenberg Mystery

By Andrei Sakharov

One of the items in the bag stolen from the dental clinic in Gorky was a letter about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II, then vanished when the Soviets occupied Budapest. Soviet authorities have maintained that Wallenberg died in prison in 1947 and the file of his case was destroyed. The latter assertion most assuredly is untrue: NKVD and KGB investigation files are stamped TO BE PRESERVED FOREVER; pages may be removed on instructions from the top, but a file is never completely eradicated.

At the Installation I learned how all this works from a KGB officer who'd had the job of sorting files. In every case, the first page of a file was retained. If a person had been executed, an affidavit that the death sentence had been carried out had to be included, along with the serial number of the pistol used.

Complete files of cases involving foreigners almost certainly were preserved. Diplomats should continue to press Soviet authorities to clear up the Wallenberg mystery.