We were There - The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

It was there that I met that intense, energetic young man, Raoul Wallenberg. He listened to me, and
issued a Swedish “defense passport” not just for me but for the entire family, for Lici, and even for Lici’s
brother. My passport number was “196,” a very low number indeed. This was our passport to life.
Wallenberg brought Lici out from the camp, and he freed me from the forced labor where I had to toil
under the command of Adolph Eichmann, in Swabenburg of Budapest, Eichmann’s notorious
headquarters 26 . Thus, Wallenberg saved our lives, as he saved probably one hundred thousand other
people.
The number of Jews he actually saved is difficult to tell; some people who he saved one day may have
been murdered at a later time.
But Wallenberg daringly appeared at train-stations, where the Jews were already locked in the cattle carts,
waiting to be deported. Meanwhile, Per Anger, Wallenberg’s Swedish assistant, collected as many names
from the doomed group as he could, and then handed the list to Wallenberg, who vigorously negotiated
with the murderers…. Or else Wallenberg turned up unexpectedly, like a “red pimpernel,” at places where
mass executions took place, to save people from their sure death…
For us too this was not the only occasion when Wallenberg saved our lives! Some six months later we fell
into a ghastly situation, and at the very last minute Wallenberg brought Lici and me back from the
threshold of execution by the Hungarian Arrow Cross murderers when we were destined to be killed at
the shore of the river Danube, like so many others 27 . There were still other times when either our good
fortune, or our then keen senses and premonitions, rescued us.
Though Lici and I are divorced, we remain friends and we are in contact. Lici lives in Stockholm, a Swedish
citizen and a practicing physician.
We all know, of course, the tragedy that befell Raoul Wallenberg, although the details are still shrouded in
mystery.
A few years ago, I got a note from Lici along with the copy of a particular page from Wallenberg’s 1944
diary. This had been found in the Lublinka Prison in Moscow and was brought to Sweden and reprinted
page by page in the newspaper Expressen.
The diary shows, in Wallenberg’s handwriting, my name and my appointment with him, at 16:00 hour on
Saturday, August 5th, 1944.
The next Monday, on the 7th, Lici was released along with four other prisoners, and this was marked in
Wallenberg’s diary in his handwriting: at 10:00 a.m. the “five fanger,” or five prisoners, were released.
This is the brief history of my “passport of death” issued by the Hungarian military, and my “passport of
life,” granted by Raoul Wallenberg.
26 Karl Adolf Eichmann was a German Lieutenant Colonel of the Nazi. He was captured, tried, and hung after being convicted of war
crimes.
27 See the glossary for more on the Arrow Cross party.
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