Past and Present

Jewish World Review May 12 , 1999 / 26 Iyar, 5759


Last known picture
of Wallenberg
A hero's homecoming



By Sam Margolis

IN A BABY CARRIAGE LADEN PARK on the banks of the Danube now rests what Gabor Deak and several other members of the Hungarian Wallenberg Society had worked long hours for the past year—a statue of Raoul Wallenberg which stands in the spot in Budapest it was originally intended to have stood exactly fifty years ago.

The story surrounding the April 18 of Raoul Wallenberg statue is covered with nearly as much intrigue as the that of the man himself. Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat stationed in Budapest at the end of the second World War and is credited with saving the lives of several thousand Hungarian Jews. Little is known of what happened to Wallenberg after Russian troops entered Budapest at the end of the war. The Soviet Union said that he died in 1947 though western governments disputed that claim.

Econophone Immediately after the war, a group of Hungarian Jews who owed their lives to Wallenberg decided to erect a statue in his honor. The statue showed a man with a club in his hand fighting off a snake advancing upon him. "The symbolism of the statue was supposed to be the power of the good souls fighting off oppression," says Deak, the head of the Hungarian Wallenberg Society.

The statue was completed in April 1949. But, on the day the statue was to be unveiled, Hungary’s then fledgling Communist party police hauled off the statue and left a sign on spot where is was to have stood reading "Due to technical problems the statue intended for this place cannot be exhibited here."

A few years elapsed before the heads of one of Hungary’s state-owned pharmaceutical plants saw the Wallenberg statue buried away at a Communist storage facility. "They thought it would be great to have this statue of a strong naked man outside their factory because it could symbolize the powers of their medicines in defeating diseases," Deak explains, "But nobody there knew it was the Wallenberg statue."

The statue was much-admired by those who had seen it at the pharmaceutical plant in eastern Hungary and later smaller replicas were made in offices within the Hungarian Health Department.

Those who designed the statues however, were unaware they were reproducing a statue of Wallenberg. In a 1970s visit to Hungary, President Suharno of Indonesia was so impressed after witnessing a replica that he wanted to have one himself.

It was not until the 1980s and the waning light of Communist rule in Hungary that an article in a Hungarian magazine appeared detailing the history and location of the Wallenberg statue.

Nevertheless nothing was done to establish the Wallenberg statue until last year the city of Budapest decided to reconstruct the park where Wallenberg was to have been commemorated. The city decided that the Wallenberg statue should be brought back and revealed fifty years after it was first taken away..

"However, the city did not have money to help so the Hungarian Wallenberg Society had to raise the money ourselves through private donations," states Deak.

One large source was the pharmaceutical company where the statue rested for nearly five decades. The company was sold by the state in the early 1990s and bought out by an Israeli company which felt obliged in giving the Wallenberg Society much of the $750,000 it needed to restore the statue to its original spot. The rest of the money came mostly from individual sponsorship for the project.


JWR contributor Sam Margolis is JWR's Man in Hungary. Send your comments to him by clicking here.


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©1999, Sam Margolis