[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 58 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
115th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 58
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding
unanswered questions into the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 24, 2017
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen (for herself, Mrs. Lowey, Mr. Roskam, Mr. Engel, Mr.
Smith of New Jersey, Mr. Deutch, and Ms. Granger) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign
Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding
unanswered questions into the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.
Whereas for 72 years, the full accounting of Raoul Wallenberg's arrest and the
mystery of his fate remains unsolved, despite the continued and
determined search for answers;
Whereas the current research and pool of knowledge recognizes and continues the
tireless efforts of Raoul Wallenberg's parents, Maj and Fredrik von
Dardel, and the countless scholars and volunteers who have worked
determinedly for over seven decades to solve the question of Raoul
Wallenberg's fate;
Whereas Raoul Wallenberg was born August 4, 1912, in the Lidingo Municipality of
Stockholm, Sweden;
Whereas in 1931 Wallenberg traveled to the United States to pursue his education
at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor;
Whereas, after graduating in 1935 with high honors, Wallenberg received his
bachelor degree of Science and Architecture and then returned to Sweden;
Whereas finding the market for architects in Sweden very restricted, Wallenberg
traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, to work at a Swedish firm selling
building materials;
Whereas six months later, Wallenberg transferred to a Dutch Bank located in
Haifa--today, northern Israel--where Wallenberg first met Jews who had
escaped from Nazi Germany;
Whereas in 1936, Wallenberg returned to Sweden where he eventually became the
international director of the Central European Trading Company
(Mellaneuropeiska), and later co-owned this Stockholm based import-
export company with the Hungarian-Jewish businessman, Kalman Lauer;
Whereas in June 1944, Wallenberg accepted a Swedish diplomatic appointment to
travel to Hungary on a humanitarian mission to help protect the Jewish
community there, a mission that was sponsored in large part by the U.S.
War Refugee Board, which itself was just created earlier that year;
Whereas Raoul Wallenberg is credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian
Jews through his work with the U.S. War Refugee Board;
Whereas Wallenberg and his diplomatic colleagues, aided by members of the
Hungarian resistance, set up hospitals, schools, nurseries and soup
kitchens in Budapest for over 8,000 Jewish orphans whose parents had
already been either killed or taken to a concentration camp;
Whereas Wallenberg redesigned and developed official Swedish documents for the
protection of Jews, including creating the so-called ``Schutzpass'', a
Swedish protective passport that ended up saving nearly 20,000 Jewish
lives by granting the holder immunity from deportation from Hungary and
almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps;
Whereas in November 1944, Wallenberg intervened in a German death march of Jews
from Budapest to labor camps in Austria, handing out food, clothing, and
Swedish protective passports, saving over 1,500 Jews from being
transported to Auschwitz;
Whereas Wallenberg helped set up shelters that offered protection, and as a
result of his joint efforts with the International Red Cross and
diplomatic representatives from Switzerland, Portugal and several other
nations, was able to save 50,000 Jews--of which an estimated 25,000 were
directly under Wallenberg's protection;
Whereas Wallenberg's last significant success took place in January 1945, when
he helped thwart a plot by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) to exterminate
70,000 Jews being held captive in the Budapest Central (Large) Ghetto;
Whereas, on January 13, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg contacted the Soviet military
authorities in an effort to secure food and supplies for the Jews under
official Swedish protection;
Whereas, on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, left
Budapest for a meeting with the Soviet military commander, Marshal
Malinovsky in Debrecen, when they were taken into ``protective custody''
by the Soviet military counterintelligence units (Smersh);
Whereas that day was the last time anyone saw Raoul Wallenberg as a free man;
Whereas, on February 6, 1945, Wallenberg was placed in cell 123 of Moscow's
Lubyanka Prison and interrogated for an hour and a half, while
Langfelder was placed in a separate cell--the official reason for arrest
remains unknown;
Whereas later that month, Wallenberg's mother was informed by the Soviet
Ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Kollontay, that her son was safe in the
Soviet Union and would return soon;
Whereas, on March 8, 1945, Hungarian Kossuth Radio, controlled by the Soviets,
reported that Wallenberg had been murdered en route to Debrecen;
Whereas, on June 15, 1946, in a meeting with Swedish Ambassador Staffan
Soderblom, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin promised to investigate
Wallenberg's fate;
Whereas, on July 17, 1947, Colonel A.L. Smoltsov, head of the Lubyanka Prison's
Medical Department, addressed a handwritten note to Viktor Abakumov,
Minister of State Security (MGB), stating that Wallenberg died suddenly
in his cell, ``probably as a result of a myocardial infarction'', while
an addendum to the report suggested that Abakumov ordered the body to be
cremated without autopsy;
Whereas, on the night of July 22, 1947, approximately one dozen prisoners with
direct connection to both Raoul Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder were
interrogated and subsequently isolated;
Whereas information released in 2009 by archivists of the Federal Security
Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) indicated that on July 23, 1947,
a still to this day unidentified prisoner, ``Prisoner No. 7'', was
interrogated for over 16 hours alongside Vilmos Langfelder;
Whereas the FSB archivists concluded ``with great likelihood'' in 2009 that
``Prisoner No. 7'' was Raoul Wallenberg;
Whereas, on August 8, 1947, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky reported to
the Swedish government that Wallenberg was not in the Soviet Union,
stating there had been no trace of him in any of the Soviet prisons and
labor camps;
Whereas, on February 6, 1957, Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei
Gromyko, informed the Swedish government that Raoul Wallenberg had
allegedly died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947, in Lubyanka Prison;
Whereas, countless individuals continued to search for Raoul Wallenberg well
after his alleged death, including famed Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal,
who on February 12, 1975, wrote to United States Senator Henry Jackson
that ``to millions of Swedish citizens and to thousands who have
survived Soviet Russian barbarity, the case of Wallenberg has become a
sort of trauma. To know that we can do nothing to bring light into the
fate of a man who fell victim to his own good deeds is almost
unbearable.'';
Whereas in January 1981, Tom Lantos became the first, and to date, only,
Holocaust survivor to serve in the United States Congress;
Whereas Congressman Lantos after escaping from a Hungarian slave labor battalion
found refuge in a Wallenberg ``safe house'' in Budapest;
Whereas, on October 5, 1981, Public Law 97-54, authored by the late Congressman
Tom Lantos, was enacted into law bestowing honorary United States
citizenship upon Raoul Wallenberg, making him the second person to
receive such an honor;
Whereas in February 1984, Wallenberg's half-brother, Professor Guy von Dardel,
filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia against the Soviet Union, demanding Soviet authorities provide
information into the fate and whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg;
Whereas, on October 15, 1985, the District Court ruled that the Soviet Union
violated international law by seizing and detaining Raoul Wallenberg,
while also stating that ``the Soviet Union has always had knowledge and
information about Wallenberg; that it has failed to disclose and
concealed that information'';
Whereas in May 1988, Members of the United States House of Representatives wrote
a letter to President Ronald Reagan, asking him to urge Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev to reveal the truth regarding the Wallenberg case and
to allow Raoul Wallenberg's family to visit the Soviet Union and
investigate Mr. Wallenberg's fate;
Whereas, on July 27, 1989, Public Law 101-63 was enacted into law, designating
October 5, 1989, as ``Raoul Wallenberg Day'';
Whereas in October 1989, members of Raoul Wallenberg's family were invited to
Moscow by the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they were given
what were personal effects alleged to belong to Mr. Wallenberg and are
said to have been offered condolences about his fate;
Whereas in 1990, headed by Professor von Dardel, the First International
Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts of Raoul Wallenberg was formed
and included independent experts in order to examine Russian archival
collections, and made major discoveries directly relevant to the
Wallenberg case;
Whereas in 1991, an official Swedish-Russian Working Group was appointed in
order to try to establish joint efforts to determine what actually
happened after the disappearance of the Swedish diplomat in January
1945;
Whereas, on November 2, 1995, Congress unveiled a bronze bust dedicated to Raoul
Wallenberg in the United States Capitol Rotunda;
Whereas, on April 24, 1997, the United States Post Office issued U.S. stamp
#3135, honoring Raoul Wallenberg;
Whereas, on December 22, 2000, in response to a formal application by Professor
von Dardel, Russia formally ``rehabilitated'' Raoul Wallenberg, a
decision based on the 1991 law ``on the rehabilitation of victims of
political repression'', stating ``by decision of extra-judicial Soviet
Organs [Wallenberg and Langfelder] were arrested without foundation and
deprived of their freedom for political reasons as representing a danger
for society, without being accused of a specific crime'';
Whereas, as a result of being ``rehabilitated'', all information regarding
Wallenberg should be made available from the Russian archives;
Whereas, on January 12, 2001, the Swedish [side of the] Working Group presented
its findings in a report, concluding that the case could not be finally
closed as a result of being unable to obtain enough verifiable
information, however, it did find that the ``Russian announcement of
Raoul Wallenberg's death could only be accepted if it were confirmed
beyond any reasonable doubt. This has not happened, partly for the want
of a credible death certificate, and partly because the testimony about
Raoul Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed'';
Whereas, on July 9, 2014, leaders of the United States Congress presented
posthumously a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award
bestowed by Congress, to Raoul Wallenberg in honor of his heroism during
the Holocaust;
Whereas in October 2015, an international group of historians and Wallenberg
experts launched a new initiative, The Raoul Wallenberg Research
Initiative RWI-70, to pool researchers' knowledge and expertise in order
to develop a comprehensive catalogue of open questions in order to
advance the search for answers regarding Wallenberg's fate and to
facilitate access to the pertinent archival materials and documents in
Russian and other international archives;
Whereas in September 2016, members of Raoul Wallenberg's family visited Moscow
and formally presented the catalogue of pending questions, compiled by
historians Dr. Vadim Birstein and Susanne Berger, to high ranking
officials of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) and the
Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian
Federation (FSB) who indicated that Russian archivists would ``answer
every single one'';
Whereas in July 1993, Russia enacted a new Law on State Secrets, establishing
the basis for classifying information, which initially led to the
reclassification of documents previously released;
Whereas in 2012, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation found that
Russia's Constitution ensures the freedom of information and clarified
that a provision from the 1993 Law on State Secrets regarding a 30-year
limit of classification ``has to be applied to information defined as
state secret both before and after this law came into force''; and
Whereas the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from
Enforced Disappearance stipulates that any victim, or individual who has
suffered harm as the direct result of an enforced disappearance, has
``the right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the
enforced disappearance, the progress and results of the investigation
and the fate of the disappeared person'': Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) urges Russian authorities to grant access to archival
collections, including the Central Archive of the Russian
Security Service (TsA FSB), the Central Archive of the Russian
Ministry of Defense (TsA MO), the Central Archive of the
Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (TsA
SVR), the Foreign Police Archive of the Russian Federation (AVP
RF), the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation
(APRF), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History
(RGASPI), the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History
(RGANI), the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF),
and the Archive of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
(TsA MVD), and declassify and make publicly available all
documents related to Raoul Wallenberg;
(2) urges the Russian authorities to work with Raoul
Wallenberg's family, the Swedish government, as well as Russian
and international scholars, researchers, and archivists in
order to resolve the outstanding questions surrounding the
circumstances of Wallenberg's arrest and death, including--
(A) how and why were Raoul Wallenberg and his
driver, Vilmos Langfelder, detained by Soviet military
counterintelligence units and moved from Budapest to
Moscow in January 1945;
(B) what happened to Raoul Wallenberg after his
last confirmed presence in Lubyanka Prison in March
1947;
(C) where are the unredacted copies of all records
of interrogations of prisoners connected with the Raoul
Wallenberg case and why have they not been made
available to family members and researchers;
(D) who were all of the prisoners interrogated on
July 22 and 23, 1947, in both Lubyanka and Lefortovo
Prisons, where are the unredacted records and
transcripts of such interrogations, and why have they
not been made available to family members and
researchers, including--
(i) what is the identity of ``Prisoner No.
7'', and why have the family and researchers
been denied access to review the prisoner's
entry in the interrogation register of Lubyanka
Prison;
(ii) why did neither ``Prisoner No. 7'' nor
Vilmos Langfelder sign the interrogation book
as was customary, on that day and what is the
meaning of the word ``Proshel'' in lieu of
their signatures;
(iii) why have references to Raoul
Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder been blotted
out in various prison journals and when did
this censorship occur; and
(iv) who are prisoners 14 and 16-20,
sentenced from June 1947 through May 1948, and
why have they never been identified;
(E) granting Raoul Wallenberg's family and
researchers access to file PF-9653, which has been
identified by FSB archivists as containing
documentation on foreign diplomats, including Hungarian
Prime Minister Istvan Bethlen and Raoul Wallenberg's
longtime cellmate, the German diplomat Willy Rodel, who
were imprisoned from 1945 through 1947;
(F) granting family members and researchers access
to unredacted copies of the list of prisoners sentenced
by the MGB Special Board from 1947 through 1953;
(G) granting the family and researchers access to
the official death registers for Lubyanka and Lefortovo
Prisons from 1947 through 1953;
(H) what is the sequence of events on July 17,
1947, when, according to Soviet officials, Raoul
Wallenberg ``died of a heart attack'', and if he did
die, what happened to his body;
(I) when, and in what Soviet or Russian archival
file, was the so-called Smoltsov Report discovered;
(J) why were no handwriting samples from 1947 for
Dr. Smoltsov provided by Russian officials to forensic
experts and why has no review been granted of
Smoltsov's personnel file in order to determine whether
or not he was on extended medical leave and thus unable
to oversee Wallenberg's detention, as claimed;
(K) what has happened to the letter written by
Minister of State Security Viktor Abakumov to Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on July 17, 1947;
(L) will all records of the Politburo meeting in
Stalin's office from August 9, 1947, during which the
Wallenberg case was definitely discussed, be
declassified and released;
(M) since researchers have not been permitted to
examine important Russian intelligence collections that
could provide valuable insights into the reasons for
Wallenberg's arrest--
(i) will researchers receive access to
Soviet foreign and military intelligence
reports from Hungary in 1944 and 1945, as well
as additional Soviet intelligence reports from
Stockholm, Sweden for the years 1944 through 47
that have so far remained classified; and
(ii) will researchers also be permitted to
review reports from Soviet Military Field
Intelligence operating in Hungary in 1945,
which possibly interrogated both Raoul
Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder;
(N) since Stalin's personal secretariat, the
Special Sector of the Central Committee, was involved
in the Wallenberg case, will the information from its
records regarding this case be made available;
(O) since, in 1956 a Soviet citizen by the name of
Shiryagin in Kharkov wrote to the Soviet Ministry of
Foreign Affairs claiming to have important information
about Raoul Wallenberg, why did the Foreign Ministry
request the KGB to silence Shiryagin on the issue,
where is the letter, and what are its contents;
(P) where is the documentation regarding the
discussions that took place in 1956 between Soviet
diplomats Viktor Vladimirov and Pavel Yerzin with
Finnish diplomat Ake Frey about Raoul Wallenberg;
(Q) since, on February 6, 1957, when the Soviet
authorities informed the Swedish government that Raoul
Wallenberg had died in July 1947, only limited
information was presented, will all the records of the
Presidium (Politburo) discussions regarding the
preparation of the Gromyko Memorandum be made
available;
(R) since, in 1961 Swedish physician Professor
Nanna Svartz reported that her Soviet colleague
Professor A. L. Myasnikov revealed to her that he had
direct knowledge of Wallenberg's presence in the Soviet
Union, will the full documentation of these discussions
be made available to Raoul Wallenberg's family and
researchers;
(S) how and where exactly were Wallenberg's
personal effects discovered in 1989, and were they
collected and archived in line with the standard Soviet
administrative procedures of the time, including--
(i) if Wallenberg indeed died in 1947, why
weren't the bills of foreign currency in his
possession at the time of his arrest
confiscated then (as was official Soviet
administrative protocol for prisoners of war)
but instead handed over to some of his family
members in 1989 and can proof be provided that
the currency given to Wallenberg's family was
the original currency in his possession;
(ii) how did the Soviet authorities know
the amount of currency in Wallenberg's
possession, was he given a receipt for his
currency upon arrival at Lubyanka, and if so,
in which file was this receipt kept; and
(iii) were Wallenberg's diplomatic passport
and address book archived in his Archival-
Investigation file, has that file been
preserved as has that of his former cellmate,
Rodel, and if so, will Wallenberg's Archival-
Investigation File be made available;
(T) since in 1993, a former KGB official, Colonel
Andrei Bachurin, indicated that Wallenberg had once
asked for medical assistance, requesting an appointment
with a dentist, why hasn't the actual register entry
for this request ever been presented by the Central
Archive of the FSB despite numerous inquiries;
(U) since in 1993, a former Vladimir Prison
employee reported that a prisoner matching Raoul
Wallenberg's description had been held in isolation in
Section 2 sometime during the mid-to-late 1950s, while
a former prisoner in Vladimir Prison, Zigurds Kruminsh,
stated to his American cellmate, Professor Marvin
Makinen, that he had met a secret Swedish prisoner
during his time at Vladimir, are there any foreigners
imprisoned in Vladimir Prison during the years 1945 to
1975 whose names have thus far been withheld, and will
the names of all Swedish nationals held prisoner in the
Soviet Union during this time be released; and
(V) since, on January 12, 2001, a Swedish-Russian
Working Group investigating the Wallenberg case for
over 10 years produced contradictory reports and failed
to reach a common conclusion, what evidence is there to
confirm that Wallenberg was most likely executed on
July 17, 1947, as the official Russian report from 2001
stated;
(3) urges the President, Secretary of State, and other high
level United States Government officials to raise the case of
Raoul Wallenberg to their Russian counterparts, and request
direct access to the original and unredacted documentation in
the Russian archives, including the questions specified in
subparagraphs (A) through (U) of paragraph (2);
(4) emphasizes the need of independent verification of any
information provided by Russian officials; and
(5) reaffirms Raoul Wallenberg's ``humanitarian spirit,
personal courage and nonviolent action in the face of enormous
odds'', and commits to the continued pursuit of answers
regarding Wallenberg's fate.
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