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Remembering Raoul Wallenberg Raoul Wallenberg memorial. Photo: Edina Tánczos Raoul Wallenberg memorial. Photo: Miki Bata Raoul Wallenberg memorial, Budapest. Photo: Edina Tánczos It stands abandoned on a bench – Raoul Wallenberg’s briefcase. Yesterday a new memorial honoring Wallenberg was inaugurated on Erzsébet Square in downtown Budapest. Preceding the statue inauguration the Hungarian edition of professor Bengt Jangfeldt’s new Wallenberg biography was presented. On the evening of 17 June the memorial “Do not forget” honoring the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was unveiled on Erzsébet Square. Present were the artists Ulla and Gustav Kraitz, and Raoul Wallenberg’s younger sister Nina Lagergren. Speeches were held by Hungarian minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Tibor Navracsics, and Swedish ambassador Karin Olofsdotter, who emphasized that “we have a duty never to forget, always to remember. We have to pass on the knowledge of what happened during the Holocaust to those who come after us”. The location of the memorial has been chosen carefully. Erzsébet Square is a popular place among young people, and it is quite likely that Raoul Wallenberg has been on the square as he spent some of his last nights in Budapest in the building that is now the British Embassy. This memorial has been erected at the initiative of the Embassy of Sweden in Budapest, and been given to the Hungarian state as a gift. The project has been realized by financial contributions from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Embassy in Budapest and also generous donations from private companies and individuals. The forgotten briefcase symbolizes the fact that Wallenberg has disappeared, though the knowledge of his deeds lives on and remains standing here reminding us: we ourselves can continue the work, and it is our duty to help victims of discrimination or people in need. Earlier during the day around one hundred people gathered in the Design Terminal to listen to a talk between journalist György Vári and professor Bengt Jangfeldt; the author of the Raoul Wallenberg biography “The Hero of Budapest” which was published this week in Hungarian. Quite a few books about Raoul Wallenberg has already been written, but most of them concentrate on the six months he spent in Budapest during the fall/winter 1944-45. Jangfeldt’s book takes a more comprehensive approach and a fair part of it tells the story about Wallenberg’s youth years, which in many ways determined his personality and faith. Using previously unseen sources, Jangfeldt has also been able to reconstruct the events surrounding Wallenberg's capture in 1945 almost hour by hour, and he is able to shed new light on why Wallenberg was arrested and what happened to him after he disappeared. |