The Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative RWI-70
April 22, 2025
Press Release
Open Letter to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson
As early as 1946, Swedish officials decided to abandon Raoul Wallenberg to his fate. Eight decades later, his family wants to know why.
An abridged version of a letter sent by Raoul Wallenberg’s nieces Marie von Dardel-Dupuy and Louise von Dardel to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, dated April 10, 2025, was published in The Jerusalem Post today.
Raoul Wallenberg’s family is calling on Mr. Kristersson to provide a complete overview of all records and information Sweden currently holds in the Wallenberg case.
“If the Swedish government already has such a comprehensive compilation, now is the time to publish it. If it doesn't have such an overview, it's high time to create one.”
The official Raoul Wallenberg case file at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs contains approximately 170,000 pages, almost all of which are accessible to the public. However, literally thousands of additional records are archived outside the official case file, in separate collections at the Foreign Ministry and in other Swedish archives, including those of the Swedish intelligence services. It remains unclear what records exactly are held in these other collections; how many pages there are and what information they contain; as well as how many documents remain classified and for what reason. In addition, entire sets of records chronicling Sweden’s wartime intelligence operations in Hungary are missing from Swedish archives.
Wallenberg’s nieces want to know what led to the Swedish government’s decision to abandon Raoul Wallenberg almost immediately after his disappearance in the Soviet Union in January 1945 and why Sweden’s passivity in his case was so extreme.
Certain key records in the Wallenberg investigation were never formally registered or filed in the official Swedish Foreign Ministry case file. Other documents remain strictly classified in the archive of the Swedish Security Police and other collections.
In recent months, new information has emerged that the archive of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contains hundreds, if not thousands of pages of background material in the Raoul Wallenberg case, the result of top-level discussions in the KGB and the Soviet leadership during the early 1960s. These records were never made accessible to previous investigations and are not duplicated in other files. It means that the truth about Raoul Wallenberg’s fate can almost certainly be solved. The decisive clue to this information came from previously classified Swedish documents.
Please find the full text of the open letter in English below. The original Swedish version is available at this link
and at www.raoul-wallenberg.eu
His Excellency
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson
103 33 Stockholm, Sweden
Marie von Dardel-Dupuy
Louise von Dardel
Lausanne, Switzerland
April 10, 2025
January 17 marked 80 years since Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance in the Soviet Union. The various investigations of his case have provided many important insights but have not answered the central questions about his fate: What exactly happened to Raoul Wallenberg after the official trail of him breaks off in Moscow in the spring of 1947? And why was the Swedish government's passivity so extreme?
There are many indications that Swedish officials deliberately abandoned Raoul Wallenberg almost immediately after his disappearance in 1945, a decision that had serious consequences for Sweden's handling of the Wallenberg case.
Despite document destruction and other forms of censorship, it is clear that relevant information is available in both Russian and Swedish archives and that what happened to Raoul Wallenberg can almost certainly be established. Through the years, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has instead signaled that it has primarily been interested in getting rid of the "problem" and removing the issue from the Swedish Russian agenda. This theme has run like a red thread through the Wallenberg case ever since 1945.
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To this day, Swedish Foreign Ministry officials say that they do not know which documents about the Swedish diplomat are still classified – in their own archives or those of other Swedish authorities, including the Swedish intelligence services. They also show no interest in finding out.[1]
In 2019, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs announced that a total of 170,000 pages in the Raoul Wallenberg case were now available to the public and that only 230 pages were still confidential. The announcement obscures the fact that the Foreign Ministry's official Wallenberg case file is far from complete. It also reinforces misconceptions about how the documentation of the case is organized.
Only a limited part of the material is stored in the Ministry’s Wallenberg case file. Thousands of additional documents are held in various collections in the Foreign Ministry archives and in other Swedish archives, including that of the Swedish Security Police (Säpo).
The result is that neither historians, Raoul Wallenberg's family, nor the public have a clear idea of which documents are kept in which archive, exactly how many records there are, and which documents remain inaccessible.
When researchers and journalists requested full declassification of the still partly secret 230 pages in the Foreign Ministry's Wallenberg case file, they were told that Ministry officials cannot or do not want to identify the relevant documents. This despite the fact that the set of documents was shared with Raoul Wallenberg's family in censored form back in 2019.
A similar problem concerns Säpo's Raoul Wallenberg dossier held at the Swedish National Archives. The archivists do not want to reveal how many pages are withheld because that information remains in itself classified.
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At the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, documents with the designation "secret" are often temporarily stored separately. Moreover, some highly relevant documents about Raoul Wallenberg have never been properly registered or archived at all.
In 2009, the archive of the Russian Federal State Security Service (FSB) released the sensational information that Raoul Wallenberg was possibly identical with a numbered prisoner (prisoner No. 7) who was interrogated in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow six days after Wallenberg's official death date (July 17, 1947). The release came after years of pressure from Raoul Wallenberg's family.
In 2011–2012, Swedish and Russian officials held top-level discussions about the new information. However, documents related to these discussions were never registered in the Foreign Ministry's archives.[2]
A separate memorandum with the most important information to emerge in the Wallenberg case since 1945 was immediately classified. It was a cipher fax from the Swedish embassy in Moscow to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm, dated October 19, 2011, in which a senior FSB officer, Colonel Vladimir K. Vinogradov, informed Swedish officials that it was "certain and tochno" – a fact – that Raoul Wallenberg was interrogated on July 23, 1947. Wallenberg’s family was not informed.
Russian officials withheld this crucial information for decades, also from the official Swedish Russian working group that investigated Wallenberg's fate in Russia (1991-2001) and that included Wallenberg's brother [Guy von Dardel]. For still not fully explained reasons, only the chairman of the Swedish side, Ambassador Hans Magnusson, was allowed to review the relevant prison registers. Magnusson says he failed to notice the information about prisoner no.7 at the time.
Why did Swedish representatives not pursue the most crucial information with much greater determination back in 2009? And why did the Foreign Ministry in 2011–2013 and again in 2019 fail to share the fact that Russian officials had actually confirmed that Raoul Wallenberg was identical with prisoner no.7?[3]
It is clear that in 2009 the Swedish government had little interest in continuing further investigations into the Wallenberg case, at a time when its main focus was squarely on expanding business relations with Russia, including approving the Russian Nord Stream I gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
At two meetings in 2009-2010 with Russian President Vladimir Medvedev, and Vladmir Putin, who was Prime Minister at the time, neither Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt nor Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt bothered to bring up the crucial information about Wallenberg that had emerged just a few months earlier.
The Swedish government's focus on the 100th anniversary celebrations of Raoul Wallenberg's birth in 2012 (which was formally headed by Carl Bildt personally) almost exclusively highlighted his legacy as a hero of the Holocaust. The question of his fate was barely mentioned in public, despite a real chance to press the Russian authorities for further information when the world's attention was focused on the Wallenberg case.[4] The rapidly expanding business ties between Sweden and Russia once again took precedent.
Russian officials claim that the new information and the fact that they lied about it for years "does not matter" (since they argue that Wallenberg died in 1947 anyway) and that they have no further information that could shed light on the full circumstances of Raoul Wallenberg's fate. Despite strong evidence to the contrary,[5] Swedish officials have largely accepted this position and, as a result, have stopped any formal investigation of the Wallenberg case.
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In recent years, it has become clear that the Swedish government already in 1946 made a conscious decision to abandon Raoul Wallenberg to his fate. This happened despite the fact that the Soviet leader Josef Stalin at the time signaled a wish to normalize relations with Sweden and Swedish officials had relatively clear indications that Wallenberg was alive and imprisoned in the Soviet Union.
Here, too, economic relations with Moscow played a decisive role. In the spring of 1946, Sweden prioritized a major Swedish-Russian credit and trade agreement (equivalent to SEK 26 billion in today's monetary value) and made at least three (!) formal requests for the Soviet government to declare Raoul Wallenberg dead. Even when the trade agreement was successfully concluded in late 1946, Swedish officials did not bother to raise the issue of Wallenberg's fate with Soviet officials. Eighty years later the motives behind this decision remain poorly understood.
By March 1947, Wallenberg's mother, Maj von Dardel, was so upset by the Foreign Ministry's inaction that she walked into the Ministry's offices and demanded to know why Swedish officials assumed that her son was no longer alive, in the absence of clear evidence. In a tense meeting, she sharply criticized their lack of enthusiasm and described the official handling of her son's case as "cold-blooded."
In the following decades, the Swedish government repeatedly signaled to Soviet officials that they were quite satisfied with incomplete answers to the question of Wallenberg's fate.
During the 1990s, both Swedish and Russian officials maintained a narrow and strictly controlled focus in the Wallenberg investigation. Both sides deliberately misrepresented and omitted important information in their respective reports and failed to provide access to key documentation to researchers and Wallenberg's family.
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Almost all information about the top Swedish diplomats Sverker Åström and Rolf Sohlman, the longtime ambassador to Moscow (1947–63), remains secret in Swedish archives. Not even partially censored documents have been released. Both men played a central role in the official handling of the Wallenberg case for decades and are suspected of having functioned as assets for the Soviet Union.
In their appeal in January 2023, Raoul Wallenberg's relatives argued that the issue of possible undue Soviet influence in the Swedish government’s foreign policy apparatus is a serious issue. They added that "the family's right to the truth ... should outweigh any lingering national security or privacy concerns."
Sohlman's discussions with a Russian contact who SÄPO suspected to be one of the KGB's most notorious counterintelligence officers in the early 1960s must have generated thousands of pages that remain in Russia's FSB archives. The material almost certainly contains crucial details about Wallenberg's fate. Swedish and Russian officials have known about this collection for decades but never informed the public. The documentation is not duplicated in any other Russian archives. It is worth nothing that the crucial clue for this new discovery came from previously classified Swedish documents.
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If Wallenberg was deliberately abandoned, it is a serious moral failure that could rise to the level of obstruction and potential criminal negligence.
Raoul Wallenberg, his family and Sweden as a country deserve better.
In principle, the Prime Minister can order all Swedish authorities to provide him with a comprehensive summary of what information they possess about the Raoul Wallenberg case, how many records there are, which ones remain classified and what type of information is involved. Only then can we arrive at a full understanding of the current state of affairs in the Raoul Wallenberg case.
If the Swedish government already has such a comprehensive compilation, now is the time to publish it. If it doesn't have such an overview, it's high time to create one.
We respectfully ask that the Prime Minister provide full clarity on all information and documentation contained in Swedish archive collections, as a first step in resolving the lingering issues that remain in the case of one of Sweden's most celebrated citizens who lost his life while carrying out an official task for the Swedish state.
After eight decades, it is time for the Swedish government to provide full information about all aspects of Raoul Wallenberg's fate.
Yours sincerely,
Marie Dupuy Niece of Raoul G. Wallenberg
Louise von Dardel Niece of Raoul G. Wallenberg
[1] Previous official reviews of Swedish intelligence records were not comprehensive and were limited in scope and time.
[2] Foreign Ministry officials claim this was due to a clerical error. The fact remains that the information was never filed. Researchers and Raoul Wallenberg’s family are left to wonder if other relevant documentation also was never properly archived.
[3] Swedish officials never sought further clarification from Colonel Vinogradov. The memorandum containing Colonel Vinogradov's statement was initially not part of the 2019 release of the 40,000 documents from the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s Raoul Wallenberg case file. The information was also not included in Ambassador Hans Magnusson's report of his review of the Wallenberg case in 2013, presumably because it remained classified at the time. Hans Magnusson. Lägesbedömning. January 2013.
[4]Instead, Swedish officials requested the release of 6,000 cipher cables, part of the communications between the Soviet Legation in Stockholm and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other agencies during the years 1945-47. However, Russian authorities refused to release an additional 3,000 cables, including some held in the archive of Russian Foreign Intelligence (SVR). In response to repeated requests from Raoul Wallenberg’s family, Mr. Bildt eventually ordered a formal review of the Raoul Wallenberg case, headed by Ambassador Hans Magnusson.
In February 2020, Mr.Bildt continued to defend his decision not to inform Raoul Wallenberg's family about Colonel Vinogradov's important statement from 2011, arguing that it contained nothing new. He did not explain why the information was immediately classified.
[5] This list has been updated. A current list will be furnished on request.
Thank you very much for your message - please let me know if you have any questions about the case or the ongoing research. I will be glad to respond.
Wow! This is quite something. Thank you for sharing it.