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Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest by [Kati Marton]

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Kati Marton

Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest Kindle Edition

by Kati Marton (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

319 ratings

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A fearless young Swede whose efforts saved countless Hungarian Jews from certain death at the hands of Adolf Eichmann, Raoul Wallenberg was one of the true heroes to emerge during the Nazi occupation of Eu-rope. He left a life of privilege and, against staggering odds, brought hope to those who had been abandoned by the rest of the world. Here is the gripping, passionately written biography of the courageous man who displayed extraordinary humanity during one of history’s darkest periods.

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274 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Arcade
Publication date

October 1, 2011
File size

2717 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A fascinating story of an extraordinary man. Kati Marton’s book should be read by anyone wishing to know what could have been done to save Jewish lives if more people had cared.” (Elie Wiesel) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Kati Marton, an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent, is the author of Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, a New York Times bestseller, as well as The Polk Conspiracy, A Death in Jerusalem, and a novel, An American Woman. She lives in New York City. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06XQ1VDQF
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arcade; Centenary Edition (October 1, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2717 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1611453372
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #359,646 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #27 in History of Sweden
- #58 in Sweden History
- #59 in History of Austria & Hungary

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319 ratings

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Kati Marton

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Kati Marton, an award-winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent, is the author of Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History, a New York Times bestseller, as well as Wallenberg, The Polk Conspiracy, A Death in Jerusalem, and a novel, An American Woman. Mother of a son and a daughter, she lives in New York with her husband, Richard Holbrooke.

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studebhawk

The Hidden Hero

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2016

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Honor and Remembrance
On our tour of Budapest our guide narrated the story of the city and the history of the Hungarian people. Full of history and tradition, Budapest has more than enough sites to satisfy the most casual tourist on a summer vacation.
The story of Hungary during the WWII Nazi occupation is not an easy story to to tell. The brutal occupation by the Germans and the local Nazi thugs, the Arrow Cross local militia, left a wake of bloodshed, terror and death in it’s wake.
Around the city there are several sites where the death squads marched the Budapest Jewish community to it’s extermination. The story of the heroic efforts of a Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, came full force to us here on our walking tour.
The Wallenberg story needed a good storyteller,and, we have that here in this wonderful story by Kati Marton.His effort in the rescue of so much of the Jewish community is a remarkable achievement given the presence of Adolf Eichmann in the city.Our guide told us that the Hungarians are uneasy about the legacy of Wallenberg, the hero. There is a memorial in the city dedicated to him,but, it is virtually hidden away in a residential neighborhood far away from the attention of the tourists in the central city area.
The hidden Wallenberg is ironic here. The Hungarian government wants him forgotten. After the Soviet Army capture of the city, Raoul Wallenberg disappeared into the post war Soviet gulag. What is shocking in the story here is the lack of action by the Swedish government to obtain his immediate release. This lack of interest went on for many years despite the activities of his family to obtain his release and despite the many sightings narrated by recently released prisoners from the Soviet gulag. The allies effort here was no better and we are all the worse for it.
Missing Hero is an excellent book by an author who obviously researched the material and provided for us here the story of the missing, hidden hero Raoul Wallenberg.
We need to honor and remember Raoul Wallenberg. He gave so much to a desperate Jewish people and the free world gave him back so little.

31 people found this helpful

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depeshkov

A Brilliant Work

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2021

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Kati Marton has written an excellently researched and very readable account of Raoul Wallenberg's efforts in Nazi Hungary to save the Jews. It provides, of course, details on the life of the heroic figure of Wallenberg, but also on the major players caught in the maelstrom of WWII and of Nazi Germany's and the Arrow Cross's efforts to erase the Jews from Budapest and Hungary. There are villains, there are the collaborators, there are no shortage of apathetic political leaders, there are the victims, and in the midst of the storm there are the handful of men and women who rose up against the evil forces and, guided and inspired by Wallenberg, pushed back against the current of evil. Marton's research and interviews allow this narrative to come to life and allows us to follow the man - from his driven mission to save the Jews from sure death, to his capture and imprisonment by the Soviets and their continual denial of his presence and condition in the GULag - a tragic end in so many ways. Firstly, fear of the Russians and abandonment by the Swedish government and later by Kissinger and the American administration; secondly by the beast that was Soviet leadership and the fear Wallenberg must have instilled in them. We may never know the full story of Wallenberg - both of his heroic exploits in Hungary or the later struggles as he traversed throughout the 'GULag Archipelago', but Marton certainly gives us a full and vibrant enough picture of the man, his times, and his exploits, to give us hope that there are some out there who stand up for humanity, and others who so aptly present it to the public.

3 people found this helpful

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Claudia Moscovici

A Holocaust hero in Hungary

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2015

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A Holocaust hero in Hungary: The courage of Raoul Wallenberg

The Talmud states: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is as if he destroyed the whole world. And whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved the whole world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9, Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a). There’s so much wisdom in this saying, which also resonates with history. The Nazis did everything in their power to destroy the whole Jewish race while Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, did everything he could to save them. He worked relentlessly to save 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.

Wallenberg’s own life story contains as much triumph as it does tragedy. By the time Wallenberg, only 31 years old, arrived in Budapest 437,000 Jews living outside the city had already been deported to Auschwitz. He could do nothing to save their lives. But there were aproximately 230,000 Jews left in Budapest, all of whom Adolf Eichamann, who was then stationed in the capital, planned to send as efficiently as possible to their deaths. The preparations of the death machine had already begun. Most of the Jews in Budapest had already been herded by the Nazis and their Fascist, Arrow Cross collaborators, into a Jewish Ghetto. They were deprived of any means of subsistence and living in terror. Every day they were subject to the Nazi actions to deport them to concentration camps as well as at the mercy of mob pogroms encouraged by the Arrow Cross.

In this humanitarian crisis, where time was of the essence, Wallenberg proved to be both flexible and resourceful. He didn’t limit himself to traditional, slow diplomatic measures to save Budapest’s Jewish community. Using his own funds, he cajoled and bribed members of the Hungarian Fascist party in power, the Arrow Cross, as well as German officials in Budapest in order to protect the lives 100,000 Hungarian Jews. Responding promptly to every call for help, he issued tens of thousands of official-looking Sweedish Embassy protection papers to the desperate Jews.

Kati Marton’s beautifully written biography, Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved the Jews of Budapest (New York: Arcade Publishing, Centenary Edition, 2011), narrates the life of this courageous and altruistic man. It also explores the still unsolved mystery of his death while imprisoned in the Soviet Union. Having managed to save tens of thousands of innocent lives and to survive WWII and the Nazi terror in occupied Hungary, in an ultimate irony of fate, Wallenberg perished at the hands of the Allies. He was caught in the lethal web of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. Yet he managed to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.

By the time he reached Hungary in his early thirties, Raoul Wallenberg had already lived a lifetime. He had travelled the world and gained enormous life experience. Born in an affluent and established family of Swedish bankers and industrialists, Wallenberg preferred to travel and learn about different cultures rather than devote himself to making money. Although he probably could have selected any university in Europe, he chose to study at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, eager to learn more about the U.S. He also travelled to Haifa, Palestine. Through family connections he met Koloman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew who was the Director of a Swedish Import and Export Company, the Mid-European Trading Company. Within a few months, the young man impressed Lauer so much with his competence and efficiency, that he became a joint partner in this enterprise. Given the Lauer’s family and business ties to Hungary, Wallenberg traveled to Budapest, following closely the political situation there. He was especially touched—and alarmed--by the fate of the Jews.

Wallenberg also took trips to Vichy France and Nazi Germany and learned a lot about the Fascist regimes and how their bureaucracy and killing machine operated. His observations that the Nazi regime functioned through a mixture of need for respectability and natural authority served him well when he embarked on the dangerous mission of saving Budapest’s Jews. He bribed the corruptible officials with cigars, alcohol or food—a strategy that often worked in a time of severe food shortages—while at the same time issuing official-looking passports and protective orders, couched in formal language, under the auspices of the Swedish Embassy and government. At one point he even faced the “Engineer of death”—Adolf Eichmann himself—in a showdown of wills in which Eichmann backed down and Wallenberg managed to save hundreds of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis.

On January 17, 1945, following the Ally victory and Budapest’s encirclement by the Soviet army, Wallenberg and his chauffeur went, under Soviet military escort, to meet with a high-ranking Russian general. Wallenberg hasn’t been heard from ever since. Marton’s book describes that several eyewitnesses claim they have seen him in the Lyubianka and, later, in several Gulags well into the 1970’s. But, ultimately, this information is highly speculative. The evidence seems to point to the fact that Raoul Wallenberg perished in 1947 at the hands of the NKVD. The heroic man who saved countless lives from the Nazis could not be saved himself from the cold injustice of the totalitarian killing machine.

Claudia Moscovici,
Literature Salon

44 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Wennel

Great book about a great man

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2015

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A tragic story about Raoul Wallenberg, a brave, intelligent, driven Swede who saved thousands of Jewish lives in Hungary. He was ultimately abandoned by his own country to its great shame. Very well written, meticulously organized, excellent 'voice,'.. Gripping from beginning to end. I will end here as I don't want to give anything away. Highly recommend if you like the subject matter.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Custome

A sad story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 28, 2019

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I had heard of Raoul Wallenburg but had no idea what an inspiring man he was. To have come to the end of his life in such a manner was devastating to read. Certainly required reading.

Neville

You read this excellent account knowing how it was going to end

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2018

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You read this excellent account knowing how it was going to end, but hoping that it would finish differently. A well-documented account by someone with Hungarian roots about one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20thC

merlin

and was imprisoned and treated with brutal contempt by a country who as a member of the allied fight against Germany turned out

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2015

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Interesting book of historial interest , tells the story of a Swedish diplomat who used every means possible to save eastern jews from the clutches of the Nazi regime , and was imprisoned and treated with brutal contempt by a country who as a member of the allied fight against Germany turned out to be little better than that regime

5 people found this helpful

J. A. Sutton

Wallenberg the true story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2015

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A well written book and as I was only 5 at the end of the war, I find it incredible to learn about well known 'respected' heads of countries and the excuses they gave for sticking their heads in the sand. Unfortunately the world still hasn't learnt and blunders blindly on

3 people found this helpful

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