The late Tom Lantos was among the Jews helped by Raoul Wallenberg.
The Wallenberg Curse
The Search for the Missing Holocaust Hero Began in 1945. The Unending Quest Tore His Family Apart
By JOSHUA PRAGERRaoul Wallenberg in 1944 in Budapest
STOCKHOLM -- In neat script, blue ink on white letterhead, Fredrik von Dardel began writing to the stepson he had long been told to leave for dead: "Dear beloved Raoul."
It was March 24, 1956. He always wrote at his living-room table, his wife, Maria, looking on from a corner of the couch by the phone. On a chest, a spray of flowers she kept fresh stood beside a picture of her son, Raoul Wallenberg.
Mr. Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who safeguarded 20,000 Jews in Budapest in the waning months of World War II, vanished into the Soviet penal system in 1945. But the couple, then 71 and 65 years old, believed their son was alive and readied a letter for Sweden's prime minister to take to Moscow.
"We have been sustained by the hope of one day seeing you among us and again being able to kiss you and hold your hands and hear your beloved voice," his stepfather wrote in an old and elevated Swedish. "There's a room here waiting for you."
Mr. Wallenberg did not come home then, or ever. His end remains unclear. The world now knows the missing Swede as a symbol of humanitarianism -- an honorary citizen in four countries, commemorated with stamps in eight and monuments in 12, the subject of scores of films and books.
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