A different sort of hero

Press, 4 February 1986, Page 19

A different sort of hero

"Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” (the new miniseries beginning on Two this evening) is the story of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved more than 100,000 Hungarian Jews from certain death in Nazi concentration camps, before vanishing somewhere within the Soviet Union. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Wallenberg’s mysterious disappearance. Richard Chamberlain has the leading role in the two-part mini-series. The story begins during the last year of World War Two when 32-year-oid Raoul Wallenberg, a distant cousin of the wealthy banking family considered to be “the Rockefellers of Sweden” was given a instant diplomatic status and dispatched to the Swedish Legation in

Budapest His instructions were to do whatever he considered necessary to save lives. It was a delicate situation to be launched into. Wallenberg’s mission took him into the heart of Nazi territory and into direct conflict with the notorious Adolf Eichmann. The Nazi leader had already got rid of 400,000 Hungarian Jews and was planning to rid himself as quickly as possible of the 230,000 still living in Budapest — Eichmann had sworn to destroy all Hungary’s Jews and Wallenberg’s diplomatic status would hardly protect him from the Nazi’s wrath should he thwart those plans. Nevertheless, Wallenberg fearlessly set about printing his own Swedish passports, and distributing them to Jews . . .