The matter raised by Senator Norris is a long way from Ballinamore, but as the Tánaiste said, all politics are local.
Adjournment Matters. - Disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg.
May I also welcome the Tánaiste and say how pleased I am that he should have taken these motions this evening.
The case of Raoul Wallenberg is one in which I am sure he already has an interest and with which he is familiar. This is at least the fourth time I have raised this issue; the last time was October 1991. I have been interested in the case of Raoul Wallenberg for at least the last ten years. On each occasion I have raised this issue, there has been a significant increase in the information and substantial evidence suggesting that he may still be alive. In pursuing this matter I wish to place on the record my thanks to Deputy Taylor, Minister for Equality and Law Reform, who has assisted me in this matter and also Mary Banotti, MEP, who has pressed it at the European Parliament.
The Wallenberg story is one of the great stories of European history. It is a story of extraordinary nobility and courage. I am sure the Tánaiste is familiar with the Irish proverb "Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine"— it is in the shelter of others that people live. Extraordinarily, Wallenberg provided that shelter for the most despised people in Europe. Towards the end of the war, he had himself sent to Budapest. Although a scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful Swedish families, he took it on himself to assist in the attempt to save from annihilation the persecuted remnants of Hungarian Jewry. With his colleague, Per Anger, and others from the Swedish legation, he issued protective Swedish passes to the Jewish minority and went alone and unarmed on the cattle trains which were taking victims to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Many thousands of innocent people were thus saved.
Armed only with the protection of his own moral authority and status, he confronted the criminal activities of the Gestapo, the most ruthlessly organised, technologically efficent and morally insensitive agents of repression the world has ever seen. It is this which makes him important for us today, in a world where the individual is increasingly threatened by the machinery of anonymous, bureaucratic and technological decisions. Ours is a world in which, regrettably, the moral evil against which Wallenberg's qualities of humanity and compassion were miraculously successful, is still in many countries doing its terrible work, albeit in less spectacular fashion.
On 17 January 1945 Wallenberg was taken into custody in Budapest by Soviet troops. He has not been a free man since then. Subsequently the Soviet authorities denied for many years having him in their custody. They said he was killed in 1945, but in 1957, in response to pressure from the Swedish Government, they acknowledged that this position was incorrect but replaced it by revising their statement, suggesting that Wallenberg had died in custody in Moscow in 1947 in Lubyanka Prison.
However, the Swedish Government did not, and does not, accept this contention that Wallenberg died in 1947, since there was evidence that satisfied them he had been alive after that date. Indeed, it is significant that more than one-third of the evidence in the Swedish Foreign Office files concerning Wallenberg, reports of sightings, etc., has been generated in the years between 1979 and 1985. In the absence of any satisfactory evidence to the contrary, I believe it is a moral obligation on all of us to assume that Wallenberg is still alive.
I know the Tánaiste had a distinguished career as a lawyer, and in this country there is a presumption of innocence in a criminal case. I believe the same obligation rests on us to assume that Wallenberg is alive. I have letters dated within the last month from the Swedish Government indicating very clearly that this is their position. If there is any credible standard of international morality to which threatened individuals and minorities can appeal, then there must be a resolution of the Wallenberg affair which is clear and unambiguous.
I wish to indicate this new evidence referred to in my motion. I quote from documents produced at a press conference in Brussels given by Mr. Leo Tindermans, former Prime Minister of Belgium, at which a Mrs. Nathalia Schinkarenko and a Mrs. Simone Lucki spoke.
Mrs. Schinkarenko was sentenced for political offences in 1953 to 20 years imprisonment in the Gorkowska-station Sukobiakhoska camp in a region with 33 labour camps, including two for women and one hospital. At the end of September 1955 she was summoned to a concert party in one of the camps. At this a performance was given on the piano by a man who was subsequently identified to her that evening by the name of Wallenbergis Raoulis. She was aware of who he was so she was fascinated. She questioned both Wallenberg and his companion, and he acknowledged that this was, in fact, who he was. A photograph was taken which is in Brussels and has been examined by the representatives of the European Parliament and subjected to detailed forensic analysis and morphological analysis which have determined there is a direct correspondence between this photograph and the visual image of Raoul Wallenberg. In other words, there is clear evidence that no matter what the Russians have said, no matter how many times they revised their statement, Wallenberg continued to survive and we now have definitive evidence that he was alive in 1956.
I have spoken to people who claim to have spoken with him and been in prison with him in 1979. In particular, I spoke to somebody in Jerusalem three or four years ago who was in prison with him and who gave me direct oral testimony that he had seen Wallenberg towards the end of the 1970s.
In case people think it incredible that Wallenberg should survive, he would just be in his eightieth year this year. To add to the evidence I placed on the record last time, this last year alone has seen in March 1992 the Bulgarian dissident, Lewanewski, interned since 1945 and declared dead, emerge. Also recently found alive, in a Russian asylum were the American, Hamilton, detained for 30 years; in a Russian psychiatric hospital, the Pole, Struginski, aged 82, detained there since 1941, and in 1992 the American Semko emerged, who disappeared in 1945 and had been declared dead. Mrs. Schikarenko has stated that there is a region of about 100 kilometres square north east of Moscow which contains 33 concentration camps known as Gorkowskaya Gebiet station, Suchobeshwodye Square or something — I cannot pronounce it. My Irish, although limited, is slightly better than my Russian——
If the Senator cannot say it, there is little hope for us.
——and it is in this area that Wallenberg is believed to survive. The European Parliament had been in contact with the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Kozyrev, who replied with a letter as follows:
The Russian Foreign Ministry has the highest esteem for the brave acts accomplished by Raoul Wallenberg and wishes to express its deepest respect for the activities of the International Committee of Inquiry into the Raoul Wallenberg affair. In accordance with the instructions given by B.N. Yeltsin, President of Russia, we are willing to give your organisation the necessary support in clarifying the fate of Raoul Wallenberg and helping to establish the truth in this complex affair.
I would like to draw the Tánaiste's attention to Resolution 1742 and 1743/92 of the European Parliament on the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. It is a catalogue of the case of Wallenberg and the demands of the European Parliament. I am confident that the Tánaiste will add the voice of Ireland to this plea for a resolution of the matter.
We have all been guilty of silence. It is not just the Russians. We too ignored the case of Wallenberg. It made us more comfortable to think he was dead; there was a nice finality to that. After the war, a large number of criminals such as Walter Rauf, the inventor of the gas chamber, Josef Mengele, the "Doctor" of Auschwitz and Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the final solution escaped with the connivance of some of the authorities in Europe to South America, where they died in bathing accidents. It is extraordinary that Wallenberg's fate should have been that of the Old Testament King David, recorded in psalm 142, and I quote: "I looked on my right hand and beheld, but there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul". This, most bitterly, is what the NKVD interrogators said to Wallenberg in 1949. They said: "Nobody cares about you, you are forgotten, the world had decided to ignore you."
I appeal to the Tánaiste to take strong action. With regard to the Russian Government, he would be pushing an open door. I would also ask him to consider doing something that has been done in Canada, Israel and in the United States of America, that is to confer honorary citizenship upon Raoul Wallenberg as a tribute to the Irish people, who have been conscientiously moved in this matter, as they were moved in the cases of East Timor, Tibet and Nicaragua. Is it possible under our Constitution to confer the status of honorary citizen of Ireland upon Raoul Wallenberg? Perhaps this House would be an appropriate place to introduce such a motion.
Your time is up, Senator Norris.
Could I conclude with one sentence? I have come back from India where I spoke briefly about Wallenberg in a human rights debate. There I invoked Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai lama and Raoul Wallenberg. If there is to be world peace we must endorse the actions of such people as these but what has happened? Gandhi was shot and the Dalai lama has been ignored. I understand it is not possible for the Government to receive his representative and I regret this.
That is not true.
I am glad to hear the Tánaiste say that and I would expect no less from him. The case of Wallenberg was left, until recently, in silence. I believe that Ireland as a neutral country which has never been involved in a regressive war and with a colonial past — if we have Wallenberg as an honorary citizen — can courteously request detailed and specific information on his case. I hope the Government will continue, as former Deputy Calleary, the then Minister of State for Foreign Affairs assured me they agreed to do, to believe that Wallenberg survives.
I would like to thank Senator Norris for raising again the issue of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. It is one which remains of considerable concern internationally. Senator Norris has been tireless in his efforts, over a number of years, to focus attention on this case, and I commend him for his activities in this regard.
The efforts of Raoul Wallenberg to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the fate that awaited them in the concentration camps of the Third Reich shine like a beacon across the years. Half a century ago, horrors of genocide on a massive scale blighted most of Europe. Today, when once again we see the horrors of genocide starting to reappear on our continent, this debate serves as a timely reminder of the debt that we owe to men such as Wallenberg, who risked their own lives so that the lives of others might be saved.
Earlier debates on this issue took place against the background of a regime in the Soviet Union which, while it was becoming a little more open to pressure from the West for a response in regard to a number of issues of human rights concern, still maintained the cloak of secrecy which made it extremely difficult, in some cases, to get to the truth. Unfortunately, that was the case with regard to efforts to establish the fate of Wallenberg. For many years, the Soviet authorities denied altogether that he had been arrested and that they had knowledge of where he was being held. In 1957, the then Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union announced that he had died of a heart attack in July 1947, while in Soviet custody. This remained the official Soviet position.
The official Soviet position, however, does not appear to have been supported by any direct evidence, and it was brought into serious doubt by the testimony of several individuals who claimed to have seen Wallenberg at a later date. Perhaps it should also be said that it was at variance with other Soviet reports. For example, the Soviet Ambassador to Sweden in 1989 states that Wallenberg had been killed by Soviet agents shortly after his arrest. Because of the widespread international concern about the fate of Wallenberg and the failure of the Soviet authorities to provide any satisfactory explanation, a number of efforts were made to try to persuade the Soviet authorities to make genuine efforts to establish either the whereabouts of Wallenberg or, if he is not alive, accurate information about his fate.
Successive Irish Governments, on a number of occasions, made known their concern to the Soviet authorities. These approaches were made within the framework of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. There were some signs that the Soviet Government was becoming more willing to respond to these pressures. This change of attitude was undoubtedly influenced, to a very large extent, by the far-reaching reforms introduced by President Gorbachev. A non-governmental commission, comprising international experts, was given access to a large number of files containing information about foreigners held in the Soviet Union in the early post-war period. In September 1991, the newly-appointed Chairman of the KGB, Mr. Bakatin, transmitted to the Swedish authorities a number of documents from the KGB archives. These documents did not however clear up the questions which remained about Wallenberg's fate.
A very significant development in September 1991 was the agreement of the Soviet authorities to the establishment of a Swedish/Soviet Joint Working Group to investigate this case. I understand that this Working Group, which comprises representatives of the Swedish Government as well as the representatives of a number of Russian ministries, has been meeting regularly since its establishment. At its plenary sessions, reports of work carried on in the intervening periods are considered.
The Joint Working Group has been following two main lines of enquiry: first, a detailed search in the archives of the Russian ministries; interviews with survivors from the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The search of archival material has focused principally on the archives of the security services, but it has extended also to the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence and the Interior. It is being carried out by representatives of the Russian Ministries and independent Russian experts, including representatives of the Memorial Society and the Parliamentary Committee responsible for the transfer of documents from security ministries to the State archives. A considerable number of documents have been examined. For the most part, these comprise standard administrative records relating to the movement of those imprisoned. Wallenberg's personal file does not seem to have survived, but there are records relating to his transfer from Budapest to Moscow and subsequent movements in Moscow. In some of these records, efforts had been made at some point to erase his name. These references cease in July 1947, and there is nothing to prove that Wallenberg has been alive since then.
There appear to be no documents surviving relating to the reasons for Wallenberg's arrest, to the content of his subsequent interrogation in Moscow or indeed, to his treatment throughout the Stalinist era. There are, however, a number of documents, from the early 1950s on, relating to the handling of the case. It is clear that, from 1953 on, it was being discussed at the highest level. There is no documentary evidence surviving about Wallenberg's driver, who was arrested with him in Budapest.
The second line of inquiry which the joint working group is following consists of interviews with surviving witnesses. The interview group includes representatives of the Swedish as well as Russian Governments and also the Russian Parliament. Most of the officers who dealt with Wallenberg's case between 1945 and 1947 are now dead. The group has interviewed one person who interrogated Wallenberg, but this witness claims that he cannot remember the details. A number of translators and junior officers who were present at such interrogations have also been interviewed but these either do not remember or are unwilling to talk. It is intended to reinterview a number of witnesses, and the group is also following up with interviews of other witnesses who claim to have information.
I understand that the Russian side has been fully co-operative in the work of the joint working group. The position of the Swedish Government remains that, so long as there is no firm evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that there is a possibility that Wallenberg remains alive.
Can we be any more hopeful, at this juncture, that the efforts of so many over the years to establish the truth may now bear fruit? It might perhaps be argued that, as time goes by, the hope of finding further documents or surviving documents steadily diminishes. On the other hand, the ongoing reform process in Russia makes it progressively harder for those who identify with the Communist régime of the Soviet Union to continue to withhold information and cover up past activities.
Information has come to light, and continues to come to light, about many of the activities of the Stalinist era. Wallenberg, too, was not a person of little consequence but someone who could have proved to be a major embarrassment to the Soviet authorities. It seems hard to believe, in these circumstances, that we will not eventually get closer to the truth.
I have listened with interest to what Senator Norris said about continuing disclosures and I have noted carefully his remarks. I will give very careful consideration to the possibilities for active intervention by the Government in this case.
The leading role in the current efforts to establish Wallenberg's fate has been taken by the Swedish Government. That is appropriate since Wallenberg was a Swedish citizen and an official representative of Sweden at the time of his disappearance. I am willing to provide any appropriate assistance I can to Sweden in its efforts at this point. I also hope that the Russian authorities will continue to co-operate fully with the work of the joint commission. It is in their interest, too, that the truth be finally established. I am sure that, when it is, the Russian authorities will ensure that justice is done.
I share the concerns the Senator has raised with regard to this case. He may be aware that it is a case in which I have also had an interest for some time. If there is any possibility that Raoul Wallenberg is still alive and that he can be found, then humanity, for whom he did so much, should spare no effort on his behalf.
We may also need to face the possibility that, despite these efforts, we do not find what we are seeking but the importance of the efforts in themselves should not be underestimated. They provide a practical example of the new spirit and attachment to democratic values that is emerging in Russia. We have already witnessed in the last week the Russian people expressing their views on their Government in a way that has never been seen before. That is a sign of hope, and one we should bear in mind when we are considering Raoul Wallenberg. If anything can be done, I can assure the Senator and the House that I will leave no stone unturned.
I am grateful to the Tánaiste for his very full and detailed reply. I am aware of his personal interest and I hope it continues. Perhaps one item will be revised, and that is the statement that there is nothing now to prove that he survived since 1947. The detailed documents from the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Security recently places this in a different context and I hope the Tánaiste will consider my suggestion of conferring honorary citizenship on Wallenberg.
It will be considered.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.35 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 29 April 1993.