By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent
In 1944, Raoul Wallenberg became Marianne Balshone’s hero, “and over half a century later,” she says, “he still is.”
Balshone was speaking of the 31-year-old Swedish diplomat in Nazi-controlled Budapest who issued protective passes to Hungarian Jews and saved as many as 100,000 —Balshone and her immediate family included —from deportation to Auschwitz.
She will be the guest speaker at the the 12th Annual Raoul Wallenberg Dinner on Tuesday, May 13, which is sponsored and organized by State Senator Ken Jacobsen (D-46), Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum and the Anti-Defamation League, Pacific Northwest Region.
The yearly dinner to honor Wallenberg was the idea of Sen. Jacobsen. With the support of Marianne Forssblad, director of the Nordic Heritage Museum, Jacobsen’s suggestion became a museum-hosted event, with proceeds from ticket sales benefiting the Washington State Holocaust Educational Resource Center and the Holocaust Fund of the Seattle office of the ADL.
“For us it’s a very important event,” said Forssblad, “both to keep Raoul Wallenberg’s memory alive and what he did alive. That’s the important thing: that human beings can make a difference.”
Sen. Jacobsen, who is of Danish descent, said he was looking forward to hearing Balshone speak, pointing out that “she’s a living witness to the work that Wallenberg did.”
Balshone was born into an affluent Jewish family in Budapest. In a recent telephone interview, she described how regent Miklos Horthy’s government protected Hungarian Jews, even though Hungary was a German ally. This changed in March 1944, on what should have been Balshone’s wedding day, when the Nazis occupied Hungary. They sent her fiancé into forced labor, though they were eventually married later.
Many of Balshone’s relatives were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. Balshone managed to acquire forged papers that identifed her as a non-Jew, for which, if discovered, she noted “I would have been shot on the spot.”
She also refused to wear a Star of David, stating, “I did not want to carry the label on me that right away said that I was a target.”
Then came a stroke of luck. “We heard through the grapevine that [a Swedish diplomat] by the name of Raoul Wallenberg came to Budapest with the sole purpose of saving Jewish lives,” she said. With limited resources but armed with great charisma, Wallenberg issued protective passes to Jews identifying them as Swedish subjects, and bought buildings in Budapest ostensibly for the Swedish legation (government), but in fact to house Jews, among them Balshone’s parents.
Balshone, meanwhile stayed in hiding places around Budapest while trying to acquire food for her family. “There was bombing by then, there was strafing by planes…there was artillery fire, and there were gendarmes who questioned people on the street,” she said. In September 1944 she joined her parents in one of Wallenberg’s legation buildings.
From a window of the building, Balshone would witness 80 to 100 Jews, including her husband, being marched by the Nazis in the direction of the Danube. She explained, “We knew what that meant, because by then nobody was taken to Auschwitz; there were no transports anymore.” The Germans planned to shoot their prisoners and throw their corpses in the river. The building’s residents telephoned Wallenberg, who raced to the river to prevent the Nazis from carrying out the executions.
“He said, ‘You cannot shoot these people: They are my people, they are under the protection of the Swedish crown and they are Swedish, and you cannot touch them,’ ” Balshone recounted. “With that charisma and persuasiveness he was able to halt these terrible killers, and a few hours later we looked out, and there was the whole Jewish crowd, including my husband, walking back.”
Wallenberg, hailed as a hero for his rescue efforts, was arrested on charges of espionage after Budapest fell to the Red Army in January 1945; the Soviets later claimed he died of a heart attack in prison in 1947 at age 34, but sloppy documentation, bureaucratic intransigence and claims of subsequent sightings of Wallenberg in Soviet prisons have cast doubt on the official version of his death.
Marianne Balshone and her husband emigrated to the United States in 1947. She now lives in Florida. She has lectured extensively on Wallenberg and Hungary during the Holocaust, and will speak at several Seattle-area schools during her visit to the Northwest, which is being facilitated by Medina resident Eugene Goddess.
Miriam Greenbaum, WSHERC’s co-executive director, said that “Mrs. Balshone’s commitment to educate children and adults about tolerance and the importance of hope is a fitting memorial to Raoul Wallenberg.”
The Twelfth Annual Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Dinner is open to the public and will be held on Tuesday, May 13, at the Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 NW 67th St., Seattle. The event begins with exhibits and open bar at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6. Tickets are $35. Proceeds benefit Holocaust education in Washington State. Reservations are advised. Traditional Swedish smorgasbord will be provided by IKEA, with Ramlösa bottled mineral water provided by Howard Rossbach. For reservations, call (206)789-5707, or visit www.nordicmuseum.com for more information.