By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent
“I was just thinking of something that symbolizes dual heritage, and I thought Wallenberg was an outstanding example: There’s a large Scandinavian community in Seattle and there’s a growing Jewish community.”
That’s how State Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-46) recalled his idea for holding an annual dinner to honor Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Nazi-controlled Hungary who issued protective passes to Jews, saving as many as 100,000 from deportation to Auschwitz. The first few gatherings were held at a restaurant, but as attendance grew yearly, “I was amazed at the response and the interest there was in it,” Jacobsen said in a telephone interview last week. The legislator sought the assistance of Seattle’s Nordic Heritage
Museum. With the enthusiastic support of Marianne Forssblad, the museum’s director, the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Dinner became a museum-hosted fund-raising event, with proceeds from ticket sales benefiting the Washington State Holocaust Education
Resource Center (WSHERC) and the Holocaust Fund of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Pacific Northwest Region.
The featured guest speaker at this year’s dinner will be Manli Ho, daughter of Dr. Feng Shan Ho, Chinese consul general in Vienna from 1938 to 1940. The subject of an exhibition currently at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, Dr. Ho enabled thousands of Jews to escape the Holocaust by providing them with visas to Shanghai.
Forssblad characterized the dinner as “an effort to just find these people who had done something that we need to know about—
to share the stories of those people [and] to let people know that, you know, you can make a difference.” She said that while some of the dinners over the years have concentrated on Wallenberg, Manli Ho’s participation in this month’s event is “a great opportunity to focus on somebody else — not Wallenberg but somebody else — who had been equally brave in stepping forth and participating in the saving of the Jewish people.”
Klaus Stern, a Seattle resident and Auschwitz survivor who has attended the dinner since its inception, remembered how initially “We had about, oh, 10, 15 people, and it became bigger and bigger, so we had to get a bigger facility, and thanks to Sen. Jacobsen they decided to have the dinner at the Nordic Heritage Museum.” Last year’s dinner was attended by about 100 people, 20 to 30 of whom were Holocaust survivors. “We have good programs, good speakers; this year there will be an especially good speaker,” said Stern, referring to Manli Ho, who described her father’s efforts to save Jews when “Visas for Life: The Story of Dr. Feng Shan Ho” opened at the Wing Luke in February.
Sen. Ken Jacobsen, 57, is of Danish descent; born in the Danish community of Dannebrog, Nebraska, his family moved to Seattle in 1953, so “I consider myself a lifelong Seattleite,” he says. A graduate of the University of Washington, Jacobsen has traveled extensively and has served for 20 years in the Washington state Legislature, including seven terms in the House of Representatives. His wife, Rachel, is Jewish and originally from New Zealand. They have two grown daughters.
The Raoul Wallenberg Dinner emphasizes “the essential humanity of the issue of helping people in need, in spite of risks to themselves,” Jacobsen said. 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 that he died of a heart attack in prison in 1947 at age 34, but scant and ambiguous records, bureaucratic stonewalling and claims of subsequent sightings of Wallenberg in Soviet prisons have cast doubt on the “official” version of his death.
Jacobsen recounted how, while campaigning for office, he met Victor Hanzeli, a Hungarian who worked for Wallenberg in Budapest. Jacobsen wanted Hanzeli to be the speaker at the very first Wallenberg dinner, and his voice shook when he explained that Hanzeli died of cancer before the dinner could be held. One of the participants at that first gathering was
a woman from Bellingham who had been rescued by Wallenberg. “She said she’d go anywhere in the world that she could afford to to honor Raoul Wallenberg,” Jacobsen noted.
Miriam Greenbaum, executive director of WSHERC, said of Jacobsen: “He’s so modest, and he does so much….” His support for Holocaust education, she continued, is “not just something that he does once a year by supporting the Raoul Wallenberg Dinner: It’s something that he does all the time, and we really appreciate that.”
Greenbaum said that when WSHERC published a teacher’s guide and the video “Never Again, I Hope,” Jacobsen “worked with the office of the superintendent of public instruction and he helped put a package together so that this Holocaust curriculum could be in every middle school and high school [in the state]. Without his help, we wouldn’t have been able to do that.” She remarked that the center continues to receive requests for copies from teachers who want to include the Holocaust in their curricula: “It’s something that they see and they say they want to know more about the Holocaust — ‘I saw this in my school library: How can I do more?’ That’s thanks to Ken.”
IKEA is a long-time sponsor of the Raoul Wallenberg Dinner, and Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery is a supporter. Last year WSHERC and the ADL Holocaust Fund each received about $800 in proceeds from the ticket sales.
Brian David Goldberg, executive director of the ADL, Pacific Northwest Region, said the Holocaust Fund has two purposes, one of which is to bring speakers and teaching materials to schools. “The other component is combating Holocaust denial,” Goldberg said. “We’re seeing a resurgence of that on college campuses — even here at the University of Washington — and so our efforts and focus will be on providing Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Cultural Life and other Jewish groups on campus about Holocaust denial with the money that’s raised at this dinner.
“Sen. Ken Jacobsen and his wife have been just tremendous in their support and their help with the Raoul Wallenberg Dinner and in their commitment to having dialog and recognizing the contributions of Scandinavians in saving Jews during World War Two, and how fitting it is that we honor Raoul Wallenberg with this dinner for all his efforts,” he added.
“I always ask myself the question: What would I do in that situation?” Jacobsen said. “And hopefully, if it ever came to that situation, I’d make the right response, rather than say, ‘It’s none of my business.’ ”