West Bank Governed by Palestinian National Authority (Palestinian territories) v t e

Jenin Qabatiya Ya'bad Yamun JENIN Tulkarm TULKARM TUBAS Tubas Nablus NABLUS QALQILYA Qalqilyah SALFIT Salfit RAMALLAH AND AL-BIREH Ramallah al-Bireh Beitunia Jericho JERICHO Jerusalem (al-Quds) JERUSALEM Bethlehem BETHLEHEM HEBRON Halhul Hebron Yatta Dura ad-Dhahiriya

The West Bank (Arabic: الضفة الغربية‎ aḍ-Ḍaffah l-Ġarbiyyah, Hebrew: הגדה המערבית‎, HaGadah HaMa'aravit also known as Hebrew: יהודה והשומרון‎ Yehuda ve-Ha'Shomron (Judea and Samaria)^[1][2]) of the Jordan River is the landlocked^[3] geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The West Bank also contains a significant coastline along the western bank of the Dead Sea. Since 1967, most of the West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation and is referred to as Judea and Samaria Area by Israel. A smaller part of the West Bank is administered by the Israeli civilian authorities as part of Jerusalem District.

For 400 years immediately prior to the First World War, the area now known as the West Bank was under Ottoman rule as part of the province of Syria. At the 1920 San Remo conference, the victorious Allied powers (UK, US, etc.) allocated the area to the British Mandate of Palestine. Following World War II, United Nations passed the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) Future Government of Palestine which aimed to establish a two-state solution within Palestine. The Resolution designated the territory described as "the hill country of Samaria and Judea" (including what is now known as the "West Bank") as part of the proposed Arab state, but following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War this area was captured by Trans-Jordan (renamed Jordan in 1949). The name "West Bank" was proposed by the Jordanian authorities to describe the area west of Jordan River. The 1949 Armistice Agreements defined its interim boundary. From 1948 until 1967, the area was under Jordanian rule, and Jordan did not officially relinquish its claim to the area until 1988, ceding its territorial claims to the PLO and eventually stripping West Bank Palestinians of Jordanian citizenship.^[4][5] Jordan's claim was never formally recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom.^[6][7] The West Bank was occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in June, 1967. With the exception of East Jerusalem and the former Israeli-Jordanian no man's land, the West Bank was not annexed by Israel but remained under Israeli military control. Most of the residents are Arabs, although a large number of Israeli settlements have been built in the region since 1967. Close to 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank settlements, annexed East Jerusalem and the former Israeli-Jordanian no man's land areas.^[8]

The West Bank has a land area of 5,640 km² (including East Jerusalem),^[9] and 220 km² water (the northwest quarter of the Dead Sea). Its population is 1,714,845 (June 2010)^[10] according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). As of December 2010, 327,750 Israelis live in the 121 officially-recognised settlements in the West Bank and 192,000 Israelis live in settlements in East Jerusalem.^[11]

Origin of the name[link]

West Bank[link]

The name West Bank, a translation of the Arabic term ad-difa’a al-gharbiya, was coined by the Jordanians after the territory, conquered by Jordan's Arab Legion in 1948, was annexed to Transjordan, forming the new Kingdom of Jordan in 1949–50. This annexation by Jordan was only recognized by a handful of countries among them Britain and Pakistan; most international bodies and even the Arab League and most Palestinians rejected the legality of the Jordanian annexation. The term was chosen to differentiate the "West bank of the River Jordan", namely the newly annexed territory, from the "East Bank" of this river, namely Transjordan. Before the end of WW1 and the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine (that then lead into the modern history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) the last state to control the land today referred to as the West Bank was the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire administrative region that included the modern West Bank was referred to by the Ottomans as the Beirut Vilayet, and the specific disctrict that included the modern West Bank was known as the Sanjak of Nablus. The modern West Bank often continued to be referred to by Jews and Christians around the world even during Ottoman rule by the Biblical terms "Judea and Samaria". This is the term the government of Israel uses for the territory today (although the International community, apart from Israeli authorities themselves, rules that Israeli control of the West Bank is illegal under international law; International law and Israeli settlements)

Cisjordan[link]

The neo-Latin name Cisjordan or Cis-Jordan (literally "on this side of the [River] Jordan") is the usual name for the territory in the Romance languages and Hungarian. The analogous Transjordan has historically been used to designate the region now comprising the state of Jordan which lies on the "other side" of the Jordan River. In English, the name Cisjordan is also occasionally used to designate the entire region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, particularly in the historical context of the British Mandate and earlier times. The use of Cisjordan to refer to the smaller region discussed in this article, while common in scholarly fields including archaeology, is rare in general English usage; the name West Bank is standard usage for this geo-political entity in English and some of the other Germanic languages. For the low-lying area immediately west of the Jordan, the name Jordan Valley is used instead.^{[citation needed]}

History[link]

Boundaries defined in the UN partition plan of 1947:

  Area assigned to a Jewish state;

    Area assigned to an Arab state;

    Corpus separatum of Jerusalem (neither Jewish nor Arab).

---

Boundaries under the armistice of 1949:

    Arab territory from 1949 to 1967;

      Israel in the 1949 armistice lines.

The region now known as the West Bank was a part of the territory entrusted to the United Kingdom by the League of Nations under the British Mandate for Palestine after World War I. The terms of the Mandate called for the creation in Palestine of a Jewish national home without prejudicing the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population of Palestine.^[12] The current border of the West Bank was not a dividing line during the Mandate period, but is the armistice line between the forces of the kingdom of Jordan and those of Israel at the close of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

When the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of a plan to partition the British Mandate (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II)) into a Jewish State, an Arab State, and an internationally administered enclave of Jerusalem^[13], a more broad region of the modern-day West Bank was assigned to the Arab State. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War most of the area assigned to the Arab State was occupied by Jordanian and Iraqi forces. Jordan annexed the West Bank after the war, and the annexation was recognized by the UK.^[7] The idea of an independent Palestinian state was not raised by the Arab populations there at the time, due to lack of political representation. King Abdullah of Jordan was crowned King of Jerusalem and granted Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem Jordanian citizenship.^[14]

During the 1950s, there was a significant influx of Palestinian refugees and violence together with Israeli reprisal raids across the "Green Line".^{[citation needed]}

In May 1967 Egypt ordered out U.N. peacekeeping troops and re-militarized the Sinai peninsula, and commenced an economic blockade of Israel through the straits of Tiran at the same time. Fearing an Egyptian attack, the government of Levi Eshkol attempted to restrict any confrontation to Egypt alone. In particular it did whatever it could to avoid fighting Jordan in a two-front war. However, "carried along by a powerful current of Arab nationalism", on 30 May 1967 King Hussein flew to Egypt and signed a mutual defense treaty in which the two countries agreed to consider "any armed attack on either state or its forces as an attack on both".^[15][16] On 5 June, the Israel Defense Forces launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt^[17] which began what came to be known as the Six Day War.

Jordan soon began shelling targets in west Jerusalem, Netanya, and the outskirts of Tel Aviv.^[18] Despite this, Israel sent a message promising not to initiate any action against Jordan if it stayed out of the war. Hussein replied that it was too late, "the die was cast".^[15] On the evening of 5 June the Israeli cabinet convened to decide what to do; Yigal Allon and Menahem Begin argued that this was an opportunity to take the Old City of Jerusalem, but Eshkol decided to defer any decision until Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin could be consulted.^[19] Uzi Narkis made a number of proposals for military action, including the capture of Latrun, but the cabinet turned him down. The Israeli military only commenced action after Government House was captured, which was seen as a threat to the security of Jerusalem.^[20] On 6 June Dayan encircled the city, but, fearing damage to holy places and having to fight in built-up areas, he ordered his troops not to go in. However, upon hearing that the U.N. was about to declare a ceasefire, he changed his mind, and without cabinet clearance, decided to take the city.^[19] After fierce fighting with Jordanian troops in and around the Jerusalem area, Israel captured the Old City on 7 June.

No specific decision had been made to capture any other territories controlled by Jordan. After the Old City was captured, Dayan told his troops to dig in to hold it. When an armored brigade commander entered the West Bank on his own initiative, and stated that he could see Jericho, Dayan ordered him back. However, when intelligence reports indicated that Hussein had withdrawn his forces across the Jordan river, Dayan ordered his troops to capture the West Bank.^[20] Over the next two days, the IDF swiftly captured the rest of the West Bank and blew up the Abdullah and Hussein Bridges over the Jordan, thereby severing the West Bank from the East.^[21] According to Narkis:

First, the Israeli government had no intention of capturing the West Bank. On the contrary, it was opposed to it. Second, there was not any provocation on the part of the IDF. Third, the rein was only loosened when a real threat to Jerusalem's security emerged. This is truly how things happened on 5 June, although it is difficult to believe. The end result was something that no one had planned.^[22]

The Arab League's Khartoum conference in September declared continuing belligerency, and stated the league's principles of "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it".^[23] In November 1967, UN Security Council Resolution 242 was unanimously adopted, calling for "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles:" "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" (see semantic dispute) and: "Termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and respect for the right of every state in the area to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries. Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon entered into consultations with the UN Special representative over the implementation of 242.^[24] The text did not refer to the PLO or to any Palestinian representative because none was recognized at that time.

Until 1974, Jordan demanded the restoration of its control over the West Bank.^[25] In 1988, Jordan ceded its claims to the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization, as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."^[26][27]

Administration[link]

Map of West Bank settlements and closures in January 2006: Yellow = Palestinian urban centers. Light pink = closed military areas or settlement boundary areas or areas isolated by the Israeli West Bank Barrier; dark pink = settlements, outposts or military bases. The black line = route of the Barrier

The 1993 Oslo Accords declared the final status of the West Bank to be subject to a forthcoming settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Following these interim accords, Israel withdrew its military rule from some parts of the West Bank, which was divided into three administrative divisions of the Oslo Accords:

Area A, 2.7%, full civil control of the Palestinian Authority, comprises Palestinian towns, and some rural areas away from Israeli settlements in the north (between Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, and Tulkarm), the south (around Hebron), and one in the center south of Salfit.^[29] Area B, 25.2%, adds other populated rural areas, many closer to the center of the West Bank. Area C contains all the Israeli settlements, roads used to access the settlements, buffer zones (near settlements, roads, strategic areas, and Israel), and almost all of the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert.

Areas A and B are themselves divided among 227 separate areas (199 of which are smaller than 2 square kilometres (1 sq mi)) that are separated from one another by Israeli-controlled Area C. ^[30] Areas A, B, and C cross the 11 Governorates used as administrative divisions by the Palestinian National Authority, Israel, and the IDF and named after major cities.

According to B'tselem, while the vast majority of the Palestinian population lives in areas A and B, the vacant land available for construction in dozens of villages and towns across the West Bank is situated on the margins of the communities and defined as area C.^[31]

An assessment by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in 2007 found that approximately 40% of the West Bank was taken up by Israeli infrastructure. The infrastructure, consisting of settlements, the barrier, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli declared nature reserves and the roads that accompany them is off-limits or tightly controlled to Palestinians.^[32]

In June 2011, the Independent Commission for Human Rights published a report whose findings included that the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were subjected in 2010 to an “almost systematic campaign” of human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as by Israeli authorities, with the security forces belonging to the PA and Hamas being responsible for torture, arrests and arbitrary detentions.^[33]

Geography and Climate[link]

The West Bank has an area of 5,680 kilometres (3,530 mi) and has generally rugged terrain. The climate is mostly desert. The total length of the land boundaries of the region are 404 km.^[34] The terrain is mostly rugged dissected upland, some vegetation in west, but barren in the east. The elevation span between the shoreline of the Dead Sea at -408 m to the highest point at Tall Asur 1,022 m.^[34] The area of West Bank is landlocked; highlands are main recharge area for Israel's coastal aquifers.^[34]

The are none to little natural resources in the area except the arable land, which comprises 27% of the land area of the region. It is mostly used as permanent pastures (32% of arable land) and seasonal agricultural uses (40%).^[34] Forests and woodland comprise just 1%, with no permanent crops.^[34]

Demographics[link]

West Bank's population pyramid in 2005

In December 2007, an official Census conducted by the Palestinian Authority found that the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) was 2,345,000.^[35][36] However, the World Bank and American-Israeli Demographic Research Group identified a 32% discrepancy between first-grade enrollment statistics documented by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS)’ 2007 projections,^[37] with questions also raised about the PCBS’ growth assumptions for the period 1997–2003.^[38] Several media outlets^{[citation needed]} have suggested that PCBS data inflate the 2007 census figures by 30%, contradicting both the Palestinian Ministry of Education's enrollment data and actual emigration growth documented by Israeli Border Police, which in 2006 observed 25,000 Palestinian Arabs emigrating from Palestinian Authority-controlled territories.^[39] These data sets suggest that the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank in 2007 was approximately 1.5 million.

There are over 350,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, as well as around 210,000 living in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. There are also small ethnic groups, such as the Samaritans living in and around Nablus, numbering in the hundreds. Interactions between the two societies have generally declined following the Palestinian First Intifada and Second Intifada, though an economic relationship often exists between adjacent Israeli and Palestinian Arab villages.^{[citation needed]}

As of October 2007, around 23,000 Palestinians in the West Bank work in Israel every day with another 9,200 working in Israeli settlements. In addition, around 10,000 Palestinian traders from the West Bank are allowed to travel every day into Israel.^[40]

Approximately 30% of Palestinians living in the West Bank are refugees or descendants of refugees from villages and towns located in what became Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (see Palestinian exodus), 754,263 in June 2008 according to UNRWA statistics.^[41][42][43] A 2011 EU report noted that between 200,000 and 320,000 Palestinians used to live in the Jordan Valley, most of which is in Area C, in 1967, but demolition of Palestinian homes and prevention of new buildings has seen the number drop to 56,000.^[44] In a similar period, the Jewish population in Area C has grown from 1,200 to 310,000.^[44]

Significant population centers[link]

The most densely populated part of the region is a mountainous spine, running north-south, where the cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, al-Bireh, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and Yattah are located as well as the Israeli settlements of Ariel, Ma'ale Adumim and Betar Illit. Ramallah, although relatively mid in population compared to other major cities as Hebron, Nablus and Jenin, serves as an economic and political center for the Palestinians. Near Ramallah the new city of Rawabi is under construction.^[47][48] Jenin in the extreme north and is the capital of north of the West Bank and is on the southern edge of the Jezreel Valley. Modi'in Illit, Qalqilyah and Tulkarm are in the low foothills adjacent to the Israeli Coastal Plain, and Jericho and Tubas are situated in the Jordan Valley, north of the Dead Sea.

Religion[link]

The population of the West Bank is 75 percent Muslim while 17 percent is Jewish. The remaining 8 percent are Christians and others.^[10]

Transportation and communication[link]

Roads[link]

Bedouin and his camel on the road to Jericho

The West Bank has 5,147 km (3,198 mi) of roads, all of which are paved.^[10]

In response to shootings by Palestinians, some highways, especially those leading to Israeli settlements, were completely inaccessible to cars with Palestinian license plates, while many other roads were restricted only to public transportation and to Palestinians who have special permits from Israeli authorities.^[49][50][51] Due to numerous shooting assaults targeting Israeli vehicles, the IDF bars Israelis from using most of the original roads in the West Bank.^{[citation needed]}

At certain times, Israel maintained more than 600 checkpoints or roadblocks in the region.^[52] As such, movement restrictions were also placed on main roads traditionally used by Palestinians to travel between cities, and such restrictions are still blamed for poverty and economic depression in the West Bank.^[53] Since the beginning of 2005, there has been some amelioration of these restrictions. According to reports, "Israel has made efforts to improve transport contiguity for Palestinians travelling in the West Bank. It has done this by constructing underpasses and bridges (28 of which have been constructed and 16 of which are planned) that link Palestinian areas separated from each other by Israeli settlements and bypass roads"^[54] and by removal of checkpoints and physical obstacles, or by not reacting to Palestinian removal or natural erosion of other obstacles. "The impact (of these actions) is most felt by the easing of movement between villages and between villages and the urban centres."^[54]

Checkpoint before entering Jericho, 2005

However, some obstacles encircling major Palestinian urban hubs, particularly Nablus and Hebron, have remained. In addition, the IDF prohibits Israeli citizens from entering Palestinian-controlled land (Area A).

As of August 2007^[update], a divided highway is currently under construction that will pass through the West Bank. The highway has a concrete wall dividing the two sides, one designated for Israeli vehicles, the other for Palestinian. The wall is designed to allow Palestinians to pass north-south through Israeli-held land and facilitate the building of additional Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem neighborhood.^[55]

Airports[link]

The only airport in the West Bank is the Atarot Airport near Ramallah, but it has been closed since 2001. However, the airport is located within the Israeli unilaterally expanded limits of Jerusalem, so Israel considers it part of its territory.

Telecom[link]

The Palestinian Paltel telecommunication companies provide communication services such as landline, cellular network and Internet in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Dialling code +970 is used in the West Bank and all over the Palestinian territories. Until 2007, the Palestinian mobile market was monopolized by Jawwal. A new mobile operator for the territories launched in 2009 under the name of Wataniya Telecom. The number of Internet users increased from 35,000 in 2000 to 356,000 in 2010.^[56]

Radio and television[link]

The Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts from an AM station in Ramallah on 675 kHz; numerous local privately owned stations are also in operation. Most Palestinian households have a radio and TV, and satellite dishes for receiving international coverage are widespread. Recently, PalTel announced and has begun implementing an initiative to provide ADSL broadband internet service to all households and businesses. Israel's cable television company HOT, satellite television provider (DBS) Yes, AM and FM radio broadcast stations and public television broadcast stations all operate. Broadband internet service by Bezeq's ADSL and by the cable company are available as well. The Al-Aqsa Voice broadcasts from Dabas Mall in Tulkarem at 106.7 FM. The Al-Aqsa TV station shares these offices.

Higher education[link]

Birzeit University, 2007

Seven Universities have been operating in the West Bank since 1967:

• Bethlehem University, a Roman Catholic institution partially funded by the Vatican, opened its doors in 1973.^[57]
• In 1975, Birzeit College (located in the town of Bir Zeit north of Ramallah) became Birzeit University after adding third- and fourth-year college-level programs.^[58]
• An-Najah College in Nablus likewise became An-Najah National University in 1977.^[59]
• Hebron University was established as College of Shari'a in 1971 and became Hebron University in 1980.^[60]
• Al-Quds University was founded in 1995, unifying several colleges and faculties in and around East Jerusalem.^[61]
• In 2000, the Arab American University – the only private university in the West Bank – was founded outside of Zababdeh, with the purpose of providing courses according to the American system of education.^[62]
• In 2007, the College of Judea and Samaria in the Israeli settlement Ariel upgraded itself to “Ariel University Center of Samaria”.^[63] The name change was recognized by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2010, but so far the school does not have the same status as the accredited universities in Israel.^[64]

Most universities in the West Bank have politically active student bodies, and elections of student council officers are normally along party affiliations. Although the establishment of the universities was initially allowed by the Israeli authorities, some were sporadically ordered closed by the Israeli Civil Administration during the 1970s and 1980s to prevent political activities and violence against the IDF. Some universities remained closed by military order for extended periods during years immediately preceding and following the first Palestinian Intifada, but have largely remained open since the signing of the Oslo Accords despite the advent of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (Second Intifada) in 2000.

The founding of Palestinian universities has greatly increased education levels among the population in the West Bank. According to a Birzeit University study, the percentage of Palestinians choosing local universities as opposed to foreign institutions has been steadily increasing; as of 1997, 41% of Palestinians with bachelor degrees had obtained them from Palestinian institutions.^[65] According to UNESCO, Palestinians are one of the most highly educated groups in the Middle East "despite often difficult circumstances".^[66] The literacy rate among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) is 94,6% for 2009.^[67]

Legal status[link]

Since 1979 the United Nations Security Council,^[68] the United Nations General Assembly,^[69] the United States,^[70] the EU,^[71] the International Court of Justice,^[72] and the International Committee of the Red Cross^[73] refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. General Assembly resolution 58/292 (17 May 2004) affirmed that the Palestinian people have the right to sovereignty over the area.^[74]

Supporters of the Israeli right^[who?] have argued that since the area has never in modern times been an independent state, there is no legitimate claimant to the area other than the present occupier, Israel. This argument however is not accepted by the international community and international lawmaking bodies, virtually all of whom regard Israel's activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occupation that denies the fundamental principle of self-determination found in the Article One of the United Nations Charter, and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Further, UN Security Council Resolution 242 notes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" regardless of whether the war in which the territory was acquired was offensive or defensive. Prominent Israeli human rights organizations such as B'tselem also refer to the Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occupation.^[75] John Quigley has noted that "...a state that uses force in self-defense may not retain territory it takes while repelling an attack. If Israel had acted in self-defense, that would not justify its retention of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Under the UN Charter there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. The response of other states to Israel's occupation shows a virtually unanimous opinion that even if Israel's action were defensive, its retention of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was not."^[76]

International law (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) prohibits "transfers of the population of an occupying power to occupied territories", incurring a responsibility on the part of Israel's government to not settle Israeli citizens in the West Bank.^[77]

Some countries, including Brazil,^[78] El Salvador,^[79] and Argentina,^[80] recognize the State of Palestine and consider the West Bank to be territory of that state.

[edit] Political positions

The future status of the West Bank, together with the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean shore, has been the subject of negotiation between the Palestinians and Israelis, although the current Road Map for Peace, proposed by the "Quartet" comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, envisions an independent Palestinian state in these territories living side by side with Israel (see also proposals for a Palestinian state). However, the "Road Map" states that in the first phase, Palestinians must end all attacks on Israel, whereas Israel must dismantle outposts. Since neither condition has been met since the Road Map was "accepted", by all sides, final negotiations have not yet begun on major political differences.

The Palestinian Authority believes that the West Bank ought to be a part of their sovereign nation, and that the presence of Israeli military control is a violation of their right to Palestinian Authority rule. The United Nations calls the West Bank and Gaza Strip Israeli-occupied territories. The United States State Department also refers to the territories as occupied.^[81][82][83] Many Israelis and their supporters prefer the term disputed territories, because they claim part of the territory for themselves, and state the land has not, in 2000 years, been sovereign.

Israel argues^{[citation needed]} that its presence is justified because:

1. Israel's eastern border has never been defined by anyone;
2. The disputed territories have not been part of any state since the time of the Ottoman Empire;
3. According to the Camp David Accords with Egypt, the 1994 agreement with Jordan and the Oslo Accords with the PLO, the final status of the territories would be fixed only when there was a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinian public opinion opposes Israeli military and settler presence on the West Bank as a violation of their right to statehood and sovereignty.^[84] Israeli opinion is split into a number of views:

• Complete or partial withdrawal from the West Bank in hopes of peaceful coexistence in separate states (sometimes called the "land for peace" position); (In a 2003 poll, 76% of Israelis supported a peace agreement based on that principle).^[85]
• Maintenance of a military presence in the West Bank to reduce Palestinian terrorism by deterrence or by armed intervention, while relinquishing some degree of political control;
• Annexation of the West Bank while considering the Palestinian population with Palestinian Authority citizenship with Israeli residence permit as per the Elon Peace Plan;
• Annexation of the West Bank and assimilation of the Palestinian population to fully fledged Israeli citizens;
• Transfer of the East Jerusalem Palestinian population (a 2002 poll at the height of the Al Aqsa intifada found 46% of Israelis favoring Palestinian transfer of Jerusalem residents.^[86]

In 2005 the United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel C. Kurtzer, expressed U.S. support "for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centres [in the West Bank] as an outcome of negotiations",^[87] reflecting President Bush's statement a year earlier that a permanent peace treaty would have to reflect "demographic realities" on the West Bank.^[88] In May 2011 US President Barack Obama officially stated US support for a future Palestinian state based on boarders prior to the 1967 War, allowing for land swaps where they are mutually agreeable between the two sides. Obama was the first US president to formally support the policy, but he stated that it had it been one long held by the US in its Middle East negotiations.^{[89] [90]}

Annexation[link]

Greater Jerusalem, May 2006. CIA remote sensing map showing areas considered settlements, plus refugee camps, fences, walls, etc.

Through the Jerusalem Law Israel effectively, though not officially, annexed the territory of East Jerusalem and its Palestinian residents have legal permanent residency status.^[91][92] Rejecting the Jerusalem Law, the UN Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 478, declaring that the law was "null and void". Although permanent residents are permitted, if they wish, to receive Israeli citizenship if they meet certain conditions including swearing allegiance to the State and renouncing any other citizenship, most Palestinians did not apply for Israeli citizenship for political reasons.^[93] There are various possible reasons as to why the West Bank had not been annexed^[94] to Israel after its capture in 1967. The government of Israel has not formally confirmed an official reason; however, historians and analysts have established a variety of such, most of them demographic. Among those most commonly cited have been:

• Reluctance to award its citizenship to an overwhelming number of a potentially hostile population whose allies were sworn to the destruction of Israel.^[95][96]
• To ultimately exchange land for peace with neighbouring states^[95][96]
• Fear that the population of ethnic Arabs, including Israeli citizens of Palestinian ethnicity, would outnumber the Jewish Israelis west of the Jordan River.^[94][95]
• The disputed legality of annexation under the Fourth Geneva Convention^[97]

The importance of demographic concerns to some significant figures in Israel's leadership was illustrated when Avraham Burg, a former Knesset Speaker and former chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, wrote in The Guardian in September 2003,

"Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer a clear Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories and preserve a Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state – not by means that are humane and moral and Jewish."^[98]

Settlements and international law[link]

Map of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, January 2006

As of December 2010, 327,750 Israelis live in the 121 settlements in the West Bank officially recognised by the Israeli government, 192,000 Israelis live in settlements in East Jerusalem.^[11] There are approximately 100 further settlement outposts which are not officially recognized by the Israeli government and are illegal under Israeli law, but have been provided with infrastructure, water, sewage, and other services by the authorities.^[99][100]

The international consensus (including the United Nations) is that all Israeli settlements on the West Bank beyond the Green Line border are illegal under international law.^{[101][102][103][104]} The European Union^[105] and the Arab League^{[citation needed]} consider the settlements to be illegal. The majority of legal scholars also hold the settlements to violate international law,^[106] however individuals including Julius Stone,^[107][108] and Eugene Rostow^[109]have argued that they are legal under international law, on a number of different grounds.^[110] Immediately after the 1967 war Theodor Meron, legal counsel of Israel's Foreign Ministry advised Israeli ministers in a "top secret" memo that any policy of building settlements across occupied territories violated international law and would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention".^{[111][112][113]}

The UN Security Council has issued several non-binding resolutions addressing the issue of the settlements. Typical of these is UN Security Council resolution 446 which states [the] practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity, and it calls on Israel as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.^[114]

The Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention held in Geneva on 5 December 2001 called upon "the Occupying Power to fully and effectively respect the Fourth Geneva Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and to refrain from perpetrating any violation of the Convention." The High Contracting Parties reaffirmed "the illegality of the settlements in the said territories and of the extension thereof."^[115]

On 30 December 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued an order requiring approval by both the Israeli Prime Minister and Israeli Defense Minister of all settlement activities (including planning) in the West Bank.^[116]

Palestinian settlements[link]

The Haaretz published on December 2005 about demolition of Palestinian outposts in Bil'in^[117], the demolitions sparked a political debate as according to PeaceNow it was a double standard ("After what happened today in Bil'in, there is no reason that the state should defend its decision to continue the construction" credited to Michael Sfard).

The Ynet News stated on Jan 2012 that The European Union has decided to pursue a series of steps which may undermine Israel's control of Area C in the West Bank, an official EU document obtained by Ynet on Thursday suggests. ^[118], the allegations draw an image of help to construct illegal outposts and constructions.later in April 2012 some of the constructions had been demolished ^[119].

In 8 of May 2012, a petition^[120] had been filed to the Israeli Supreme Court about the legality of more 15^[120] Palestinian outposts and Palestinian building in "Area C". The cases were filed by the non-profit Regavim: National Land Protection Trust.^[121][122]

The petition was one of 30 different petitions with the common ground of illegal land takeover and illegal construction and use of natural resources. some of the petitions (27) had been set for trials ^[123] and the majority received a verdict.

According to environmental group GreenNow, the illegal construction sites and queries had been the source for water and air pollution in the west bank. In a paper provided by the GreenNow environmental group it was stated that 9 of 18 illegal queries reported by the District Coordination and Liaison (the paper stated that there are estimated 100 queries in the West Bank)^[124] already received demolition order.

In may 21 2012, the Missingpeace[1] project translated Israeli media reports made by maariv saying Palestinian efforts to create facts on the ground in Area C of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria),Since 2009 the Palestinian Authority is heavily involved in creating illegal outposts in this area in the West Bank, which is legally controlled by Israel (Oslo accords) ^[125] dating the method up to 2009 ^[125].

West Bank barrier[link]

West Bank Barrier (Separating Wall)

The Israeli West Bank barrier is a physical barrier ordered for construction by the Israeli Government, consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 metres (197 ft) wide exclusion area (90%) and up to 8 metres (26 ft) high concrete walls (10%) (although in most areas the wall is not nearly that high).^[126] It is located mainly within the West Bank, partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or "Green Line" between the West Bank and Israel. As of April 2006 the length of the barrier as approved by the Israeli government is 703 kilometers (437 mi) long. Approximately 58.4% has been constructed, 8.96% is under construction, and construction has not yet begun on 33% of the barrier.^[127] The space between the barrier and the green line is a closed military zone known as the Seam Zone, cutting off 8.5% of the West Bank and encompassing dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Palestinians.^{[128][129][130]}

The barrier generally runs along or near the 1949 Jordanian-Israeli armistice/Green Line, but diverges in many places to include on the Israeli side several of the highly populated areas of Jewish settlements in the West Bank such as East Jerusalem, Ariel, Gush Etzion, Immanuel, Karnei Shomron, Givat Ze'ev, Oranit, and Maale Adumim.

The barrier is a very controversial project. Supporters claim the barrier is a necessary tool protecting Israeli civilians from the Palestinian attacks that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada;^[131][132] it has helped reduce incidents of terrorism by 90% from 2002 to 2005; over a 96% reduction in terror attacks in the six years ending in 2007,^[133] though Israel's State Comptroller has acknowledged that most of the suicide bombers crossed into Israel through existing checkpoints.^[134] Its supporters claim that the onus is now on the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism.^[135]

Opponents claim the barrier is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security,^[136] violates international law,^[137] has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations,^[138] and severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel, thereby undermining their economy. According to a 2007 World Bank report, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has destroyed the Palestinian economy, in violation of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. All major roads (with a total length of 700 km) are basically off-limits to Palestinians, making it impossible to do normal business. Economic recovery would reduce Palestinian dependence on international aid by one billion dollars per year.^[139]

Pro-settler opponents claim that the barrier is a sly attempt to artificially create a border that excludes the settlers, creating facts on the ground that justify the mass dismantlement of hundreds of settlements and the displacement of over 100,000 Jews from the land they claim as their biblical homeland.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• Economy of the Palestinian territories
• Geography of the West Bank
• Political status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
• Rule of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan
• West Bank closures

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Find more about West Bank on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Statistical Atlas of Palestine – Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
• Global Integrity Report: West Bank has governance and anti-corruption profile.
• West Bank entry at The World Factbook
• Palestinian Territories at the United States Department of State
• Palestine from UCB Libraries GovPubs
• Palestine Facts & Info from Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
• United Nations – Question of Palestine
• Disputed Territories: Forgotten Facts about the West Bank and Gaza Strip – from Israeli government's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• West Bank at the Open Directory Project
• Large map of West Bank (2008) – C.I.A./Univ. of Texas, Austin
• Large map of West Bank (1992)
• A series of geopolitical maps of the West Bank
• 1988 "Address to the Nation" by King Hussein of Jordan Ceding Jordanian Claims to the West Bank to the PLO
• Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association – establishing links between the North London Borough of Camden and the town of Abu Dis in the West Bank
• Map of Palestinian Refugee Camps 1993 (UNRWA/C.I.A./Univ. of Texas, Austin)
• Map of Israel 2008 (C.I.A./Univ. of Texas, Austin)
• Map of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank Dec. 1993 (C.I.A./Univ. of Texas, Austin)
• Map of Israeli Settlements in the Gaza Strip Dec. 1993 (C.I.A./Univ. of Texas, Austin)
• Israeli Settlements interactive map and Israeli land use from The Guardian

Coordinates: 32°00′N 35°23′E / 32°N 35.383°E / 32; 35.383

	Israel	Israel	Jordan
	Israel		Jordan
		West Bank    East
	Israel	Israel	Dead Sea •  Jordan

v t e Cities in Palestinian National Authority areas West Bank Abu Dis Arraba Bani Na'im Beit Sahour Beit Jala Beit Ummar Beitunia Bethlehem al-Bireh ad-Dhahiriya Dura al-Eizariya Halhul Hebron Idhna Jenin Jericho Nablus Qabatiya Qalqilyah al-Ram Ramallah Sa'ir Salfit as-Samu Tarqumiya Tubas Tulkarm Ya'bad al-Yamun Yatta *Gaza Strip Abasan al-Kabera Bani Suheila Beit Hanoun Beit Lahia Deir al-Balah Gaza Jabalia Khan Yunis Rafah az-Zawayda *Since June 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under de facto Hamas governance.

v t e Judea and Samaria Area Cities Ariel · Beitar Illit · Ma'ale Adumim · Modi'in Illit Regional committee Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron Local councils Alfei Menashe · Beit Aryeh-Ofarim · Beit El · Efrat · Elkana · Giv'at Ze'ev · Har Adar · Immanuel · Karnei Shomron · Kedumim · Kiryat Arba · Ma'ale Efrayim · Oranit Regional councils Gush Etzion · Har Hevron · Mateh Binyamin · Megilot Dead Sea · Shomron · Southern Jordan Valley (Bik'at HaYarden) Region: West Bank Other sub-divisions: Center District · Haifa District · Jerusalem District · North District · South District · Tel Aviv District See also: Population statistics · Israeli settlement  · Israeli settlement timeline · Israeli West Bank barrier

Raoul Wallenberg
Wallenberg passport photo from June 1944
Born	(1912-08-04)August 4, 1912 Lidingö Municipality, Sweden
Died	presumed July 17, 1947(1947-07-17) (aged 34) presumed Soviet Union
Nationality	Swedish
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Occupation	Diplomat
Parents	Raoul Oscar Wallenberg Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising

Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912 – July 17, 1947?)^[1][2][3][4] was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for his successful efforts to rescue tens of thousands to about one hundred thousand Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from Hungarian Fascists and the Nazis during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory saving tens of thousands of lives.^[5]

Raoul Wallenberg Memorial, Wallenberg St., Tel-Aviv, Israel

Place Raoul Wallenberg, Montreal

Wallenberg Monument, Budapest

Memorial at Great Cumberland Place, London

Sign commemorating Wallenberg in Budapest

Monument in Stockholm

Wallenberg's briefcase in bronze, with the initials R W, set up on the doorstep to the summer house (summer house foundation still exists) at Kappsta, Lidingö, where Wallenberg was born. The setts come from Budapest.

Köszönöm, a monument at the University of Michigan

Memorial to Raoul Wallenberg, Stockholm, Sweden

One of the memorials in Budapest

Memorial to Raoul Wallenberg removed by communist regime and restored on the 50th anniversary of its demolition (Budapest, District XIII, Szent István park)

Plaque at the site of the former Swedish Embassy in Budapest, honoring Carl-Ivan Danielsson, Wallenberg and Per Anger

Street sign for Raoul Wallenberg St. in Jerusalem

On January 17, 1945,^[6] during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by Soviet authorities on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared. He was later reported to have died on July 17, 1947, while imprisoned in the Lubyanka, a building located in Moscow, Russia, housing both the KGB headquarters and its affiliated prison. The motives behind Wallenberg's arrest and imprisonment by the Soviet government, along with questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and his possible ties to US intelligence, remain mysterious and are the subject of continued speculation.^[7]

Due to his courageous actions on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg has been the subject of numerous humanitarian honors in the decades following his presumed death. In 1981, U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, himself one of those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States. He is also an honorary citizen of Canada, Hungary, and Israel. Israel has also designated Wallenberg one of the Righteous among the Nations. Monuments have been dedicated to him, and streets have been named after him throughout the world. A Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States was created in 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg". It gives the Raoul Wallenberg Award annually to recognize persons who carry out those goals. A postage stamp was issued by the U.S. in his honour in 1997.

Early life[link]

Wallenberg in his youth

Wallenberg was born in 1912 in Kappsta, Lidingö, near Stockholm, where his maternal grandparents, professor Per Johan Wising and his wife Sophie Wising, had built a summer house in 1882. His paternal grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, was a diplomat and envoy to Tokyo, Constantinople and Sofia.

His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). His father died of cancer three months before he was born, and his maternal grandfather died of pneumonia three months after his birth. His mother and grandmother, now both suddenly widows, raised him together.^[8] In 1918, his mother married Fredrik von Dardel;^[9] they had a son, Guy von Dardel, [11] and a daughter, Nina Lagergren.

After high school and his compulsory eight months in the Swedish military, Wallenberg's paternal grandfather sent him to study in Paris. He spent one year there, and then, in 1931, he matriculated at University of Michigan in the United States to study architecture.^[8] Although the Wallenberg family was rich, he worked at odd jobs in his free time and joined other young male students as a passenger rickshaw handler at Chicago's Century of Progress.^[10] He used his vacations to explore the United States, with hitchhiking being his preferred method of travel. About his experiences, he wrote to his grandfather saying, "When you travel like a hobo, everything’s different. You have to be on the alert the whole time. You’re in close contact with new people every day. Hitchhiking gives you training in diplomacy and tact."^[11]

He graduated university in 1935, but upon his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. Later that year, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town, South Africa, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. After six months in South Africa, he took a new job at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa, Israel.^[12] He returned to Sweden in 1936 and obtained a job in Stockholm with the help of his uncle and godfather, Jacob Wallenberg, at the Central European Trading Company,^[13] an export-import company trading between Stockholm and central Europe, owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew.

World War II[link]

Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, under the regency of Miklós Horthy, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage. Because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kalman Lauer, found it increasingly difficult to travel to his native Hungary, which was moving still deeper into the German orbit, becoming a member of the Axis Powers in November 1940 and later joining the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Out of necessity Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative, traveling to Hungary to conduct business on Lauer's behalf and also to look in on members of Lauer's extended family who remained in Budapest. He soon learned to speak Hungarian, and from 1941 made increasingly frequent travels to Budapest.^[14] Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the International Director of the company.^[12] In this capacity Wallenberg also made several business trips to Germany and Occupied-France during the early years of World War II. It was during these trips that Wallenberg was able to closely observe the Nazi's bureaucratic and administrative methods, knowledge which would prove quite valuable to him later.^[15]

Meanwhile, the situation in Hungary had begun to deteriorate as the tide of the war began to turn decisively against Germany and its allies. Following the catastrophic Axis defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad (in which Hungarian troops fighting alongside German forces suffered a staggering 84% casualty rate) the regime of Miklos Horthy began secretly pursuing peace talks with the United States and the United Kingdom. Upon learning of Horthy's duplicity, Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary by German troops in March 1944. The Wehrmacht quickly took control of the country and placed Horthy under house arrest. A pro-German puppet government was installed in Budapest, with actual power resting with the German military governor, SS-Brigadefuhrer Edmund Veesenmayer. With the Nazis now in control, the relative security from the Holocaust enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In April and May 1944 the Nazi regime and its accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to concentration camps in occupied-Poland. Under the personal leadership of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann, who would later be tried and hanged in Israel for his major role in the implementation of the Nazis' Final Solution, deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 individuals per day.^[16]

Recruitment by the War Refugee Board[link]

The persecution of the Jews in Hungary soon became well known abroad, unlike the full extent of the Holocaust. In late spring 1944, George Mantello publicized what is now called the Wetzler-Vrba Report, a detailed account of the operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp written by two recent escapees.^[17] Following the report's publication, the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to the newly created War Refugee Board (WRB) established as a result of activism by the "Bergson Group" led by Hillel Kook and later by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr and team in search of a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Hungary. In spring 1944, President Roosevelt dispatched US Treasury Department official Iver C. Olsen to Stockholm as a representative of the WRB. Olsen was tasked specifically by the President with finding a way to aid the Hungarian Jews. This, however, was not the sole reason for Olsen being posted to Sweden. In addition to his duties with the WRB, Olsen was also secretly functioning as the chief of currency operations for the Stockholm branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the United States' wartime espionage service.^[18]

In search of someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue program for the nation's Jews,^[19] Olsen established a committee composed of many prominent Swedish Jews to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the WRB's planned rescue operation.^[15] One member of the committee was Wallenberg's business associate Kalman Lauer.

The committee's first choice to lead the mission was Count Folke Bernadotte, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross and a member of the Swedish Royal Family. When Bernadotte's proposed appointment was rejected by the Hungarians, Lauer suggested Wallenberg as a potential replacement.^[15] Olsen was introduced to Wallenberg by Lauer in June 1944 and came away from the meeting impressed and, shortly thereafter, appointed Wallenberg to lead the mission.^[11] Olsen's selection of Wallenberg was initially met with objections from some US officials who doubted his reliability, in light of existing commercial relationships between businesses owned by the Wallenberg family and the German government. These differences were eventually overcome and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs agreed to the American request to assign Wallenberg to its legation in Budapest as part of an arrangement in which Wallenberg's appointment was granted in exchange for a lessening of American diplomatic pressure on neutral Sweden to curtail their nation's free-trade policies toward Germany. ^[20]

Mission to Budapest[link]

When Wallenberg reached the Swedish legation in Budapest in July 1944, the campaign against the Jews of Hungary had already been underway for several months. Between May and July 1944, Eichmann and his associates had successfully deported over 400,000 Jews by freight train. Of those deported all but 15,000 were sent directly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland.^[15] By the time of Wallenberg's arrival there were only 230,000 Jews remaining in Hungary. Together with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger,^[21] he issued "protective passports" (German: Schutz-Pass), which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus prevented their deportation. Although not legal, these documents looked official and were generally accepted by German and Hungarian authorities, who sometimes were also bribed.^[14] The Swedish legation in Budapest also succeeded in negotiating with the German authorities so that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow badge required for Jews.^[12]

With the money raised by the board, Wallenberg rented 32 buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as "The Swedish Library" and "The Swedish Research Institute" on their doors and hung oversize Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people.^[11]

Sandor Ardai, one of the drivers working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

.. he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.^[22]

At the height of the program, over 350 people were involved in the rescue of Jews.^[23] Sister Sára Salkaházi was caught sheltering Jewish women and was killed by members of the Arrow Cross Party. Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz also issued protective passports from the Swiss embassy in the spring of 1944; and Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca posed as a Spanish diplomat and issued forged visas.^[24] Berber Smit (Barbara Hogg), the daughter of Lolle Smit (1892–1961), director of N.V. Philips Budapest and a Dutch spy working for the British MI6, also assisted Wallenberg. According to her son, she had a romance with him.^[25] Smit's other daughter, Reinderdina Petronella (1922–1945), died on 18 August 1945 in Bucharest.

Wallenberg started sleeping in a different house each night, to guard against being captured or killed by Arrow Cross Party members or by Adolf Eichmann's men.^[26] Two days before the Russians occupied Budapest, Wallenberg negotiated with both Eichmann and Major-General Gerhard Schmidthuber, the supreme commander of German forces in Hungary. Wallenberg bribed Arrow Cross Party member Pál Szalai to deliver a note in which Wallenberg persuaded the occupying Germans to prevent a Fascist plan to blow up the Budapest ghetto and kill an estimated 70,000 Jews and cancel a final effort to organize a death march of the remaining Jews in Budapest by threatening to have them prosecuted for war crimes once the war was over.^[12][14]

People saved by Wallenberg include biochemist Lars Ernster, who was housed in the Swedish embassy, and Tom Lantos, later a member of the United States House of Representatives, who lived in one of the Swedish protective houses.^[27]

Disappearance[link]

On October 29, 1944 elements of the 2nd Ukrainian Front under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky launched an offensive against Budapest and by late December the city had been successfully encircled by Soviet forces. Despite this the German commander of Budapest, SS Lieutenant General Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, refused all offers to surrender, setting in motion a protracted and bloody siege of the Hungarian capital. At the height of the fighting, on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg was called to General Malinovsky's headquarters in Debrecen on suspicion of being a spy for the United States and that the War Refugee Board was engaged in espionage.^[28][29][30] Wallenberg's last recorded words were, "I'm going to Malinovsky's ... whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet."^[31] Documents recovered in 1993 from previously secret Soviet military archives and published in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet show that an order for Wallenberg's arrest was issued by Deputy Commissar for Defence (and future Soviet Premier) Nikolai Bulganin and transmitted to Malinovsky's headquarters on the day of Wallenberg's disappearance.^[32] In 2003, a review of Soviet wartime correspondences indicated that Vilmos Böhm, a Hungarian politician who was also a Soviet intelligence agent, may have provided Wallenberg's name to the NKVD as a person to detain for possible involvement in espionage.^[33]

Information about Wallenberg after his detention is mostly speculative; there were many witnesses who claim to have met him during his imprisonment.^[34] Wallenberg was transported by train from Debrecen, through Romania, to Moscow.^[30] The Soviet authorities may have moved him to Moscow in hopes of exchanging him for defectors in Sweden.^[35] Vladimir Dekanosov notified the Swedish government on January 16, 1945 that Wallenberg was under the protection of Soviet authorities. On January 21, 1945, Wallenberg was transferred to Lubyanka prison and held in cell 123 with fellow prisoner Gustav Richter, formerly a police attaché at the German embassy in Romania. Richter testified in Sweden in 1955 that Wallenberg was interrogated once for about an hour and a half, in early February 1945. On March 1, 1945, Richter was moved from his cell and never saw Wallenberg again.^[8][36]

On March 8, 1945, Soviet-controlled Hungarian radio announced that Wallenberg and his driver had been murdered on their way to Debrecen, suggesting that they had been killed by the Arrow Cross Party or the Gestapo. Sweden's foreign minister, Östen Undén, and its ambassador to the Soviet Union, Staffan Söderblom, wrongly assumed that they were dead.^[12] In April 1945, William Averell Harriman of the U.S. State Department offered the Swedish government help in inquiring about Wallenberg’s fate, but the offer was declined.^[11] Söderblom met with Vyacheslav Molotov and Stalin in Moscow on June 15, 1946. Söderblom, still believing Wallenberg to be dead, ignored talk of an exchange for Russian defectors in Sweden.^[37][38]

Death[link]

On February 6, 1957, the Soviet government released a document dated July 17, 1947, which stated "I report that the prisoner Wallenberg who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack or heart failure. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Wallenberg under my care, I request approval to make an autopsy with a view to establishing cause of death... I have personally notified the minister and it has been ordered that the body be cremated without autopsy."^[39] The document was signed by Smoltsov, then the head of the Lubyanka prison infirmary, and addressed to Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov, the Soviet minister of state security.^[2][8] In 1989, Wallenberg's personal belongings were returned to his family, including his passport and cigarette case. Soviet officials said they found the materials when they were upgrading the shelves in a store room.^[40][41]

In 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov was charged by the Russian government to investigate Wallenberg's fate. He concluded that Wallenberg died in 1947, executed while a prisoner in Lubyanka.^[42]

In Moscow in 2000, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev announced that Wallenberg had been executed in 1947 in Lubyanka prison. He claimed that Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former Soviet secret police chief, told him about the shooting in a private conversation. The statement did not explain why Wallenberg was killed or why the government had lied about it.^[28][43] General Pavel Sudoplatov claimed that Raoul Wallenberg died after being poisoned by Grigory Mairanovsky, a notorious NKVD assassin.^[44] In 2000, Russian prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov signed a verdict posthumously rehabilitating Wallenberg and his driver, Langfelder, as "victims of political repression".^[45] A number of files pertinent to Wallenberg were turned over to the chief rabbi of Russia by the Russian government in September 2007.^[46] They will be housed at the Museum of Tolerance in Moscow,^[46] scheduled to open in 2011.^[47]

Disputes regarding his death[link]

Several former prisoners have claimed to have seen Wallenberg after his reported death in 1947.^[48] In February 1949, former German Colonel Theodor von Dufving, a prisoner of war, provided evidentiary statements concerning Wallenberg. While in the transit camp in Kirov, en route to Vorkuta, Dufving encountered a prisoner with his own special guard and dressed in civilian clothes. The prisoner claimed that he was a Swedish diplomat and that he was there "through a great error."^[39]

Renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal searched for Wallenberg and collected several testimonies. For example, British businessman Greville Wynne, who was imprisoned in the Lubyanka prison in 1962 for his connection to KGB defector Oleg Penkovsky, stated he talked to, but could not see the face of, a man who claimed to be a Swedish diplomat.^[49] Efim (or Yefim) Moshinsky claims to have seen Wallenberg on Wrangel Island in 1962.^[50][51] An eyewitness asserted that she had seen Wallenberg in the 1960s in a Soviet prison.^[52]

During a private conversation about the conditions of detention in Soviet prisons at a party reception in the mid-1970s, a KGB general is reported to have said that "conditions could not be that harsh, given that in Lubyanka prison there is some foreign prisoner who had been there now for almost three decades".^[49]

The last reported sightings of Wallenberg were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November 1987.^[53]

Raoul Wallenberg's half-brother, Professor Guy von Dardel,^[54] a well-known physicist, retired from CERN, was dedicated to finding out his half-brother's fate.^[55] He traveled to the Soviet Union about fifty times for discussions and research, including an examination of the Vladimir prison records.^[56] Over the years, Professor von Dardel had compiled a 50,000-page archive of interviews, journal articles, letters, and other documents related to his quest.^[57]In 1991, he initiated a Swedish-Russian working group^[58] to search eleven separate military and government archives from the former Soviet Union for information about Wallenberg's fate, but were not able to find conclusive information.^[30][59][60] Many, including Professor von Dardel and his daughters Louise and Marie, do not accept the various versions of Wallenberg's death. They continue to request that the archives in Russia, Sweden and Hungary be opened to impartial researchers.

In 2012 Russian lieutenant-general Vasily Khristoforov, head of the Russian Federal Security Service said that the Wallenberg case is still open. He dismissed allegations of a continuing coverup; referring to the legacy Soviet agency from which his department sprang, Khristoforov said: "This is another state and a different special service."^[61]

Show trial in 1953[link]

In April 1952, Hungarian State Protection Authority (Hungarian: Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH) kidnapped Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler, three leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest, to extract scripted confessions under torture.^[62] Two purported eyewitnesses – Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó ^[63]– were also arrested and interrogated using torture. This was in preparation for a show trial to be mounted in 1953 by the Hungarian ÁVH to prove that Wallenberg had not been moved to the Soviet Union in 1945, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists.^[64]

This was after the Prague Trials or purge, when the mostly Jewish Communist leaders were executed in 1952 and at the time when the Soviets were planning a major antisemitic show trial in Moscow, the "Doctors' Plot". They accused mostly Jewish doctors of planning to murder Soviet leaders. Many Soviet Jews were fearful hearing that the Soviet plan was to have massive number of Jews deported to Siberia after likely execution of the doctors.

The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist leader Ernő Gerő, demonstrated by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi.^[65] The show trial was to be held in Moscow. But, after the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 and the execution of Lavrentiy Beria, the AVH stopped preparations for the trial and released the prisoners. Domonkos spent a week in the hospital and died at home shortly afterward, mainly due to the torture he had suffered.^[62] The Soviet doctors were also released after Stalin's death.

Possible connection to US intelligence[link]

In May 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released thousands of previously classified documents regarding Raoul Wallenberg, in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act.^[18] The documents, along with an investigation conducted by the publication US News and World Report, appeared to confirm the long-held suspicion that Wallenberg was an American intelligence asset during his time in Hungary. In addition to Wallenberg's name appearing on a roster found in the National Archives^[66] which listed the names of operatives associated with the CIA's wartime predecessor the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the documents also included a 1954 memo from an anonymous CIA source that identified a Hungarian-exile living in Stockholm who, according to the author: "assisted…in inserting Roul [sic] Wallenberg into Hungary during WWII as an agent of OSS".^[20] Another declassified memorandum written in 1990 by the curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection William Henhoeffer, characterized the conclusion that Wallenberg was working for the OSS while in Budapest as being "essentially correct".^[18]

More telling was a communique sent on November 7, 1944 by the OSS Secret Intelligence Branch in Bari, Italy which apparently acknowledged that Wallenberg was acting as an unofficial liaison between the OSS and the Hungarian Independence Movement (MFM), an underground anti-Nazi resistance organization.^[67] The OSS message notes Wallenberg's contacts with Geza Soos, a high-ranking MFM leader and further explains that Soos "may only be contacted" through the Swedish legation in Budapest, which was Wallenberg's workplace and also served as the operational center for his attempts to aid the Hungarian Jews. The same message's assertion that Wallenberg "will know if he (Soos) is not in Budapest" is also curious, in that by November 1944 Soos was in hiding and knowledge of his whereabouts would only have been available to individuals closely involved with the MFM.^[68] This conclusion is given further weight by additional evidence ^[68] suggesting that communications from the MFM to US intelligence were transmitted first to Stockholm and then relayed to Washington via Iver C. Olsen, the American OSS operative who initially recruited Wallenberg to go to Budapest in June 1944.

This particular disclosure has given rise to speculation as to whether, in addition to his efforts to rescue the Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg may have also been pursuing a parallel clandestine mission aimed at politically destabilizing Hungary’s pro-Nazi government on behalf of the OSS.^[20] This would also seem to add some credence to the potential explanation that it was his association with US intelligence that led to Wallenberg being targeted by Soviet authorities in January 1945.^[69] Several other humanitarians who had helped refugees during World War II disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in the period 1949/50, several years after Wallenberg’s disappearance. OSS ties may have been of interest to the Soviets, but is not a complete explanation because some of those detained, i.e. Hermann Field and Herta Field, had not worked for the OSS. All of these humanitarians, however, like Wallenberg, had interacted with a large number of anti-fascist and socialist refugees during the War, and this experience was used in the Stalin regime’s factional politics and show trials. ^[70]

Family[link]

In 2009, reporter Joshua Prager wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal profiling the long-term toll that Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance had on his family. His mother Maj and his stepfather Fredrik von Dardel spent the rest of their lives searching for their son. They both committed suicide by overdosing on pills two days apart in 1979. Their daughter Nina Lagergren, Raoul's half-sister, attributed their suicide to their despair about never finding their son. Both Nina and Raoul's half-brother Guy von Dardel established organizations and worked to find their brother or confirmation of his death. At the request of their parents, they were to assume he was alive until the year 2000.^[57]

Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, and is active in many humanitarian efforts.^[3][12] Another of Wallenberg's nieces, Louise von Dardel, is the main activist in the family and dedicates much of her time to speaking about Wallenberg and lobbying various countries to help uncover information about her uncle.^[71] The extended Wallenberg family remains an influential part of Swedish society as major shareholders in banks and corporations including Saab and Scandinavian Airlines.^[72]

Honours[link]

Wallenberg was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1948 by more than 50 qualified nominators^[73] and in 1949 by a single nominator^[73] At the time, the prize could be awarded posthumously, but the concept of such awards was controversial.^[74][75]

Argentina[link]

In Buenos Aires, there is a monument in honour of Wallenberg at a park. It is a replica of the London monument by Philip Jackson, was unveiled in 1998 and can be seen from the Figueroa Alcorta Avenue, in Palermo neighbourhood.^[76]

Australia[link]

In Melbourne, a small memorial in honour of Wallenberg stands at the Jewish Museum Holocaust and Research Centre; a monument dedicated to him is on the corner of Princess Street and High Street, Kew; and a tree and memorial seat are at St Kilda Town Hall. The Australian Centre for Clinical Neuropharmacology in Melbourne adopted the name 'The Raoul Wallenberg Centre' on the occasion of Raoul Wallenberg's 89th birthday. In Sydney are a Raoul Wallenberg garden and sculpture in Woollahra, and a statue inside the Jewish Museum of Australia. Commemorative trees have been planted in front of federal Parliament and in many other locations.^[77]

Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne, Australia, together with Max Stern & Co, a leading stamp dealer in Melbourne, and Australia Post, have released a limited edition Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet and Envelope Set to mark the Unit's 25th anniversary in 2010. The Stamp Sheet shows a photo of Raoul Wallenberg together with a brief outline of his life, a monument in honour of Raoul Wallenberg by artist, Karl Duldig, in the Raoul Wallenberg Garden at Kew Junction, Melbourne, and ten 60 cent Australia Post stamps with tabs of Raoul Wallenberg from early childhood to adult soldier. The Envelope has a transparent front to show the Stamp Sheet; a Schutzpass is shown on the back accompanied by an explanation.

To commemorate this Centenary Year, a limited number of the Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet will be stamped with a special Centenary cancellation. These will be available from Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B'nai B'rith in Melbourne from 1 July 2012.

Raoul Wallenberg Unit is requesting clergy around the world to speak about Raoul Wallenberg and his heroic deeds - 'One Person can Make a Difference' - from their pulpits over the weekend 3-5 August 2012 which coincides with the date of his 100th birthday, 4 August 2012.

Austria[link]

In the 22. district of Vienna a street was named "Raoul-Wallenberg-Gasse".

Canada[link]

Wallenberg was made the first Honorary Citizen of Canada in 1985;^[78] and the government declared January 17, the day he disappeared, as "Raoul Wallenberg Day" in Canada.^[79]

Numerous memorials, parks, and monuments honouring Wallenberg can be found across Canada, including the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, Raoul Wallenberg Corner in Calgary, Raoul Wallenberg Park in Saskatoon, Parc Raoul Wallenberg in Ottawa, Ontario, and a memorial behind Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Montreal, where a bust of Wallenberg and a caged metal box, styled as a barbed-wire gate, stand beside each other.^{[citation needed]} The main entrance to Earl Bales Park in Toronto, Ontario is named Raoul Wallenberg Road.

Germany[link]

Streets were named after Wallenberg in both east and west Berlin. Wallenberg-Straße, named in 1967, is in the western district of Wilmersdorf[12], and Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße, named in 1992, with a station of the S-Bahn, is in the eastern district of Marzahn.[13]

Hungary[link]

Budapest named Wallenberg as an honorary citizen in 2003. Several sites honor him, including Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, which commemorates those who saved many of the city's Jews from deportation to extermination camps, and the building that housed the Swedish Embassy in 1945.^[80]

Israel[link]

Israel granted Wallenberg honorary citizenship in 1986 and honored him at the Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations; this designation recognizes Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust.^[81] Other tributes to Wallenberg in Israel include at least five streets named after him.^[82] On Raoul Wallenberg Street in Tel Aviv, a statue identical to one in Budapest was installed in 2002 (see below), made by the sculptor Imre Varga.^[83]

Russia[link]

A memorial to him stands in the courtyard of the Russian Rudomino Library of Foreign Languages in Moscow, and an educational institute in Saint Petersburg was named after him.^[84]

Sweden[link]

In 2001, a memorial was created in Stockholm to honor Wallenberg. It was unveiled by King Carl XVI Gustaf, at a ceremony attended by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his wife Nane Maria Annan, Wallenberg's niece. The abstract sculpture portrays people rising from the concrete, accompanied by a bronze replica of Wallenberg's signature.^[85] At the unveiling, King Carl XVI Gustaf said Wallenberg is "a great example to those of us who want to live as fellow humans."^[86] Kofi Annan praised him as "an inspiration for all of us to act when we can and to have the courage to help those who are suffering and in need of help."^[87]

A memorial to Wallenberg was installed in Göteborg, near Hagakyrkan (Haga Church). Kofi Annan attended the unveiling ceremony.

United Kingdom[link]

A Raoul Wallenberg memorial was installed at Great Cumberland Place in London, outside the Western Marble Arch Synagogue. On separate occasions in the 1990s and 2000s, Queen Elizabeth II and Charles, Prince of Wales paid tribute to Wallenberg at the Western Marble Arch site. A separate memorial stands near the Welsh National War Memorial in Alexandra Gardens, Cardiff.^{[citation needed]} A bronze briefcase memorial by Gustav Kraitz with the initials RW is located in the garden of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre near Laxton in Nottinghamshire.

United States[link]

The US Congress made Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States in 1981,^[88] the second person to be so honored, after Winston Churchill. In 1985, the portion of 15th Street, SW in Washington, D.C. on which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is located, was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place by Act of Congress.^[89][90]

In 1997, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor. Representative Tom Lantos, one of those saved by Wallenberg's actions, said: "It is most appropriate that we honor [him] with a U.S. stamp. In this age devoid of heroes, Wallenberg is the archetype of a hero – one who risked his life day in and day out, to save the lives of tens of thousands of people he did not know whose religion he did not share."^[91]

In Manhattan, a monument honoring him was installed on Raoul Wallenberg Walk, named in his honor, across from the headquarters of the United Nations. The Swedish consulate commissioned the piece, created by Swedish sculptor Gustav Kraitz. The sculpture, Hope, is a replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, a sphere, five pillars of black granite, and paving stones (setts) which were formerly used on the streets of the Budapest ghetto.^[92] Another memorial stands in front of the Art and Architecture building at the University of Michigan, where he received his architecture degree in 1935.^[93]

Places named after Wallenberg include Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco, the PS 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in Brooklyn, New York, Raoul Wallenberg Avenue in Trenton, New Jersey, and Raoul Wallenberg Blvd in Charleston, South Carolina.

Since 2005, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has campaigned to establish October 5 as Raoul Wallenberg Day throughout the United States, as this was the day Wallenberg was awarded Honorary U.S. Citizenship. By 2010, Raoul Wallenberg Day was being observed by the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming.^[94]

Wallenberg was posthumously awarded the Train Foundation's Civil Courage Prize, which recognizes "extraordinary heroes of conscience".^[95]

Awards in his name[link]

The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States bestows the Raoul Wallenberg Award "on individuals, organizations and communities that reflect Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian spirit, personal courage and nonviolent action in the face of enormous odds."^[96]

The University of Michigan awards the Wallenberg Medal annually to outstanding humanitarians who embody the humanitarian values and commitment of its distinguished alumnus. The first Wallenberg Medal was presented in 1990 to Elie Wiesel. The twentieth Wallenberg Medal was awarded in October 2010 to Dr. Denis Mukwege.^[97] The University's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning also awards Wallenberg Scholarships to exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, many of which are given to enable students to broaden their study of architecture to include work in distant locations.

Schools named after him[link]

Argentina[link]

• Raoul Wallenberg Educational Center

Brazil[link]

• The Raoul Wallenberg Integral High School

Canada[link]

• Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto Wallenberg Campus

Ecuador[link]

• Raoul Wallenberg Kindergarten & Primary School

Germany[link]

• Raoul-Wallenberg Schule, Dorsten
• Raoul-Wallenberg-Oberschule, Berlin

Hungary[link]

• Raoul Wallenberg Humán Szakközépiskola és Gimnázium

Sweden[link]

• Raoul Wallenbergskolan Bromma
• Raoul Wallenbergförskolan Brazil
• Raoul Wallenbergskolan Skövde
• Raoul Wallenberggymnasiet Skövde
• Raoul Wallenbergskolan Uppsala
• Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Lund University)

Uruguay[link]

• Raoul Wallenberg Lyceum

USA[link]

• P.S. 194 Raoul Wallenberg School in Brooklyn, New York
• Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, a street in Washington, D.C. The United States Holocaust Museum is located on this street.
• Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco

Venezuela[link]

• Raoul Wallenberg Pre-School Educational Unit

Films[link]

A number of films have been made of Wallenberg's life, including the 1985 made-for-television movie Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985), starring Richard Chamberlain, the 1990 Swedish production God afton, Herr Wallenberg (Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg), featuring Stellan Skarsgård, and various documentaries,^[98] such as Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1984) and Searching for Wallenberg (2003). He also appears in the Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest and is played by Iván Fenyő.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Raoul Wallenberg

• Folke Bernadotte
• Ángel Sanz Briz and Giorgio Perlasca
• Marvin Makinen
• Oskar Schindler
• Henryk Sławik
• Chiune Sugihara
• Nicholas Winton
• Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for Humanity (founded by Dr. Vera Parnes)

References[link]