Speaker. I would like today to join several of my colleagues in paying tribute to Raoul Wallenberg. an outstanding humanitarian of our time. Raoul Wallenberg. a Swedish diplomat who served in proNazi Hungary during World War II. led a rescue mission in Budapest which saved over 20.000 Hungarian Jews from deportation and eventual extermination in concentration camps. In the mid1940s. when the Nazis were ravaging Budapest to liquidate the citys Jewish population. Wallenberg distributed Swedish passports to at least 20.000 Jews. and sheltered 13.000 of them in houses he had rented and over which the Swedish flag was flown. Despite a number of attempts on his life. Wallenberg was unconcerned for his own safety. He is reported to have stood on top of a deportation train handing out Swedish papers to all that could reach them. and then to have insisted that all those with papers be permitted off the train. Survivors claim he pulled people out of death marches to camps at the Austrian border and brought them food and medical supplies by night when he had no more passports to give out. On January 17. 1945.
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