Specifically. the United States suggested that the number of Swedish diplomatic and consular officials in Hungary be increased to deal with this situation. Such personnel would receive instructions and financial support from the U.S. War Refugee Board. arrangements to be handled through Iver Olsen. the Boards official representative in Sweden. Raoul Wallenberg. a young Swedish businessman who had been educated in the United States. volunteered to undertake this perilous assignment for the War Refugee Board. and in the summer of 1944. Wallenberg was sent to Hungary as the Secretary of the Swedish Legation. With funds provided by the War Refugee Board. Wallenberg began his efforts to save Hungarian Jews from deportation to the death camps or violent deaths in the ghetto of Budapest. He printed and issued thousands of Swedish protective passports of his own design. He purchased and rented scores of houses in Budapest. equipped them with Swedish flags and declared them to be Swedish Embassy property. and protected and cared for the refugees he gathered within these safe houses. Risking his own life time and time again. Wallenberg followed the death marches and went daily to the deportation trains where he literally pulled people out of the clutches of the Nazis. And. when the Nazis decided to blow up the ghetto in Budapest and all its inhabitants with it. Wallenberg confronted the Nazis leaders. threatened to see to it personally that they were hanged as war criminals if they proceeded with their plan. and thus prevented its execution.
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Refugee deportation refugees