Chairman. Raoul Wallenberg was born in 1912 to a distinguished Swedish family.. In July 1944. in response to a request of the World Jewish Congress following deportation of nearly half a million Hungarian Jews to the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. he was secretly sent by the American Governments War Refugee Board to Budapest as a Swedish diplomat. At that time there were still 250.000 Jews living in the Budapest ghetto. and Wallenberg undertook the impossible task of slowing down their deportation. Working from the Swedish Embassy. he organized a rescue staff of several hundred Jewish volunteers and declared 32 apartment buildings .housing 20.000 Jews to be shelters under the protection of the Swedish flag. He issued protective Swedish passports to approximately 30.000 Jews. providing them a degree of immunity from persecution.
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Refugee deportation