Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish Holocaust Hero, Executed in Soviet Prison, Diaries Reveal

Image by Wikipedia
— Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi gas chambers, was executed in a Soviet prison, according to a KGB head’s diaries.
The diaries of Ivan A. Serov, who ran the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency from 1954 to 1958, were discovered inside the walls of his second home in northwestern Moscow, which his granddaughter is now renovating. Discovered four years ago, the diaries were published this summer, The New York Times reported Sunday.
“I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” Serov wrote.
The diaries contains references to several previously unknown documents referring to Wallenberg, including one recording the cremation of his body. They were published under the title “Notes From a Suitcase: Secret Diaries of the First KGB. Chairman, Found Over 25 Years After His Death,” which went for sale in Russia in June.
Serov died of a heart attack in 1990 at age 84. He is thought to have hidden the diaries around 1971.
A 1991 joint Russian-Swedish effort to discover what happened to Wallenberg, which included archival research and interviews with retired state security employees, yielded no definitive conclusion when it ended in 2000. The investigation found that documents had been destroyed or altered to eliminate all traces of him.
Wallenberg was posted to Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II, where he issued protective passports to Jews in the final months of the Holocaust. He disappeared in 1945 after being seen surrounded by Soviet officers in Budapest. The Soviets later claimed Wallenberg had died of heart failure in prison.
The diplomat’s parents both reportedly committed suicide in 1979 in despair over his disappearance. In November 2015, Wallenberg family members asked Swedish authorities to declare him dead.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 2
Opinion Trump’s Israel tariffs are a BDS dream come true — can Netanyahu make him rethink them?
- 3
Opinion I co-wrote Biden’s antisemitism strategy. Trump is making the threat worse
- 4
Film & TV How Marlene Dietrich saved me — or maybe my twin sister — and helped inspire me to become a lifelong activist
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Colombia appoints allegedly fake anti-Zionist rabbi as director of religious affairs
-
Fast Forward GOP Rep. Randy Fine, the newest Jewish congressman, calls Rashida Tlaib a ‘terrorist’
-
Fast Forward Freed hostage Liri Albag responds to backlash over Netanyahu criticism: ‘I fear what we have become’
-
Fast Forward France will move to recognize a Palestinian state this year, Macron says
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.