Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest
On October 27, 2016, Swedish tax authorities issued a formal death certificate for Raoul Wallenberg acting on a request of his family to settle his estate. The family said in a statement to the press: “The family lived in hope and despair – hope that their efforts would bear fruit and Raoul would return, despair as their hopes were dashed again and again.” But now it’s time “to bring one phase to closure and move on.” As an article in The New York Times explained, “Pia Gustafsson, a lawyer at the legal department at the Swedish Tax Agency, said that it had decided to regard Mr. Wallenberg as missing as of July 31, 1947. Under the Swedish law, the official date of death for missing people is defined as the fifth anniversary of their disappearance – in Mr. Wallenberg’s case, July 31, 1952.”
This announcement does not mean that the Wallenberg Case is closed, the efforts to find out what happened to him will continue. If the Russian government once again does not comply with the new requests about the case discussed at the meeting of the Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative (RWI-70) in Moscow last September, the family is prepared to explore legal options.