Maynard Gertler

The contents of this number herald the tenth anniversary of the Wallenberg Bulletin and the critical events in Parliament of June 5, 2002 related to the declaration of the first Raoul Wallenberg Day in Canada, January 17, 2002. This date marks the anniversary of that January day in 1945 when Wallenberg was detained by Soviet authorities and incarcerated - contrary to diplomatic convention, as well as to the spirit and text of the inimitable 1936 Soviet Constitution. He was never to reappear, except in hearsay and extrinsic evidence. There are many eloquent, deep-felt words about our Raoul in these pages and about those who were instrumental in securing the great and deserved honour for him and his achievements. It remains to place both of the latter in context.

Wallenberg is the towering humanitarian of the World War II period. Is it just a coincidence that a fellow Scandinavian, Nobelist and "moral genuis," Fridtjof Nansen, was in that respect the colossus of the period following World War I? He who set aside his cherished scientific and exploration vocations to devote himself to repatriation of prisoners of war at the behest of the League of Nations in the spring of 1920. According to A.R. Christopherson's brief work on Nansen, A Life in the Service of Science and Humanity (1961), "Nansen negotiated with governments...made arrangements to build up efficient administrative machinery, raised money...obtained credit...food and clothing and medicaments, borrowed ships, and coordinated the efforts of the principal humanitarian organizations.... In the course of eighteen months...some 450,000 prisoners of war from twenty-six...countries were returned to their homes - which for many of them was tantamount to being saved from certain death.... In February 1921 the International Red Cross urged the League of Nations Council to do something about the...millions of political refugees whom the first world war and ensuing revolutions and civil disturbances had driven from their homes...uprooted and hunted...dispersed throughout Europe and Asia and would not or could not return to their own countries.... A special problem was presented by the fact that many of the refugees were without passports or identification papers.... Nansen solved this difficulty simply and radically by introducing a new form of passport [the famous 'Nansen Passport'], a kind of international proof of identity which he induced more than fifty governments to accept.... Unlike the repatriation of prisoners of war, relief work on behalf of the refugees could not be brought to a proper conclusion. It had to be continued, year in, year out, for the rest of Nansen's life and beyond. To the end of his days Nansen himself worked unsparingly for the refugee cause...setting up a number of international organizations devoted to their interests. After his death in 1930 at 69, [much hastened by stress and effort on their behalf] the work was carried on under the aegis of the League of Nations...[mainly] through what became known as the Nansen Office, and after the second world war the United Nations [and notably the American Red Cross] assumed the burden.... It is estimated that they saved the lives of more than seven million persons, of whom more than six million were children."

From the outset of my cooperation with the work of the RWIMH and especially in editing of this bulletin, I have been supported in universalizing its message, in keeping with the perpetuation of the influence and meaning of Raoul's giant foot-step, and his trajectory toward the model he would become to future generations in Canada and beyond. It was essential to emphasize from concrete instances that "there are good people everywhere." And so from bulletin to bulletin the effort was made to introduce, as in the bulletin of March '98, people such as the Japanese consul general Senpo Sugihara and his wife Yukuko, in wartime Lithuania - from a report by Betty Koboyashi Issenman. As the German armies threatened invasion in 1940, the Sugihara's in defiance of government orders worked for nineteen days, from early morning to midnight, to issue visas to Japan so that 6,000 Jews could escape certain death. Because he disobeyed government orders, he and his family were transformed to Berlin (and later interned in Siberia). But, as the train left the station he thrust out the windows signed papers to waiting throngs. Similarly, through the cooperation of the Embassy of Portugal in Ottawa we were able to acquire the story of the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, (originally carried in Le Monde of Paris and condensed in our bulletin of March '99). In May 1940 Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches contrived, against the orders of his superiors, at greatest risk to himself and his family, to save the lives of 30,000 persons fleeing the invading Nazi army, among them 10,000 Jews. He provided all of them with visas to neutral Portugal. Consul de Sousa Mendes and his family paid dearly, both under dictator Salazar and beyond, for "placing the urgings of his conscience above his duties as a public servant." But, that is a story we've already told in full in the March '99 bulletin. We should at least recall that he was honoured by Vad Yashem in Jerusalem, in 1966, as "just among the Nations." His own potent words are the most moving of all. As he said: "If so many Jews could have suffered at the instance of one Catholic, Hitler, there is nothing so bizarre in the thought that another Catholic should take the rap for helping a multitude of others.

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In offering Raoul Wallenberg as a role model for future generations, reinforcing that with the precedent of rectitude, compassion and persistence of a Nansen; by calling attention to the apparent universality of altruism and courage suggested by the actions of the Sugiharas and de Mendes we come perilously close to attesting that such traits are within the common potential of mankind. And so we had better lay down our pen before we get carried away.