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Whereas Wallenberg and his diplomatic colleagues, aided by 
members of the Hungarian resistance, set up hospitals, 
schools, nurseries and soup kitchens in Budapest for over 
8,000 Jewish orphans whose parents had already been ei-
ther killed or taken to a concentration camp; 
Whereas Wallenberg redesigned and developed official Swed-
ish documents for the protection of Jews, including cre-
ating the so-called ‘‘Schutzpass’’, a Swedish protective 
passport that ended up saving nearly 20,000 Jewish lives 
by granting the holder immunity from deportation from 
Hungary and almost certain death in Nazi concentration 
camps; 
Whereas in November 1944, Wallenberg intervened in a Ger-
man death march of Jews from Budapest to labor camps 
in Austria, handing out food, clothing, and Swedish pro-
tective passports, saving over 1,500 Jews from being 
transported to Auschwitz; 
Whereas Wallenberg helped set up shelters that offered pro-
tection, and as a result of his joint efforts with the Inter-
national Red Cross and diplomatic representatives from 
Switzerland, Portugal and several other nations, was able 
to save 50,000 Jews—of which an estimated 25,000 were 
directly under Wallenberg’s protection; 
Whereas Wallenberg’s last significant success took place in 
January 1945, when he helped thwart a plot by the Nazi 
Schutzstaffel (SS) to exterminate 70,000 Jews being held 
captive in the Budapest Central (Large) Ghetto; 
Whereas, on January 13, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg contacted 
the Soviet military authorities in an effort to secure food 
and supplies for the Jews under official Swedish protec-
tion; 
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Whereas, on January 17, 1945, Wallenberg and his driver, 
Vilmos Langfelder, left Budapest for a meeting with the 
Soviet military commander, Marshal Malinovsky in De-
brecen, when they were taken into ‘‘protective custody’’ 
by the Soviet military counterintelligence units (Smersh); 
Whereas that day was the last time anyone saw Raoul 
Wallenberg as a free man; 
Whereas, on February 6, 1945, Wallenberg was placed in cell 
123 of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison and interrogated for 
an hour and a half, while Langfelder was placed in a sep-
arate cell—the official reason for arrest remains un-
known; 
Whereas later that month, Wallenberg’s mother was informed 
by the Soviet Ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra 
Kollontay, that her son was safe in the Soviet Union and 
would return soon; 
Whereas, on March 8, 1945, Hungarian Kossuth Radio, con-
trolled by the Soviets, reported that Wallenberg had been 
murdered en route to Debrecen; 
Whereas, on June 15, 1946, in a meeting with Swedish Am-
bassador Staffan So¨derblom, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 
promised to investigate Wallenberg’s fate; 
Whereas, on July 17, 1947, Colonel A.L. Smoltsov, head of 
the Lubyanka Prison’s Medical Department, addressed a 
handwritten note to Viktor Abakumov, Minister of State 
Security (MGB), stating that Wallenberg died suddenly 
in his cell, ‘‘probably as a result of a myocardial infarc-
tion’’, while an addendum to the report suggested that 
Abakumov ordered the body to be cremated without au-
topsy; 
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Whereas, on the night of July 22, 1947, approximately one 
dozen prisoners with direct connection to both Raoul 
Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder were interrogated and 
subsequently isolated; 
Whereas information released in 2009 by archivists of the 
Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation 
(FSB) indicated that on July 23, 1947, a still to this day 
unidentified prisoner, ‘‘Prisoner No. 7’’, was interrogated 
for over 16 hours alongside Vilmos Langfelder; 
Whereas the FSB archivists concluded ‘‘with great likeli-
hood’’ in 2009 that ‘‘Prisoner No. 7’’ was Raoul 
Wallenberg; 
Whereas, on August 8, 1947, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei 
Vishinsky reported to the Swedish government that 
Wallenberg was not in the Soviet Union, stating there 
had been no trace of him in any of the Soviet prisons and 
labor camps; 
Whereas, on February 6, 1957, Soviet Deputy Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, Andrei Gromyko, informed the Swedish 
government that Raoul Wallenberg had allegedly died of 
a heart attack on July 17, 1947, in Lubyanka Prison; 
Whereas, countless individuals continued to search for Raoul 
Wallenberg well after his alleged death, including famed 
Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who on February 12, 
1975, wrote to United States Senator Henry Jackson 
that ‘‘to millions of Swedish citizens and to thousands 
who have survived Soviet Russian barbarity, the case of 
Wallenberg has become a sort of trauma. To know that 
we can do nothing to bring light into the fate of a man 
who fell victim to his own good deeds is almost unbear-
able.’’; 
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Whereas in January 1981, Tom Lantos became the first, and 
to date, only, Holocaust survivor to serve in the United 
States Congress; 
Whereas Congressman Lantos after escaping from a Hun-
garian slave labor battalion found refuge in a Wallenberg 
‘‘safe house’’ in Budapest; 
Whereas, on October 5, 1981, Public Law 97–54, authored 
by the late Congressman Tom Lantos, was enacted into 
law bestowing honorary United States citizenship upon 
Raoul Wallenberg, making him the second person to re-
ceive such an honor; 
Whereas in February 1984, Wallenberg’s half-brother, Pro-
fessor Guy von Dardel, filed a lawsuit in the United 
States District Court for the District of Columbia against 
the Soviet Union, demanding Soviet authorities provide 
information into the fate and whereabouts of Raoul 
Wallenberg; 
Whereas, on October 15, 1985, the District Court ruled that 
the Soviet Union violated international law by seizing and 
detaining Raoul Wallenberg, while also stating that ‘‘the 
Soviet Union has always had knowledge and information 
about Wallenberg; that it has failed to disclose and con-
cealed that information’’; 
Whereas in May 1988, Members of the United States House 
of Representatives wrote a letter to President Ronald 
Reagan, asking him to urge Soviet leader Mikhail Gorba-
chev to reveal the truth regarding the Wallenberg case 
and to allow Raoul Wallenberg’s family to visit the Soviet 
Union and investigate Mr. Wallenberg’s fate; 
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Whereas, on July 27, 1989, Public Law 101–63 was enacted 
into law, designating October 5, 1989, as ‘‘Raoul 
Wallenberg Day’’; 
Whereas in October 1989, members of Raoul Wallenberg’s 
family were invited to Moscow by the Soviet Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs, where they were given what were per-
sonal effects alleged to belong to Mr. Wallenberg and are 
said to have been offered condolences about his fate; 
Whereas in 1990, headed by Professor von Dardel, the First 
International Commission on the Fate and Whereabouts 
of Raoul Wallenberg was formed and included inde-
pendent experts in order to examine Russian archival col-
lections, and made major discoveries directly relevant to 
the Wallenberg case; 
Whereas in 1991, an official Swedish-Russian Working Group 
was appointed in order to try to establish joint efforts to 
determine what actually happened after the disappear-
ance of the Swedish diplomat in January 1945; 
Whereas, on November 2, 1995, Congress unveiled a bronze 
bust dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg in the United States 
Capitol Rotunda; 
Whereas, on April 24, 1997, the United States Post Office 
issued U.S. stamp #3135, honoring Raoul Wallenberg; 
Whereas, on December 22, 2000, in response to a formal ap-
plication by Professor von Dardel, Russia formally ‘‘reha-
bilitated’’ Raoul Wallenberg, a decision based on the 
1991 law ‘‘on the rehabilitation of victims of political re-
pression’’, stating ‘‘by decision of extra-judicial Soviet 
Organs [Wallenberg and Langfelder] were arrested with-
out foundation and deprived of their freedom for political 
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reasons as representing a danger for society, without 
being accused of a specific crime’’; 
Whereas, as a result of being ‘‘rehabilitated’’, all information 
regarding Wallenberg should be made available from the 
Russian archives; 
Whereas, on January 12, 2001, the Swedish [side of the] 
Working Group presented its findings in a report, con-
cluding that the case could not be finally closed as a re-
sult of being unable to obtain enough verifiable informa-
tion, however, it did find that the ‘‘Russian announce-
ment of Raoul Wallenberg’s death could only be accepted 
if it were confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt. This 
has not happened, partly for the want of a credible death 
certificate, and partly because the testimony about Raoul 
Wallenberg being alive after 1947 cannot be dismissed’’; 
Whereas, on July 9, 2014, leaders of the United States Con-
gress presented posthumously a Congressional Gold 
Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress, 
to Raoul Wallenberg in honor of his heroism during the 
Holocaust; 
Whereas in October 2015, an international group of histo-
rians and Wallenberg experts launched a new initiative, 
The Raoul Wallenberg Research Initiative RWI–70, to 
pool researchers’ knowledge and expertise in order to de-
velop a comprehensive catalogue of open questions in 
order to advance the search for answers regarding 
Wallenberg’s fate and to facilitate access to the pertinent 
archival materials and documents in Russian and other 
international archives; 
Whereas in September 2016, members of Raoul Wallenberg’s 
family visited Moscow and formally presented the cata-
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logue of pending questions, compiled by historians Dr. 
Vadim Birstein and Susanne Berger, to high ranking of-
ficials of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) 
and the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service 
of the Russian Federation (FSB) who indicated that 
Russian archivists would ‘‘answer every single one’’; 
Whereas in July 1993, Russia enacted a new Law on State 
Secrets, establishing the basis for classifying information, 
which initially led to the reclassification of documents 
previously released; 
Whereas in 2012, the Constitutional Court of the Russian 
Federation found that Russia’s Constitution ensures the 
freedom of information and clarified that a provision 
from the 1993 Law on State Secrets regarding a 30-year 
limit of classification ‘‘has to be applied to information 
defined as state secret both before and after this law 
came into force’’; and 
Whereas the International Convention for the Protection of 
All Persons from Enforced Disappearance stipulates that 
any victim, or individual who has suffered harm as the 
direct result of an enforced disappearance, has ‘‘the right 
to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the en-
forced disappearance, the progress and results of the in-
vestigation and the fate of the disappeared person’’: Now, 
therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) urges Russian authorities to grant access to 
archival collections, including the Central Archive of 
the Russian Security Service (TsA FSB), the Cen-
tral Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense 
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(TsA MO), the Central Archive of the Foreign Intel-
ligence Service of the Russian Federation (TsA 
SVR), the Foreign Police Archive of the Russian 
Federation (AVP RF), the Archive of the President 
of the Russian Federation (APRF), the Russian 
State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), 
the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History 
(RGANI), the State Archive of the Russian Federa-
tion (GARF), and the Archive of the Russian Min-
istry of Internal Affairs (TsA MVD), and declassify 
and make publicly available all documents related to 
Raoul Wallenberg; 
(2) urges the Russian authorities to work with 
Raoul Wallenberg’s family, the Swedish government, 
as well as Russian and international scholars, re-
searchers, and archivists in order to resolve the out-
standing questions surrounding the circumstances of 
Wallenberg’s arrest and death, including— 
(A) how and why were Raoul Wallenberg 
and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, detained by 
Soviet military counterintelligence units and 
moved from Budapest to Moscow in January 
1945; 
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(B) what happened to Raoul Wallenberg 
after his last confirmed presence in Lubyanka 
Prison in March 1947; 
(C) where are the unredacted copies of all 
records of interrogations of prisoners connected 
with the Raoul Wallenberg case and why have 
they not been made available to family members 
and researchers; 
(D) who were all of the prisoners interro-
gated on July 22 and 23, 1947, in both 
Lubyanka and Lefortovo Prisons, where are the 
unredacted records and transcripts of such in-
terrogations, and why have they not been made 
available to family members and researchers, 
including— 
(i) what is the identity of ‘‘Prisoner 
No. 7’’, and why have the family and re-
searchers been denied access to review the 
prisoner’s entry in the interrogation reg-
ister of Lubyanka Prison; 
(ii) why did neither ‘‘Prisoner No. 7’’ 
nor Vilmos Langfelder sign the interroga-
tion book as was customary, on that day 
and what is the meaning of the word 
‘‘Proshel’’ in lieu of their signatures; 
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(iii) why have references to Raoul 
Wallenberg and Vilmos Langfelder been 
blotted out in various prison journals and 
when did this censorship occur; and 
(iv) who are prisoners 14 and 16–20, 
sentenced from June 1947 through May 
1948, and why have they never been iden-
tified; 
(E) granting Raoul Wallenberg’s family 
and researchers access to file PF–9653, which 
has been identified by FSB archivists as con-
taining documentation on foreign diplomats, in-
cluding Hungarian Prime Minister Istva´n 
Bethlen and Raoul Wallenberg’s longtime cell-
mate, the German diplomat Willy Ro¨del, who 
were imprisoned from 1945 through 1947; 
(F) granting family members and re-
searchers access to unredacted copies of the list 
of prisoners sentenced by the MGB Special 
Board from 1947 through 1953; 
(G) granting the family and researchers 
access to the official death registers for 
Lubyanka and Lefortovo Prisons from 1947 
through 1953; 
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