IN MEMORIUM: HELEN SOOS (1947 – 2004)

The first non-Swedish official whom Raoul Wallenberg met upon his arrival in Budapest in July 1944 was Geza Soos – jurist, leader of a Protestant youth organization, a member of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and, under the Horthy government, a key figure in the Hungarian Independence Movement working to resist the Nazis and, later, the Communist takeover.

Soos, who had been helpful in the care of Jews prior to Wallenberg’s arrival, also experienced the dangers which beset the young Swede under the Arrow Cross government – hiding out, sleeping in different places every night in order to escape capture or death. Unlike Wallenberg, Soos left Hungary in December 1944 on a clandestine flight to Italy where, in the wake of Soviet advance, he brought a separate peace offer to the Allies, which was to have been extended through the Vatican but he was detained by British officials before he could reach Rome, After the Armistice, Soos again risked his life when he returned to Hungary to help rebuild his nation, but in 1946, in the face of Soviet arrests, left for Switzerland. He and his family lived near Geneva while he studied for his ordination as a pastor. The Soos family then came to settle in the United States, in the mountains of North Carolina where they continued to live a life of Christian faith.. Tragically, Geza Soos died in 1953.

Helen Soos, Geza’s daughter born in Switzerland in 1947 and a graduate of Radcliffe College in 1971, carried on in her father’s footsteps as a career diplomat. After obtaining her Masters from the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy, she worked most of her life for AID, in Nairobi Kenya, Niger and Morocco but also, for a few years, for the National Security Council during the Reagan years.

With the formation of a new democratic government in Hungary, members of the former Resistance still alive in the West began to return to Hungary where they continued to document their history as young Hungarian officials, struggling to uphold the religious, political, economic and military standards of their flowering nation prior to German and Soviet occupation. Geza Soos’ family returned his extensive archive to the Protestant church archives in Budapest. In a “providential” meeting in Michael Berenbaum’s office at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, they met Susan Mesinai and together began to explore the Wallenberg-Soos connection. Susan and Helen traveled to Budapest together in 1997 to review her father’s papers, meet other resistance and nationalist leaders and to interview Wallenberg’s Hungarian staff members and other witnesses still alive to get a clearer understanding of his mission and connection to the Resistance.

The friendship and generosity which Helen Soos gave to the search for the truth of Raoul Wallenberg’s fate was matched by her courage, resolve and inspiration. Her sudden death of cancer in 2004 was a shock and great loss; her spirit remains a guiding light in this research. Helen is survived by her two daughters: Heidi and Kristi, her mother Helen (who died in 2009) and siblings Zoltan, Piroska, Geza and Emese as well as her former husband, Lawrence Hausman.