JACOB WALLENBERG

Jacob Wallenberg was born in Gothenberg, Sweden, 16 months after the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg at the hands of Soviet troops in Budapest. Although his father would on occasion take him to the family bank in Stockholm – where the sea of clerks seated beyond the teller’s gate were laughingly referred to as the “Gulag” – Jacob grew up knowing nothing of his cousin’s fate. Although Raoul’s name might be mentioned in passing, the story of his heroic and humanitarian deeds were never recounted at family gatherings. By the time he was old enough to take an avid interest in world news, the case wasn’t mentioned in the Swedish media at all. Finally, in high school, he came across a small paragraph in a history book that spoke of World War II, violence and genocide, with a brief reference to Raoul. Jacob immediately called his father and demanded that he tell him more.

Even then, it wasn’t until Jacob was living in America and working in New York, that he finally grasped the importance of his historic cousin. Following Elinor Lester’s article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, a Hungarian whose brother had worked with Raoul in Budapest came to visit him and, for two hours, awakened a real sense of Raoul’s struggle, his humanity and great achievements. Jacob began to understand the sacrifices Raoul had made in combatting violence and prejudice, the dangers he faced in saving lives. He too was emboldened by a desire to take risks for the sake of the truth, for others and for history. Discovering Raoul gave Jacob a new sense of purpose as well as a burden -- a conflicting mixture of shame and legacy, a passion for the responsibility inherent in his heritage. With time, he resolved to find the truth obscurred by family and country.

In an article entitled “It’s the 1990s: Do Your Children Know Who Raoul Wallenberg Is?”, published in Raoul Wallenberg’s Children, a special issue of the Raoul Wallenberg Committee’s A Study of Heroes curriculum, Jacob stated how angry it made him to learn the real story of his cousin from a total stranger. He was a Swede and a relation who felt that neither the Wallenberg family nor the Swedish government had done enough to resolve Raoul’s fate. A Vice President of the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States, in 1991 Jacob founded with Diane Blake and Susan Mesinai (then Program Director) “No Stone Unturned” as an expression of his determination to focus on the resolution of Raoul’s fate in addition to educating the American public about his heroic deeds. He did both. When Susan Mesinai left the Committee to found the ARK Project later that year in order to do on-site search in Russia for Wallenberg’s whereabouts, he maintained strong contacts with the Independent Investigators. On occasion Jacob was known to carry out his own private initiatives to learn more of his cousin’s fate by following up on reports that came his way because he bore the Wallenberg name.

Jacob Wallenberg died tragically on January 17, 1994 – a date which was already marked by the disappearance of his heroic cousin – at the age of 47. He is survived by his son,