MARIA SOPHIA (MAJ) VON DARDEL

Daughter of  prominent Swedish physician Per Wising. Married Raoul Oscar Wallenberg in 1911.  Her husband fell ill and died of cancer before the birth of their  only child, Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg, who was born on August 4, 1912.

After raising her son alone for six years, she  married Fredrik von Dardel, a lawyer, in 1918. After Raoul's disappearance in 1945, she and her husband, as well as their two children, Guy and Nina, devoted their lives to secure his release from Soviet captivity.

Shortly after Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance, she met with the Soviet Ambassador in Stockholm, Alexandra Kollontai. Kollontai told  Maj von Dardel that her son had been detained by Soviet forces but that he was well and that there was no cause for worry.

Through three decades, Maj kept up far-reaching correspondence, sending personal appeals to international political leaders, including Josef Stalin and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as human rights organizations and activists such as Simon Wiesenthal.

In 1973 she wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asking him to bring the influence of the U.S. government to bear in the case of her son, since his mission had been in large part conceived and supported by official U.S. entities such as the War Refugee Board. Kissinger never responded, even though the matter had been brought to his attention by his close associate Thomas Pickering.