Raoul Wallenberg – two student photographs

Raoul Wallenberg as a senior high school graduate in May 1930, together with his mother Maj von Dardel. Photo: Berit Wallenberg

The 17th of January 2012 was the start of the Raoul Wallenberg Year, celebrated in memory of the Swedish businessman, architect and diplomat, born in Stockholm on August 4th, 1912. Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of thousands of Jewish Hungarians during his diplomatic service at the Swedish Legation in Budapest in the last period of the Second World War. On January 17th, 1945, Raoul was arrested by the Soviet military and disappeared for ever from the Western world. He was imprisoned in Moscow, where he died in 1947, according to official Soviet sources.

The Swedish National Heritage Board keeps in it’s holdings a collection of photographs by the Swedish archaeologist and art historian Berit Wallenberg, a ten years older female relative of Raoul. The photograph above was taken by Berit at Raoul’s graduation day on May 13th, 1930 at Nya Elementar Senior High School in Stockholm. By his side stands his mother Maj, remarried von Dardel in 1918. Raoul’s father Raoul Oscar Wallenberg deceased three months before he was born.

The second of the two photographs of Raoul in Berit Wallenberg’s collection shows Raoul in a group of fellow students at the graduation day.

Raoul Wallenberg third student to the right in the upper row. Photo: Berit Wallenberg

The photographs by Berit Wallenberg, from Sweden and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, will be the next photo collection to be shown on the Swedish National Heritage Board’s page on Flickr Commons, starting later this spring. More about it to come…

Read more about the Raoul Wallenberg Year 2012 at the home page of the Government Offices of Sweden.