Between May 5 and June 13, 1944, Adolf Eichmann personally supervised the deportation of Hungarian Jews—147 trains brought 437,000 women, children and men to Auschwitz and other camps. The killing temporarily stopped through the intervention of Hungary's regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, under pressure brought by Raoul Wallenberg, a 31-year-old Swedish businessman from an aristocratic family. Wallenberg had been recruited by the War Refugee Board to attempt to intercede and save as many Jewish lives as possible. By bribing, hectoring and cajoling Hungarian officials Wallenberg managed to manufacture 4,500 Schutzpasses—Swedish passports—that allowed Jews, if they could prove any connection to Sweden no matter how dubious, to leave Hungary. He also negotiated a series of other deals with the Gestapo that made life easier for the Jews, even as the killings increased as the Russian Army advanced in early 1945. The final third of Smith's narrative examines the mystery of why Wallenberg was taken in custody by the Soviets in 1945 as a spy and was never heard from again. This familiar history is brought to life in vivid prose that at times borders on the imaginative—was Wallenberg really inspired to his heroic actions after viewing the 1942 film Pimpernel Smith, based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel?
—and this important chapter of Holocaust history is conveyed with energy and a sound sense of historical context. Smith unearths no new material here—although he does restate and reemphasize important historical facts such as the U.S. and British governments' negligence in not acting more quickly to save European Jewry—but, in dramatic narrative form, presents a moving and compelling portrait of a man who acted when others did not. (Feb.)
