Panel Suggests Swedes Did Not Do Enough to Save Wallenberg

STOCKHOLM — Investigators studying the fate of Raoul Wallenberg left open the possibility Friday that the prominent diplomat did not die in a Soviet prison in 1947, and they implied that Swedish officials did not do enough to save him.

A 362-page report by a Swedish-Russian panel set up in 1991 left many unanswered questions about the Swedish diplomat revered for helping tens of thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary. He was arrested in 1945 after the Soviets entered that country, and the Russians claim, without offering proof, that he died in a Soviet prison in 1947.

But some researchers say they believe that Wallenberg did not die in 1947 but was isolated under a false identity in the gulag penal system and could have lived as late as the 1980s.

Former prisoners claim to have seen Wallenberg alive in the 1970s and 1980s.

On Friday, Russian investigators conceded that nothing could be certified because much of the evidence had been destroyed.

With 71 blue binders of newly declassified Wallenberg-related documents on shelves behind them, panel members suggested that an initially slow and confused response by the Swedish government to Wallenberg’s disappearance probably gave the Soviets an impression of nonchalance.