Wallenberg conferred with Aussie citizenship
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard this week announced that the government would extol Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg by giving him honorary citizenship.
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard this week announced that the government would extol Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg by giving him honorary citizenship.
The posthumous award is the first of its kind to be bestowed in Australia.
Wallenberg is already an honorary citizen in the US, Canada, Hungary and Israel. The Australian Governor-General Quentin Bryce will present the certificate of honorary citizenship at a ceremony at Government House in Canberra on May 6.
“I am pleased to announce that the late Raoul Wallenberg will be recognised as an honorary Australian citizen,” Gillard said.
“The lives of those he rescued are Mr Wallenberg’s greatest memorial, and Australia is honoured to have survivors he rescued living in Australia today,” she added.
A Swedish diplomat in Budapest in 1944, Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps by issuing protective passports. He was later arrested by Soviet forces on suspicion of espionage and was never seen again.
His valour earned him the title of Righteous Among the Nations, which was conferred on him in 1963, along with honorary Israeli citizenship in 1986.
Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott welcomed the move by the government.
“The ceremony at Government House will recognise Raoul Wallenberg’s remarkable service to humanity, and provide an opportunity for Holocaust survivors and their families to honour his memory,” Abbott said in a statement.
Jewish MP Josh Frydenberg, who feted Wallenberg in Parliament last year, told The AJN: “I welcome the announcement, for Raoul Wallenberg was a man who was Righteous Among Nations and whose courage and deeds will always represent a beam of light in what was one of the darkest periods in the history of mankind.”
Frank Vajda who, along with his mother, was saved by Wallenberg from an Arrow Cross firing squad, has been campaigning since 1983 to have Wallenberg recognised. “My life is owed to Wallenberg,” an emotional Vajda, 77, told The AJN.
“It means a heck of a lot to me. When I heard it, I was completely nonplussed. I rang my son and cried, and I think it’s absolutely glorious that the government has seen it fit to grant [Wallenberg] honorary citizenship at this time.”
Vajda, a professor of neurology at Melbourne University, described the tribute as a “historic occasion”.
“It’s truly wonderful. It gives him his rightful place among the honorary citizens of other countries, like Winston Churchill in the United States.”
Judy Schiff of the B’nai B’rith Wallenberg Unit, which was set up in 1985 to bring Wallenberg’s disappearance to the attention of the world and which now provides grants for teachers to visit Yad Vashem in Israel, said the commendation was the culmination of decades of lobbying.
“It’s very exciting, because we’ve been asking for [Wallenberg to be given honorary citizenship] for years now,” Schiff said. “Raoul Wallenberg is a hero of our time.”
According to Schiff, Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus were instrumental in the bestowment of the honour.
ADAM KAMIEN
Righteous Among the Nations Raoul Wallenberg.
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