ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LONDON
SOURCE: Associated Press
A Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews during World War II joined the ranks of Britain's heroes Wednesday, honored by the queen, diplomats and Jews who survived because of his courage.
In a rare tribute to an eminent foreigner, Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a 10-foot-high statue of Raoul Wallenberg, whose personal campaign against Nazi genocide epitomized man's ability to battle evil.
Israeli President Ezer Weizman stood beside the queen at the ceremony outside a synagogue near London's Marble Arch. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose wife is Wallenberg's niece, was among the guests.
Annan said that contemplating the statue had forced him to ask the painful question of why Wallenberg took such extraordinary risks - ``and why did so many turn the other way?''
He said he hoped the monument would inspire future generations to act.
Wallenberg, a member of a family of industrialists and diplomats referred to as ``Sweden's Rockefellers,'' distributed special Swedish passports to Hungarian Jews in deportation trains and on death marches. He also won diplomatic protection for entire sections of Budapest and is credited with saving at least 20,000 Jews.
In January 1945, the Soviet army occupied Budapest and arrested Wallenberg as an American spy. He vanished into the Soviet prison system, where Soviet officials say he died in 1947. Fellow inmates claim to have seen him as late as 1989.
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