[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 54 (Friday, May 3, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E706-E707]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 TRIBUTE TO SWEDISH AMBASSADOR JAN ELIASSON AND HIS STATEMENT ON RAOUL 
                               WALLENBERG

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 2, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me today in 
paying tribute to Ambassador Jan Eliasson--ambassador of Sweden to the 
United States. I want to call the attention of my colleagues to a 
particularly important speech which he gave before he assumed his 
current position at a special fiftieth anniversary commemoration 
marking the disappearance of Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg. 
That address was given in the Swedish Parliament on January 17, 1995.
  Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Eliasson has a distinguished career in the 
Swedish diplomatic service. He achieved international attention in 
1991, when he was able to utilize his extensive knowledge of economics 
with a humanitarian purpose in serving as both the Vice President of 
the United Nations Economic and Social Counsel (ECOSOC) and as the 
Chairman of the U.N.'s emergency relief group. As the Vice President of 
the ECOSOC, Ambassador Eliasson was responsible for coordinating 
activities of social, economic, and humanitarian importance.
  Ambassador Eliasson is not only an outstanding diplomat but also a 
great humanitarian, who embodies the highest and noblest values Sweden 
has contributed to western civilization. After being named Under-
Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs of the U.N., one of his first 
initiatives was to eliminate the problem of active land mines in 
countries such as Mozambique. Aid agencies were hired out to de-mine 
the most dangerous civilian populated regions of the country. 
Ambassador Eliasson publicly denounced the further production of land 
mines under existing law.
  From October 1994 to September 2000 Ambassador Eliasson was Sweden's 
Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs. In this position, his voice was 
particularly significant in formulating and implementing Swedish 
foreign policy. He continued to incorporate economic pragmatism, social 
development, and international peace and security into his agenda while 
serving in this capacity.
  Mr. Speaker, for the past two years, Jan Eliasson has served as the 
Swedish Ambassador to the United States. I am pleased that he is still 
dedicated to the humanitarian goals that have marked his long and 
distinguished diplomatic career and which clearly represent the best of 
Sweden. Ambassador Eliasson's commitment to helping other people 
mirrors the compassion that Raoul Wallenberg so nobly embodied during 
his unique rescue mission, in my native land of Hungary.
  In his 1995 address to the Swedish parliament, Ambassador Eliasson 
said, ``Raoul Wallenberg lives on.'' Anyone that dedicates his or her 
life to peaceful diplomacy and humanitarian causes as Ambassador 
Eliasson has done is carrying on Wallenberg's humanitarian tradition. I 
urge my colleagues to join me in honoring Ambassador Eliasson.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that Ambassador Eliasson's address to the Swedish 
Parliament on the fiftieth anniversary of the disappearance of Raoul 
Wallenberg be placed in the Record. It is an outstanding statement of 
Wallenberg's humanitarian commitment, and it reflects as well the 
thoughtful commitment to democracy, human rights, and humanitarian 
action that Ambassador Jan Eliasson represents.

 Address to the Swedish Parliament on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 
      Disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg By Ambassaor Jan Eliasson

       Looking back at his life in his autobiography, from the 
     perspective of an ageing man, the philosopher Bertrand 
     Russell said: ``Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly 
     strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the 
     search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering 
     of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me 
     hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of 
     anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.''
       Perhaps Raoul Wallenberg would not have chosen precisely 
     these words if he were looking back on his life today. But 
     Bertrand Russell puts into words what I believe were also 
     Raoul Wallenberg's strongest driving forces. And Russell also 
     formulates the course which Raoul Wallenberg would probably 
     want all of us to take in today's bewildering and violent 
     world.
       Most of what I know about Raoul Wallenberg comes from 
     books, and from the think dossiers at the Ministry for 
     Foreign Affairs. But many of the most important and finest 
     things I know about Raoul Wallenberg I have learnt from his 
     close relative, his friends, and some of those who were saved 
     from the Holocaust.
       There are three concepts which have been etched into my 
     memory, when I have been going through what I have read and 
     heard about Raoul: action, passion, and it goes without 
     saying. I am going to attempt to describe Raoul Wallenberg as 
     a person in terms of these three words. And I will also be 
     using them as my starting point when I try to explain the 
     example he sets.
       What was Raoul Wallenberg's action? We know that he saved 
     the lives of tens of thousands of people, together with brave 
     and loyal colleagues. We know that he helped to prevent the 
     destruction of the ghetto in Budapest, thus also preventing 
     the murder of a further 60,000 people. And we know that he 
     became one of the outside witnesses--the eyes and ears of the 
     international community--in an inferno on earth, at a time of 
     horrific human degradation.
       When we read his letters to his grandfather--we must 
     remember that his father died before Raoul was born--we see 
     few signs that he was preparing himself for a task or a role 
     of this nature. He had studied in America, worked in offices 
     in Cape Town and Haifa, and he had discussed various possible 
     careers in some detail with his grandfather. Was he to become 
     an architect, a banker, or a businessman?
       From his letters, he seems to have been carefree, active, 
     full of curiosity and ideas and agreeable self-ironic. He 
     once hitchhiked from Michigan to Los Angeles, where his 
     birthday coincided with the pomp and circumstances of the 
     1932 Olympics. ``My birthday was a quiet affair, since I had 
     asked the civic authorities not to go to any special 
     trouble,'' he told his grandfather in a slightly bantering 
     tone.
       Nonetheless, in the years he spent in America, there were 
     already signs that action was waiting for Raoul Wallenberg. 
     On one occasion when he was the victim of a holdup, he kept 
     his sang-froid, requesting that he be driven to a main road 
     after he was robbed. Afterwards, he merely regretted that he 
     had not made a better job about bluffing about how much money 
     he had on him.
       He was restless, waiting for something important to do, 
     something meaningful. It was easy to understand that his 
     heroes were Dumas' three musketeers, and Pimpernel Smith, 
     whose final words in the film were--incidentally--``I always 
     come back''.
       Nothing seemed to be difficult, or impossible for him. He 
     even believed that he could tackle his incipient baldness if 
     he shaved off all his hair. A man of action, certainly but 
     also man who totally lacked a sense of prestige and who was 
     not interested in appearances.
       And then action and Raoul Wallenberg fused together in the 
     summer of 1944. He has six months to save as many as possible 
     of the 200,000 Jews who still remained in Hungary--after the 
     death or the deportation of more than 600,000. ``When does 
     the next train leave?'' he asked Nina and Gunnar, his sister 
     and her husband when he learnt in Berlin, on his way to 
     Hungary, that the travel agency had given him a day of rest. 
     He could not afford to waste a single hour.
       Once he arrived in Budapest, he started to organize things 
     at a hectic pace, designing new protection passports and 
     building up a closely meshed network of contacts--ranging 
     from members of the Jewish Council to the wife of the Foreign 
     Minister, and from his laundress to the detestable Adolf 
     Eichmann, whom he asked to dinner (which he subsequently 
     forgot or subconsciously suppressed, since he was so full of 
     the thousands of other things which he had to do).
       The spirit of action was something which expanded 
     ceaselessly, slowly permeating him. When the thugs of the 
     Arrow Cross--Hungary's Quislings--took over the autumn of 
     1944, the situation became unbearable and the cruelty almost 
     indescribable. Raoul was like the Dutch boy who put one 
     finger after the other in the various holes to stop the dam 
     bursting. Many lives were saved as the result of the 
     meticulous planning, others by ruses and provisions in 
     various languages and in different keys.
       But many, many people were murdered before his eyes. And 
     often he arrived too late or was not able to intervene and 
     stop the inferno. He saw people slip away, disappear, die--as 
     when thousands of Jewish women and children, clad in high 
     heeled or thin-soled shoes, were forced to trudge in the 
     slush, day and night, without food and water for 150 miles to 
     the border--and there a fraction of them were subjected to a 
     roll-call, with traditional thoroughness, by Eichmann's 
     command.
       I am sure that in these situations he thought of the danger 
     in delay, the damage caused by waiting too long and not 
     acting in time, of being forced to focus on putting out the 
     cruel flames instead of looking for arsonists and the causes 
     of the fire. Arriving in time, to forestall and take 
     preventive action, is basically a question of respect for 
     life and respect for human dignity.
       It was with this in mind with Raoul formulated a plan, 
     together with his co-workers, in the last weeks in Budapest, 
     for the rebirth and rehabilitation of the scattered remaining 
     Jews in Hungary. He planned for tomorrow, for survival, in 
     order to plant the trees that must grow. I am convinced that 
     he had this plan in his rucksack--he did not have a 
     briefcase--when he got into the black limousine en route for 
     the Russian headquarters exactly 50 years ago today.
       To move on to my second keyword: passion, no only Bertrand 
     Russell's compassion, but also Raoul Wallenberg's fervor and 
     capacity to amuse his friends with the quick-fire

[[Page E707]]

     macabre humor, in spite of the horrors, and to inspire other 
     people to great exploits, to work day and night. It was a 
     case of ``saving as many people as possible, to snatch as 
     many as possible from the clutches of the murders,'' as he 
     wrote in a letter in July 1944.
       In Wallenberg, passion and compassion lived, side by side, 
     in symbiosis. Both are necessary for action and results. The 
     American Wallenberg Committee has characteristically chosen 
     as its motto the words of Edmund Burke: ``All that is 
     necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do 
     nothing''.
       But for Wallenberg, there was no choice. There is no 
     decision-making process in the face of evil. The phrase ``it 
     goes without saying'' became Raoul Wallenberg's invisible 
     companion.
       He did not question whether he should go to Hungary. He did 
     not ask any questions when he was awakened in the middle of 
     the night in Budapest and took his bicycle to the ``Swedish 
     houses''. With the streets filled with loudmouthed supporters 
     of the Arrow Cross, who were running amok, raping or trading 
     in human beings. He knew which path he had to walk. He had an 
     unfailing moral compass.
       Thus, Raoul Wallenberg also set an example. He was one of 
     us, a man who showed that action is possible and necessary. 
     He showed that we do not always need to be prepared or to 
     take deliberate decisions to do what is right. He showed that 
     we can all rise to the occasion, which can then take over and 
     inspire us to superhuman effort. He showed that powerlessness 
     does indeed exist--but that it can be overcome by tackling 
     one problem at a time and by always working and planning for 
     a better future, for a new sense of fellowship.
       One of the books I read describes a long conversation Raoul 
     had with a young girl about the League of Nations. He seemed 
     much more interested in what the League of Nations--the 
     United Nations of that time--should do than in the girl. His 
     sister Nina also noted this.
       This episode comes to mind when we look around the world 
     today, searching for a Raoul Wallenberg. He would be need in 
     Pol Pot's Cambodia, in Idi Amin's Uganda, in the civil wars 
     in Angola and Mozambique, in Somalia in 1992, in the genocide 
     of Rwanda and in the nightmare of Bosnia. Many were there--
     but were we too few? Were we--are we--onlookers on too great 
     an extent? Where was the action, the passion and ``it goes 
     without saying''?
       Raoul Wallenberg lives on. We must not give up on our 
     efforts to have a full account of his fate. We had strong 
     expectations that a new, open and truthful Russia would help 
     us achieve this clarity. Let us hope that today's Chechen 
     tragedy will not stop the ultimate triumph of the forces of 
     democracy and openness.
       Russia can show that these forces cannot be conquered, 
     either by producing Raoul Wallenberg or the whole truth about 
     him. This can be achieved in the Swedish-Russian Commission 
     which, since 1991, has been systemically examining documents 
     and available information.
       The central issue is not the Wallenberg case or affair. It 
     is Raoul Wallenberg as a human being. And, in the final 
     analysis, the end of the Cold War should be a matter of 
     focusing on human beings. We should stop viewing nations as 
     pawns on a geopolitical chessboard but instead see them as 
     societies with people who have to right to political freedom, 
     to economic and social justice and to a life in dignity for 
     all.
       For me, this is Raoul Wallenberg's message. That is why 
     Raoul Wallenberg lives on. During his work in Hungary in the 
     reign of terror, in the ghetto and on the streets, he looked 
     the victim in the eye and tried to erase all the power games, 
     all the prejudices and all the hate that encompassed this 
     individual human being.
       He saw the forces of evil, but he never gave up the hope, 
     and never stopped taking action.
       What more do we need today?

       

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