[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 113 (Tuesday, September 10, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1542-E1543]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO AMBASSADOR PER ANGER OF SWEDEN

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 10, 2002

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I call to the attention of my colleagues to 
the passing during the August recess of Ambassador Per Anger of Sweden. 
He died Sunday August 25 in Stockholm at the age of 88. I invite my 
colleagues to join me in paying tribute to him.
  Mr. Speaker, Per Anger was a distinguished career diplomat of his 
native Sweden. He was ambassador to Australia, Canada and the Bahamas, 
Consul General in San Francisco, an advocate and activist within the 
Swedish Foreign Ministry for humanitarian assistance, and an effective 
voice of conscience in Swedish diplomacy. But most of all, he will be 
long remembered for his active and effective collaboration with Raoul 
Wallenberg in the saving of Hungarian Jewish lives during the 
Holocaust, and then for his advocacy on behalf of Wallenberg after the 
Soviet Army took him prisoner at the end of World War II.
  Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Anger was born in Goteborg on December 7, 
1913, and studied law at Stockholm and Uppsala universities. He began 
his diplomatic career in Berlin, but he was posted to Budapest in late 
1942. During his early days in Budapest, he passed on a historic piece 
of intelligence--the plans, location and operations of Nazi 
concentration camps that he had gleaned from refugees to Hungary.
  He was still in Budapest in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied 
Hungary. Shortly after the German Wehrmacht arrived, Adolf Eichmann and 
his henchmen appeared in Budapest with the assignment to exterminate 
the Jewish population of Hungary. Per Anger began issuing temporary 
Swedish passports and identity cards to Hungarian Jews in an effort to 
protect them against deportation to Nazi extermination camps.
  In July of 1944, Raoul Wallenberg arrived at the Swedish Legation 
Budapest. He came at the request of the United States and with the 
support of the Swedish government in an effort to do what he could to 
save the lives of Hungarian Jews. Wallenberg expanded the use of these 
protective passports, issuing tens of thousands of them to Jews facing 
shipment to extermination camps, and with American financial assistance 
he leased apartment buildings where Jews driven from their homes stayed 
nominally under Swedish diplomatic protection. Together Wallenberg and 
Anger saved tens of thousands of children, women, and men from the 
forced marches and from the trains bound for death camps at Auschwitz 
and elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.
  Mr. Speaker, while Per Anger's diplomatic career is distinguished, it 
is his efforts with Raoul Wallenberg that set him apart, that raise him 
above the many eminent Swedes who have served their country with honor 
and integrity. Ambassador Anger's association with Raoul Wallenberg 
gave him a cause that he continued to pursue with commitment and 
intelligence throughout his life. Because of that association, he will 
be honored around the world for generations.
  A great deal of what we know about Raoul Wallenberg's efforts in 
Budapest in 1944 is the

[[Page E1543]]

result of the work of Per Anger. His memoir, With Raoul Wallenberg in 
Budapest, provides essential documentation of many of the events during 
that tempestuous time. Without this published recollection, our 
knowledge of Wallenberg's incredible struggle against the Nazi terror 
would be considerably diminished.
  Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Anger was also a champion within the Swedish 
Foreign Ministry, urging bolder and more aggressive action by the 
Swedish government to secure the release of Raoul Wallenberg after he 
was seized and imprisoned in the Soviet Union in January of 1945. 
Because Sweden was reluctant to take any action that might antagonize 
its huge neighbor to the east, it officially pursued a cautious and 
pusillanimous policy in seeking the release of Wallenberg. Within the 
Swedish Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Anger was a strong voice for 
bolder action.
  After his retirement from the diplomatic service, Per has continued 
his efforts. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was in 
Moscow on a number of occasions, at times with members of Raoul 
Wallenberg's family, in the continuing effort to determine the truth of 
what really happened after Wallenberg was seized by Red Army troops in 
Eastern Hungary.
  Ambassador Anger has been one of the leaders in keeping alive the 
memory of Raoul Wallenberg during the fifty years since Raoul 
Wallenberg disappeared. I remember well many occasions when Anger paid 
eloquent tribute to the heroism of Raoul Wallenberg. One of his most 
memorable and moving tributes was given at the commemoration of the 
50th anniversary of Wallenberg's disappearance which was held at the 
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., on January 
17, 1995.
  Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Anger was honored appropriately for his 
humanitarian contribution to saving the lives of Hungarian Jews. In 
1982 he was named one of the ``Righteous Among Nations'' by Israel's 
Yad Vashem memorial and museum. The government of Hungary awarded him 
the Order of Merit in 1995, and in 2000 he was granted honorary Israeli 
citizenship.
  Mr. Speaker, as we reflect on the unspeakable horrors that were 
unleashed upon the world by the Nazi regime a half-century ago, it is 
important that we not only remember the atrocities and violence and 
murder and terror of that time, but that we also consider the sparks of 
humanity that glowed in the midst of that darkest of midnights. Per 
Anger was one of those radiant sparks of light. Per Anger had the 
decency, dedication, courage and the motivation to do great good 
against incredible odds.

                          ____________________