International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
Encyclopedia
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) is a non-governmental organization
which researches Holocaust rescuers and advocates for their recognition. The organization developed educational programs for school to promote peace and civil service
. Founded by Baruch Tenembaum
, it has offices in Buenos Aires, New York, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro and Jerusalem.
The organization bears the name of Raoul Wallenberg
, a Swedish diplomat who saved Jews and other persecuted people in Hungary during the Holocaust. He was captured by the Soviet Union
and his death has been the source of controversy and secrecy.
In addition to Wallenberg, the IRWF has researched and honored numerous Rescuers of the Holocaust, such as:
Dignitaries that have written letters on Wallenberg's behalf include Argentine Congressman Federico Pinedo, American Researcher on the German resistance in the Third Reich Greg McClelland,The Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry Paul J. Crutzen
, Yuan T. Lee
and Herbert A. Hauptman
, President of the Republic of Croatia Stjepan Mesic
, and Mayor of Or Yehuda, Israel Itzhak Buchovza.
IRWF also campaigns for public sites to be named after Wallenberg. Parks, streets and schools across the globe bear his name in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Ecuador, Uruguay and others.
In April, 2010, the IRWF commissioned an exhibit by painter Peter Bulow. The exhibit "Blessings May Break from Stone" featured statues of Raoul Wallenberg and Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas
. Bulow's mother is a Holocaust survivor from Budapest, Hungary.
citizen, proclaimed as Raoul Wallenberg Day across the U.S. The purpose of the commemorative day is to promote peace and the values that come with humanitarianism
, while remembering Wallenberg and his deeds. The day is recognized annually in the State of New York and the IRWF campaigns had led to Wallenberg Days proclamations in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
which researches Holocaust rescuers and advocates for their recognition. The organization developed educational programs for school to promote peace and civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
. Founded by Baruch Tenembaum
Baruch Tenembaum
Baruch Tenembaum was born in Argentina at the Las Palmeras colony, a Santa Fe provincial settlement for Jewish immigrants escaping from the Russian pogroms of 1880. The grandson and son of Jewish gauchos, he studied in Buenos Aires and Rosario. He is best known as an interfaith activist, most...
, it has offices in Buenos Aires, New York, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro and Jerusalem.
The organization bears the name of Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman, diplomat and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for his successful efforts to rescue thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary from the Holocaust, during the later stages of World War II...
, a Swedish diplomat who saved Jews and other persecuted people in Hungary during the Holocaust. He was captured by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and his death has been the source of controversy and secrecy.
Research
IRWF is primarily a historical research organization, collecting information on different on cases of rescuing during the Holocaust. As part of the research, the foundation gathers survivors saved by Wallenberg and others like him to interview them for the purposes of research and historic memory preservation. IRWF posts the transcripts online for others to read and use. It recently has pushed for researching more women saviors, dedicating a special section on their English language website for them. IRWF aims for its research subjects and honorees to gain official recognition by their local governments and organizations.In addition to Wallenberg, the IRWF has researched and honored numerous Rescuers of the Holocaust, such as:
- Angelo Roncalli
- Dimitar PeshevDimitar PeshevDimitar Peshev was the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice during World War II...
- Aristides de Sousa MendesAristides de Sousa MendesAristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches, GCC, OL was a Portuguese diplomat. He ignored and defied the orders of his own government for the safety of war refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early years of World War II...
- George MantelloGeorge MantelloGeorge Mantello, born György Mandl or Mandel was a Jewish diplomat who, while working for the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, Switzerland, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by providing fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers and rescued tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands...
- Per AngerPer AngerPer Johan Valentin Anger was a Swedish diplomat who participated in numerous efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews from arrest and deportation by the Nazis during World War II.-Early career:...
- Friedrich BornFriedrich BornFriedrich Born was a Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Budapest between May 1944 and January 1945, when he had to leave Hungary following orders of the occupying Red Army.He already lived in the Hungarian Capital city before his appointment by the ICRC, working as...
- Ho Feng-Shan
- Princess Alice of BattenbergPrincess Alice of BattenbergPrincess Alice of Battenberg, later Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and mother-in-law of Elizabeth II....
- Giorgio PerlascaGiorgio PerlascaGiorgio Perlasca was an Italian who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:...
- Chiune SugiharaChiune Sugiharawas a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from...
- Dorothea NeffDorothea NeffDorothea Neff was a Vienna stage actress during the 1930s. Neff helped hide her Jewish friend Lilli Schiff, after she received resettlement orders from the Nazis to leave Vienna. To throw the Gestapo, Neff wrote a suicide note and signed it 'Lilli' and left it in her apartment...
- Giovanni PalatucciGiovanni PalatucciGiovanni Palatucci was an Italian police official who saved thousands of Jews from being deported to Nazi extermination camps....
- Gitta BauerGitta Bauer-Opposing Nazism:She was born into a liberal family and raised a Catholic. She was a member of a Catholic movement, that was banned by the Nazis in 1935...
- Otto WeidtOtto WeidtOtto Weidt was the owner of a workshop in Berlin for blind and deaf. During the Holocaust, he fought to protect his Jewish workers against deportation and he has been recognised for his work as one of the Righteous Men of the World's Nations...
- Suzanne SpaakSuzanne SpaakSuzanne Spaak , World War II heroine.Suzanne Spaak was born into a prosperous Belgian banking family sometime around 1905...
- Nicholas WintonNicholas WintonSir Nicholas George Winton, MBE is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe...
- Carlo AngelaCarlo AngelaCarlo Angela was an Italian doctor, who has been recognized as a "Righteous Gentile" for his efforts during World War II in saving Jewish lives. He is the father of TV journalist and science writer Piero Angela.-Early life:...
- Carl LutzCarl LutzCarl Lutz was the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary from 1942 until the end of World War II. He helped save tens of thousands of Jews from deportation to Nazi Extermination camps during the Holocaust. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews...
- Gilberto Bosques SaldívarGilberto Bosques SaldívarGilberto Bosques Saldívar was a Mexican career diplomat and before that a combatant in the Mexican Revolution and a leftist legislator...
- Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães RosaAracy de Carvalho Guimarães RosaAracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa, née Aracy Moebius de Carvalho, was a Brazilian diplomatic clerk who has been recognized with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.-Early life:...
- Maria KotarbaMaria KotarbaMaria Kotarba was a courier in the Polish resistance movement, smuggling clandestine messages and supplies among the local partisan groups. She was arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo as a political prisoner before being imprisoned in Tarnów and then deported to Auschwitz on January...
- Luis Martins de Souza Dantas
- Jan KarskiJan KarskiJan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
- Irena SendlerIrena SendlerIrena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground and the Żegota resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II...
- Irene Gut OpdykeIrene Gut OpdykeIrene Opdyke was a Polish nurse who gained recognition for aiding Jews persecuted by the Nazis during World War II and for saving twelve Jews.-Humanitarian efforts:...
- Andris Bērziņš
Campaigns
The organization has many humanitarian campaigns. Aimed to put pressure on the Russian government to release an official statement of what happened to Wallenberg, IRWF created two campaigns. The 'Bring Raoul Home' campaign asks dignitaries to address Wallenberg’s case in the correspondence and official meetings with the Russian Government; and the '100,000 Names for 100,000 Lives' campaign, which aims to get 100,000 people to sign the petition who then will be conveyed to the Russian President. As of August 12, 2010, IRWF has gotten 27,204 signatures for its '100,000 Names for 100,000 Lives' campaign.Dignitaries that have written letters on Wallenberg's behalf include Argentine Congressman Federico Pinedo, American Researcher on the German resistance in the Third Reich Greg McClelland,The Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry Paul J. Crutzen
Paul J. Crutzen
Paul Jozef Crutzen is a Dutch Nobel prize winning atmospheric chemist.Crutzen is best known for his research on ozone depletion. He lists his main research interests as “Stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate”...
, Yuan T. Lee
Yuan T. Lee
Yuan Tseh Lee, Ph.D. is a chemist. He was the first Taiwanese Nobel Prize laureate, who, along with the Hungarian-Canadian John C. Polanyi and American Dudley R. Herschbach won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 "for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes"...
and Herbert A. Hauptman
Herbert A. Hauptman
Herbert Aaron Hauptman was an American mathematician and Nobel laureate. He pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the whole field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials...
, President of the Republic of Croatia Stjepan Mesic
Stjepan Mesic
Stjepan "Stipe" Mesić is a Croatian politician and former President of Croatia. Before his ten-year presidential term between 2000 and 2010 he held the posts of Speaker of the Croatian Parliament , Prime Minister of Croatia , the last President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia , Secretary General...
, and Mayor of Or Yehuda, Israel Itzhak Buchovza.
IRWF also campaigns for public sites to be named after Wallenberg. Parks, streets and schools across the globe bear his name in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Ecuador, Uruguay and others.
The Arts
IRWF has an art gallery in its New York City Headquarters, where it exhibits work done by Holocaust survivors or those who have been inspired by Rescuers of the Holocaust. The Foundation will often co-organize film screenings and theatre productions based on Wallenberg and other rescuers.In April, 2010, the IRWF commissioned an exhibit by painter Peter Bulow. The exhibit "Blessings May Break from Stone" featured statues of Raoul Wallenberg and Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas
Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas
Luis Martins de Souza Dantas was a Brazilian diplomat who was awarded the Righteous Among The Nations by the Israeli Supreme Court in June 2003 for his participation during the Holocaust in helping Jews in France escape. It is estimated he saved 800 people, 425 confirmed to be Jewish...
. Bulow's mother is a Holocaust survivor from Budapest, Hungary.
Education
IRWF has created many different educational programs for different student levels. For middle school to higher education, there are resources for both students and teachers that are free for public use and easily accessible online. The program emphasizes the values of courage and integrity.Wallenberg Day
The organization has advocated for having October 5, the date in which Wallenberg became an Honorary AmericanHonorary Citizen of the United States
A person of exceptional merit, generally a non-United States citizen, may be declared an Honorary Citizen of the United States by an Act of Congress, or by a proclamation issued by the President of the United States, pursuant to authorization granted by Congress.Seven people have been so honored,...
citizen, proclaimed as Raoul Wallenberg Day across the U.S. The purpose of the commemorative day is to promote peace and the values that come with humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
, while remembering Wallenberg and his deeds. The day is recognized annually in the State of New York and the IRWF campaigns had led to Wallenberg Days proclamations in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming.