Raoul Wallenberg, born in 1912, was a Swedish diplomat in Budapest who was credited with saving the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the hands of the occupying Nazi forces and their Hungarian collaborators in 1944-45. While first secretary at the Swedish legation in Budapest, Wallenberg issued special protective passes and fake passports to the city's Jews, saving them from deportation, or immediate execution at the hands of the Hungarian Nazis. Initially, Wallenberg issued more than 700 protective passes, but this number increased to nearly 4,500. He also negotiated with Hungarian and German authorities in order to designate several dozen buildings in Budapest as "safe houses," where persecuted Jews found refuge.

Wallenberg vanished in January 1945, on route to the city of Debrecen, in eastern Hungary. The Soviet military claimed that Wallenberg had been killed by the Nazis, but it was later discovered that he had been detained by Russian officials (who thought that he was an American spy) and was held captive in the Soviet Union.

In the mid-1950s, following Stalin's death, the USSR finally admitted to having had imprisoned Wallenberg and claimed that he had died in prison in 1947. Nevertheless, the personal accounts of several Russian prisoners who were later granted amnesty suggested that Wallenberg had been alive throughout the 1950s. Wallenberg's fate remains a mystery to this date and there is little certainty as to where, when and how the former Swedish diplomat died.