Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust, Paul A. Levine (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010), xviii + 392 pp., cloth $74.95, pbk. $32.95

Abstract

Raoul Wallenberg's story has emerged as one of the bright lights shining through a dark period of modern European history. Some Hungarian Jewish survivors have viewed him as virtually an angel from heaven, others as a genuine “altruistic personality.” For some he was a hero racing around Budapest to save Jews. Literature, film, and television have created a man of mythic heroism. As Levine suggests, however, Wallenberg can also be seen as an ordinary man confronting extraordinary evil. Levine effectively argues that the myths detract from Wallenberg's real-life story, contending that Wallenberg becomes an even more significant moral symbol when the historical complexities are understood. At age 32 Wallenberg disappeared into the Soviet Gulag, and never lived to witness the freedom for which he fought. By the same token, he never clarified his motives. Levine's goal is to enhance Wallenberg's significance by offering a methodologically sound study of the genocidal context in which Wallenberg worked. Levine has nuanced the “cult of personality” surrounding Wallenberg since 1945, helping us bypass his one-dimensional portrayal as a knight battling the Nazis' war of extermination.