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Raoul Wallenberg
Diplomat • Sweden • 1912–Disappeared 1947
Saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest by issuing protective passports and personally climbing onto deportation trains.
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat sent to Budapest in 1944, issued protective passports to tens of thousands of Jews, designated buildings as Swedish territory, and established soup kitchens and hospitals for refugees. He personally intervened at train stations to stop Jews from being transported to Auschwitz, climbing onto roofs of train cars to hand out protective passports. When the Soviets liberated Budapest in 1945, Wallenberg was arrested on suspicion of being an American spy. He disappeared from Lubyanka prison in Moscow in 1947 and was presumed dead, though his exact fate remains unknown to this day.