Newspaper Page Text
Modern miracle
A cause for celebration
by Maurice Samuelson
LONDON (JTA)-The Hanuka
candles in a London home
reminded a Jewish family of its
debt to Raoul Wallenberg, the
legendary Swedish diplomat who
saved thousands of Jews in
wartime Hungary and then
disappeared in the Soviet Union
For Rabbi Leo Fischer, Hanuka
is always associated with the rescue
of his brother, Arthur Fischer,
from certain death at the hands of
the Nazis Although Arthur himself
died nearly three years ago, his
debt to the Swedish hero is
cherished by his brother, who also
played an important, if indirect,
role in the Swedish rescue mission
in Hungary.
It is one of many untold stories
gleaned by this correspondent
about the exploits of Wallenberg,
whose own fate as a post-war
Soviet prisoner still remains a
mystery.
December 1944 marked the
blackest period of the war for the
Jews in the Hungarian capital who
had escaped deportation earlier in
the year. With the city bombarded
by the Soviet army, the
bloodthirsty Arrow Cross fascists
and the Nan SS were trying to
murder as many Jews as possible
before meeting their own fate at
the hands of the Russians.
Arthur Fischer, his wife and two
baby boys were among hundreds
of Jews sheltering in an apartment
block designated as Swedish
property by Wallenberg All had
been furnished with Swedish
provisional passports in a bid to
safeguard them against death or
deportation.
On Dec. 10, Arthur rashly
ventured outside the building and
was arrested, in spite of his
Swedish documents, by Arrow
Cross thugs. Together with about
15 other Jews he was locked up in a
factory on an island in the Danube
At that time, Jews were being
murdered wholesale and Arthur
and his comrades feared for the
worst.
The following day was the first
night of Hanuka. As darkness fell,
one of the Jews found a candle in
the factory. The prisoner kindled
it, recited the traditional blessings,
and quietly intoned the Hanuka
anthem, Ma’oz Tzur. recalling the
miraculous deliverances of old
Arthur later described what
happened:
“The following day, we suddenly
heard people arguing outside the
factory. The door opened; in came
Raoul Wallenberg. He recognized
me as a Swedish pass-holder and
took all of us back to the SWedish
houses."
Wallenberg had already saved
Fischer once before. Together with
two cousins, who also held
Swedish papers, Arthur had been
put on a train for the Polish death
camps. Wallenberg had intercepted
it before it reached the border, and
secured the release of several
people, including the Fischers.
As if that was not enough.
Wallenberg came to the family’s
aid a third time, on Jan. 6. 1945,
shortly before the eastern sector of
Budapest fell to the Russians. On
that day the Nazis and their
Hungarian accomplices were
driving Jews from the Swedish
houses to the general ghetto, where
conditions were much more
perilous.
Wallenberg turned up too late to
stop the transfer of Arthur
Fischer’s family and elderly
parents, and one of the two Fischer
infants was to die in the general
ghetto. However, Wallenberg
managed to prevent the evacuation
of other members of the family
who remained in the Swedish
houses until the liberation.
Raoul Wallenberg •
Arthur’s brother, Leo, who has
preserved this account of their
family's debt to Wallenberg, also
played an important part in
making it possible. As a refugee
from Nazis Germany, Leo Fischer
had obtained Swedish citizenship
just before the war thus ensuring
that his family, living in Hungary,
were among the first to receive
Swedish papers when the Nazis
took power there in March 1944.
Although their father was
originally from Hungary, the two
Fischer brothers were born in
Fuerth, Germany, and went to the
same Jewish school as Henry
Kissinger, the future American
secretary of state.
In 1933, while Arthur and the
other Fischers left for Hungary,
Leo went to Sweden where he
served as a rabbi in a small town on
the Baltic in 1934 He joined his
parents in Budapest, from where
he planned to proceed to Palestine.
For various reasons, this plan fell
through and Leo returned a year
later to Sweden, becoming a
Swedish citizen in 1938.
By 1944, Rabbi Fischer had
settled down and married in
Malmo, on Sweden’s coast. In
March of that year, when Adolf
Eichmann began dispatching
Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz,
Fischer appealed to the Swedish
authorities to protect his
relatives
In July, when Wallenberg
expanded the Swedish rescue
mission. Leo Fischer began
“adopting" scores ol other
Hungarian Jews with whom he
had no family connection but
whose plight he understood all too
well.
After the war, Arthur and othci
members of the family joined Leo
in Sweden and recounted their
wartime experiences to him. In
1949. Arthur Fischer, his wife and
their surviving son moved to the
new state of Israel. He himself died
in 1981, in Germany.
His brother Leo now lives in
Golders Green, London, where he
recounted this story of a modern
Hanuka miracle and his family’s
debt to Wallenberg, the hero who
never came back.
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