Raoul Wallenberg - The Holocaust Rescuer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Raoul Wallenberg - The Holocaust Rescuer - Essay Example He hated witnessing hunting and killing of animals just for entertainment and sport (Handler, 1996). As an adolescent Wallenberg travelled far and wide and gained proficiency in English, German, Russian and French plus his native Swedish. He attended the University of Michigan for four years where he took up architecture. After finishing his degree he apprenticed in a Dutch bank located in Haifa, Palestine. Throughout his six months working in Palestine, he met Jews who luckily got away from Nazi Germany. The mad, sadistic, and hideous stories they narrate to him appalled and profoundly affected him not merely because of his compassionate nature, but because his great-great-grandfather was a Jew (Handler, 1996). When he went back to Sweden in 1936 he desired to work in the discipline of architecture, except that his American architecture did not meet the criteria for such profession in Sweden. Hence over the subsequent years he committed himself in different business ventures. He was hired in 1941 as the foreign sales representative for a Central European Trading Company located in Hungary. Hungary became a collaborator of Germany in 1939 because the Americans failed to rescue the pitiful and blameless Jews who were persecuted under the Nazi regime. Hence Sweden consented to send a special representative whose only objective would be to save the Jews from the evil clutches of the Nazis. For this mission the Swedish people chose Raoul Wallenberg for the reason that he spoke German proficiently and comprehend the ways of the Nazis (Tokudome, 1999). Wallenberg sensed that a number of Hungarian and German authorities were starting to be apprehensive of post war retribution for the heinous crimes they did to the Jews. He took advantage of this opportunity and immediately got the Hungarian and German authorities to reconsider their decisions and actions through encouraging them with intimidations and