The protective passes
Documents with no legal force, official-looking enough to save tens of thousands.
Holger.Ellgaard — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0 · JIP — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Frankie Fouganthin — CC BY-SA 3.0
A small square on the water in central Stockholm, named after Raoul Wallenberg and holding a memorial to him. The man's story is the reason for the square: a Swedish diplomat sent to Budapest in 1944 while the Nazis were deporting Hungary's Jews to the extermination camps. He issued thousands of Swedish protective passes — documents with no real legal force but official-looking enough — and rented buildings he declared Swedish territory, hiding people inside them. He is estimated to have saved tens of thousands in a matter of months. Then he vanished: the Soviets arrested him in January 1945 as they entered Budapest and he never came out. His fate has never been established with certainty, and his case remained a point of dispute between Sweden and Moscow for decades. The memorial in the square addresses that disappearance as much as the rescue. The square is open, free and small — a ten-minute stop on the waterfront at Nybroplan, on your route between the city centre and the Östermalm district.
Documents with no legal force, official-looking enough to save tens of thousands.
He rented houses in Budapest, raised the flag over them and hid people inside.
Arrested by the Soviets in 1945, his fate never established with certainty.
Nybroplan, central Stockholm, on the water
Soviet forces arrested him in Budapest in January 1945 and took him to Moscow. The Soviet Union later stated he had died in prison in 1947, but scattered testimonies claimed sightings years afterwards, and conclusive documents were never produced. He was formally declared dead in Sweden in 2016, more than seventy years after he vanished.
You are at Nybroplan on the water: the Royal Dramatic Theatre stands on the same square with its marble front, and the archipelago boats leave from here. Östermalm lies east with its historic market hall, and the Nobel Museum and Gamla Stan to the south. All walkable.
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