On this day in 1947, diplomat and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg allegedly passed away in a Soviet prison (his body was never found). Born August 4, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden, Wallenberg saved 100,000 Jews from extermination in Budapest, Hungary. After being given status as a diplomat by the Swedish legation, he was given the task of doing whatever it took to save Hungarian Jews. Despite having no experience in diplomacy and clandestine operations, Wallenberg led one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Holocaust. In 1936, he worked for a Dutch bank in Haifa, Israel, hearing firsthand accounts from German-Jewish refugees about the plight of Jews under Nazi rule. He then became acquainted with Budapest because his boss could no longer travel safely in Stockholm as a Jew, and instead sent Wallenberg on business trips. In July 1944, 440,000 Jews from Hungary were deported, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 320,000 Jews were murdered upon arrival. Upon learning this, with permission from the Swedish government, Wallenberg began distributing certificates of protection known as ‘Schutzpass’ to Jews in Budapest, where they were given the status of Swedish citizens. Wallenberg used the funds to establish hospitals, nurseries, soup kitchens, and ‘safe houses’ where the Swedish flag was flown, thus converting them into official Swedish embassy annexes and shielding the inhabitants from the Nazis. He would often appear at the railyard where Jews were being deported and hand out Swedish papers to those onboard he could physically reach; he then argued that those holding the papers should be let off the train.In June 1944, Wallenberg delivered a note to the commander-in-chief for the German troops in Hungary, arguing that if they massacred Budapest’s largest ghetto, he would ensure that the General be held personally responsible for it and would be hanged as a war criminal. The massacre was stopped at the last minute. Actions such as this led to Adolf Eichmann’s attempt to assassinate Wallenberg by attacking his car, however, he was not in the vehicle at the time. While on the way to a business meeting in 1947, Wallenberg was taken into custody by Soviet forces, presumably detained on suspicion of espionage. In 1956, the Soviet government suggested that Wallenberg previously died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947, while imprisoned at Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. In 2000, Russia officially admitted Soviet forces wrongfully held him in prison, though they did not provide any details about the cause of his death. In October of 2016, Swedish officials declared him legally dead. The exact fate of Wallenberg and the reason for his imprisonment may never be known. In 1981, United States President Ronald Reagan signed legislation naming Wallenberg an honorary American citizen, a mark of distinction that, until then, only Winston Churchill held.