God afton, Herr Wallenberg (1990)

In 1943, Raoul Wallenberg, a member of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, is on a business trip in Hungary. He trades in delicacies and is in the middle of a conversation with a customer when the train windows suddenly go dark. Wallenberg opens the blackout curtain and sees a stationary train on the track to Auschwitz concentration camp, with bodies being thrown out of its carriages. One man manages to escape and embraces his dead son. He looks Wallenberg in the eyes as the guards shoot him. Stockholm, June 1944: At the Swedish government’s direction, and under the protection of the United States, Wallenberg is to be sent to Budapest on a diplomatic mission. He is to provide Hungarians there who have ties to Sweden with Swedish protective passports. Opinions are divided about his ability to do so. He is considered mediocre; despite having every advantage, he achieved only average grades at school and does not work in keeping with his background. He is neither religious nor political, but he is not afraid of death, since his father died before he was born and, from an early age, became someone he could turn to even in death. What ultimately convinces them, alongside Wallenberg’s influential family, is his account of the man who held his dead son in his arms and was shot before Wallenberg’s eyes. In December 1944, Wallenberg is in Budapest. He has housed numerous threatened Budapest residents in buildings officially under Swedish protection. At the Swedish consulate, he has employed 400 Jews to save them from deportation. He uses tricks to rescue people from train carriages that have already been sealed, pretending they hold Swedish protective passports. His self-assured manner earns him respect. In the eyes of Budapest’s Jews, Wallenberg is a savior, while the authorities know him for his persistence. His new focus is a house that has supposedly been cleared, but still contains 20 “forgotten” Jews. He gives protective passports to everyone in the house and visits regularly so that he can be there when it is raided and save them. At first, he fails to reach the young Marja, whose two daughters were shot in front of her in the house. In winter, she is wearing only a coat and does not want to be rescued. She plans to stand naked before the soldiers during the deportation to make them understand that everyone they shoot is a real person. The days pass, but the people in the house are left undisturbed. Wallenberg tries to save more Jews, but time and again he arrives too late. His influence wanes as the Red Army draws closer to Budapest, especially since his actions are increasingly frowned upon in Sweden and the United States as well. They want to order him back to Sweden, but Wallenberg refuses, saying he is not a diplomat and therefore is not bound by diplomatic instructions. One day, 3,000 Hungarian soldiers assemble in front of the house with the 20 forgotten Jews. The house is stormed, and Wallenberg tries in vain to save the people from arrest in an orderly manner on the basis of their passports. Some are shot, but most are loaded onto a truck that is already waiting. The truck will not start because of bad petrol, so the prisoners wait on the vehicle. It turns out the operation was a mistake, as no one had requested 3,000 soldiers. However, the man in charge of the operation, who refuses to introduce himself to Wallenberg, stays on the truck. Wallenberg now drives to the stationary truck every day, tries to bribe the stranger, and even looks for an empty house for the prisoners. During a heated argument with the stranger about whether the arrests were lawful, soldiers standing nearby kill several of the prisoners, including a rabbi. The stranger blames Wallenberg’s presence for the massacre. One day, Adolf Eichmann flees Budapest, along with his entourage. It is Christmas, and Wallenberg realizes that the stranger is ready to give up. He advises him to shoot himself, since Eichmann did not take him along. At first, the stranger suggests that all the Jews on the truck will have to die, because only their release after a few have been shot would make it a crime. The stranger finally tells Wallenberg that his name is Ferenc Moser and orders the prisoners to leave. One soldier loses control and shoots at the people on the truck. Almost all are killed. The few survivors flee to the house where they had previously been hiding. Wallenberg manages to get through to Marja; she gets dressed and gives in to her grief. Wallenberg himself despairs over his limited influence, especially as he constantly witnesses shootings and deportations he can no longer do anything to stop. Food deliveries he arranged for the Budapest ghetto are held up; houses under Swedish protection are raided, and their residents are shot or taken prisoner. Wallenberg knows that he himself is the target of planned assassination attempts. They are not carried out, however, because Wallenberg’s presence in Budapest eases the world’s conscience, as a minister tells him. Shortly before the Budapest ghetto is to be cleared, Wallenberg makes a desperate attempt to save its 65,000 people by going to the commanding general, Schmidhuber. He tells him that if the ghetto is cleared, people will speak of him in future not as a soldier, but as a murderer. Detailed reports about what is happening in the ghetto and the planned operations have been sent not only to the United States, but also to Schmidhuber’s family members. Soon afterward, the Red Army liberates Budapest. Marja has survived, and there have been no further casualties among the other people from the house either. Wallenberg wants to continue looking after the Jews he has saved and enter into dialogue with the new Russian authorities. Despite warnings from members of the Swedish embassy, he goes to the Soviet commandant in January 1945, but never returns.