Raoul Wallenberg in his office in the Swedish legation.
Budapest, Hungary, November 26, 1944. Hungary's capital,
Budapest, straddles the banks of the Danube River and is the
country's most populous city. Budapest was created by the union
of three cities: Buda, Obuda, and Pest. Before World War II,
approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the
center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life. In the late 1930s and
early 1940s, Budapest was a safe haven for Jewish refugees.
Before the war some 5,000 refugees, primarily from Germany and
Austria, arrived in Budapest. With the beginning of deportations
of Jews from Slovakia in March 1942, as many as 8,000 Slovak
Jewish refugees also settled in Budapest. Hungary was allied
with Nazi Germany. Despite discriminatory legislation against
the Jews and widespread antisemitism, the Jewish community of
Budapest was relatively secure until the German occupation of
Hungary in March 1944. With the occupation, the Germans ordered
the establishment of a Jewish council in