pál szalai provided raoul wallenberg with special favors and government information. in the second week of january 1945, raoul wallenberg found out that adolf eichmann planned a massacre of the largest jewish ghetto in budapest. the only one who could stop it was the man given the responsibility to carry the massacre out, the commander of the german troops in hungary, general gerhard schmidhuber. through szalai, wallenberg sent schmidhuber a note promising that he, raoul wallenberg, would make sure the general was held personally responsible for the massacre and that he would be hanged as a war criminal when the war was over. the general knew that the war would be over soon and that the germans were losing. the massacre was stopped at the last minute thanks to the courage and daring action of wallenberg.