Dark Skies over Budapest: Raoul Wallenberg, Resistance and Rescue of the Hungarian Jews, 1944–1945

Budapest in the autumn of 1944 was a city full of terror, tension and conspiracies. Members of the SS and the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement roamed the streets looking for Jews and other opponents. The German and Hungarian Nazis planned to exterminate the last surviving large Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Europe. Ranged against them was a loosely knit network of neutral diplomats, lower-level church activists and a fragile but growing resistance movement. In an inferno of intrigue, a low-key civil war was taking shape between pro- and anti-Nazi Hungarians. Meanwhile, the Soviet army was approaching the city and the biggest urban battle since Stalingrad was imminent. That summer, a young Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg had arrived in the Hungarian capital, throwing himself into the dramas and intrigues raging in Hungary under the German occupation. Wallenberg soon became an important part of the networks desperately scrambling to save the Jewish population in Budapest. Through Wallenberg’s story, the reader follows the dramatic events that took place between the summer of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 and meets the many individuals and groups that were crucial to this unique and ultimately largely successful action. Dark Skies over Budapest is a true story of resistance and rescue and of one of the greatest humanitarian efforts of the Second World War. Casting new light on Raoul Wallenberg’s work, the book also tells the story of hitherto unknown but important people – who in many cases never received any recognition for their endeavours – and of actions that have remained undiscovered for many years. This book offers a comprehensive account of what really happened in Budapest in 1944–1945.