Russia caught "red-handed" in Wallenberg probe, says historian

A new book containing statements from a cellmate of missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg proves that Russian officials deliberately withheld information about the fate of the man credited with saving thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, researchers allege.

“They've been caught red handed,” historian Susanne Berger told The Local of the Russian actions.

“This ranks as one of the most significant findings in the Raoul Wallenberg case in the last 50 years.”

The new accusations of Russian deception regarding what happened to Wallenberg come following the publication of a new book, “Secrets of the Third Reich Diplomacy,” which contains interrogation transcripts from several German diplomats imprisoned by the Soviet Union following World War II, including Willy Rödel, who was Wallenberg's long-term cellmate in Moscow's Lefortovo prison from 1945-1947.

The book was published earlier this year by archivists of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB)— the successor to the KGB.

Historian Vadim Birstein, a Russian-born researcher now based in the United States, who along with Berger served on the 1991 Swedish-Russian Working Group tasked with looking into Wallenberg's disappearance, came across the book while researching SMERSH, the Soviet military counterintelligence active during the second part of World War II....