The United States Treasury unveiled a Congressional gold medal, last Thursday, in honor of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved about 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. Among his efforts, he issued and distributed thousands of protective Swedish passports to the Jews of Budapest and pressured senior Nazis to stop the shipment of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
At the ceremony, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew noted, “The War Refugee Board was commissioned two floors above of where we stand today, here in the Cash room," according to theyeshivaworld.com, which explained that the it was the board that gave Wallenberg authority to commit to his plan of action. Wallenberg was detained by Soviet authorities and disappeared in 1945. He reportedly died in a Soviet prison two and a half years later, but his death and the circumstances surrounding it are subject to speculation. If alive he would be 101, this August.