Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński is expected to give a speech during the ceremony by a plaque commemorating Wallenberg.
The diplomat saved Jews while serving as Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest during World War II. Friday marks 75 years since he was abducted by the Soviets.
“On January 17, 1945, after the Red Army entered Hungary, he was arrested by the NKVD [Soviet secret police] and taken to Moscow. His subsequent fate is unknown,” a spokesman for Poland’s Foreign Office said.
“In 1963, [Wallenberg] was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal by the Yad Vashem Institute. He became a symbol of activities to save human lives throughout Europe,” the spokesman added.
The memorial event to honour Wallenberg will take place at 11am on Friday at the intersection of Raoul Wallenberg and Świętokrzyska streets in central Warsaw.
Meanwhile, Israeli journalist Eldad Beck has proposed that during a World Holocaust Forum scheduled to take place on January 23 at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Russian President Vladimir Putin should refer to the arrest of Wallenberg by the Soviets in 1945, Polish website tysol.pl reported.
Beck tweeted that Putin should also refer to “the other antisemitic crimes committed by the Soviets, before, during and after WWII.”
(pk)