A Quiet Courage

Book excerpt: The Russians are advancing on Budapest. The Nazis, in a last desperate attempt to destroy Hungarian Jewry, have sent Adolf Eichmann to round up as many Jews as possible for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. It is a time of chaos and terror. Two Swedish diplomats with their colleagues in the Swedish legation decide that they must act to save as many as possible. One of them, Raoul Wallenberg, was to vanish after the war into Soviet Russia. His story has often been told. The other, Per Anger, was to be his partner in the great rescue effort. This is Per's story, and it once again proves the great truth that "one man can make a difference." Per Anger's determination and heroism were to be repeated twelve years later, in 1956, when he came to the aid of Hungarians fleeing another oppressor - Soviet communism.