By Kim Gamel
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Jan. 12, 2001; 6:17 a.m. EST

STOCKHOLM, Sweden –– After nearly a decade of sifting through tantalyzing if sketchy evidence on the fate of former Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, a panel of experts issued a report Friday that doesn't even try to write the end of the story.

A Swedish-Russian panel shed little light on what happened to the man who vanished in 1945 in Soviet custody after helping tens of thousands of Jews escape Nazi-occupied Hungary.

"There are still questions that remain unanswered," the report summary stated.

While the diplomats and experts on the semiofficial commission said it was likely that Wallenberg died in 1947, they conceded that no evidence has been found to confirm that. The report did say that Sweden may have missed chances to win his freedom in the months after his disappearance.

Russia says Wallenberg died in 1947, a victim of the Soviets, but some researchers believe he survived in Soviet custody perhaps even into the 1980s.

Investigators working since 1991 scrutinized thousands of archive documents in Russia, Hungary, Switzerland and Sweden; interviewed dozens of people with connections to Wallenberg and made repeated appeals on television and in newspapers for anybody with any information to to come forward.

"Unfortunately, none of them could provide any concrete information about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg," the Russians said in their summary.

Sweden left the door open in hopes answers may some day come. The government released thousands of newly declassified Wallenberg-related documents Friday, though it withheld others to protect the integrity of any future investigations.

Wallenberg belonged to one of Sweden's wealthiest and most prominent families. While a diplomat in Hungary, he distributed Swedish passports to Jews in deportation trains and on death marches, won diplomatic protection for whole neighborhoods in Budapest, and organized food and medical supplies. His efforts are credited with saving at least 20,000 lives.

He was arrested on espionage charges in Budapest soon after the Soviet army entered in January 1945, and he vanished at the age of 32.

Moscow first claimed he was killed during fighting in Budapest, then that he was taken under the protection of Soviet troops. A 1957 memo from then-Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said Wallenberg died of a heart attack in Soviet custody in 1947.

Last month, Russia acknowledged for the first time that Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, were imprisoned for political reasons until they died in 1947.

The two men were officially rehabilitated as "victims of Soviet repression," but Russian prosecutors failed to provide details about how, where or exactly when they died. Wallenberg's family have pressed for details.

Susan Mesinai, an independent researcher who worked with the panel, said the answers are out there but more documents need to be made available to find them.

"We're confident that we'll be able to finish our work," she said Thursday. "I really believe ... the documentation exists enough to know" what happened to Wallenberg.

Many former prisoners have claimed they saw Wallenberg alive in the 1970s and 1980s. Mesinai and other researchers have said they believe Wallenberg most likely did not die in 1947, but was isolated under a false identity in the Gulag penal system and could have lived as late as the 1980s.

Mesinai applauded the decision by the Swedish government to publicize more documents and she called on the Russians to do the same.

Staunchly neutral Sweden came under some criticism in the report. It said a likely scenario was that the Soviets wanted to exchange Wallenberg for defectors and other Soviet citizens in Sweden, but the offers were neglected.

Wallenberg's home country also was too slow in pursuing the case, initially accepting assurances that the diplomat was being held for safekeeping, then refusing to insist on more concrete action in order to facilitate negotiations on a Swedish-Russian trade agreement.

Russian investigators pointed to a June 15, 1946 meeting between then-Swedish ambassador to Moscow Staffan Soderblom and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, saying Soderblom's incorrect personal opinion that Wallenberg had been killed caused him to miss an opportunity to lobby on his behalf.

The panel was created in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union to tap into newly open secret police files.

Swedes are not alone in speculation about what happened to Wallenberg, remembered worldwide as one of the heroes of the Holocaust.

"He was one of the few who really put his life on the line," said Thomas Kanger, a journalist with Sweden's TV4 who has been following the case since 1994. "And it's a riddle. It's like a crime story, you want to know the end of it."

–––

On the Net:

Jewish Student Research Center, http://www.usisrael.org/jsource/biography/wallenberg.html