Did Raoul Wallenberg try to leave Budapest in January 1945 with jewelry and 15–20 kg of gold hidden in the gasoline tank of his car? On sensationalism in popular history and Soviet disinformation

This article addresses the claim made by the American journalists
Frederick Werbell and Thurston Clarke (in 1982) and the Swedish
author and researcher Bengt Jangfeldt (in 2012) to the effect that
the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, when preparing to leave
Budapest for Debrecen in January 1945, hid jewelry and 15–20 kg
of gold in his car. As is evident from the examination conducted
here, the testimonies referred to in support of this theory are all
fraught with serious problems. Most importantly, there is not a
single witness making such a claim before the July 1947 issue of
the American journal Reader’s Digest, where it first appeared. The
article concludes that the sources referred to are not sufficiently
solid to support the claim that Wallenberg tried to bring anything
of value out of Budapest, except for the small number of bills of
different currencies that was handed over to his relatives by the
KGB in 1989, together with his personal belongings. The article
also describes a number of known and suspected Soviet attempts
to furnish the Swedes with disinformation regarding Wallenberg’s
fate and discusses whether the gold-and-jewelry claim is in fact
the distant echo of an almost 70-year-old Soviet attempt to discredit Wallenberg.