GREENSTREET

First Ave Between E 47 St And E 46 St

Manhattan

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This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

Located in the shadow of the United Nations at First Avenue and East 47th Street, this striking monument honors the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg (1912-Α), who is credited with helping to save the lives of some 100,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust in World War II (1939-1945). The monument was crafted by Swedish sculptor Gustav Kraitz (born in Hungary, 1926) in collaboration with his wife Ulla Kraitz, and was dedicated in 1998.

Wallenberg was born into a prominent Swedish banking family on August 4, 1912. Trained as an architect at the University of Michigan, he became a businessman and traveled widely in Europe before and during World War II. Meanwhile in Hungary, persecution of the country’s large Jewish population intensified toward the end of the war, with mass executions and deportations. In 1944, the American Refugee Board sought the aid of neutral Sweden in its efforts to save as many of the country’s Jews as possible.

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