KGB Documents Said to Confirm Wallenberg Death

MOSCOW —  KGB chief Vladimir V. Bakatin on Wednesday presented new documents on the missing Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to the Swedish ambassador in Moscow, an embassy official said.

Bakatin, a reformer who was appointed to the job after last month’s coup, reportedly said the documents only confirm the “previously existing” version of Wallenberg’s death.

Wallenberg is credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War II. He vanished after the Soviets arrested him in Budapest in 1945 on charges of spying.

The Soviet Union said in 1957 that prison documents showed the Swede had died of a heart attack in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison in 1947. But these claims are disputed throughout the world and witnesses claim to have seen Wallenberg alive as recently as the 1980s.

Wallenberg’s family and friends also say he might still be alive.

Hans Magnusson, a Swedish Embassy official, said five documents were given to Ambassador Carl Otto Orjan Berner during a meeting with Bakatin on Wednesday.

“We did not have time to study them, and they might be of interest. However, they do not shed a new light on Wallenberg’s fate,” he said in a telephone interview.