Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor of Germany, has become the newest member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a non-governmental organization created in Argentina, which works to make known the example of solidarity we find in the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of people persecuted by the Nazi Regime in Budapest between 1944 and 1945.
Among the accomplishments undertaken by the IRWF, it can be point out the educational program titled, ”Diplomacy and the Holocaust”, presented at the German Ambassador’s residency in September 2000. On that occasion, the chief of the mission, Ambassador Hans Ulrich Spohn toasted the Jewish New Year, which coincided with the event.
The IRWF was the first NGO in Argentina to congratulate ex-Ambassador Adolf Ritter Von Wagner for the German president’s unparalleled gesture. President Johannes Rau requested exoneration from the Jewish people at the Israeli Parliament in February 2000 for the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. It is expected that in the next weeks there will be a meeting between President Rau and the founder of the IRWF, Baruch Tenembaum, in Berlin. This meeting will serve to analyze a work agenda on topics of common interest.
In the letter, addressed to Tenembaum and signed by the Chancellor himself, we read: ”It is with pleasure that I join the Wallenberg Foundation as an Honorary Member. Raoul Wallenberg personifies the battle of the valiant individual against human contempt, the authority of terror, and totalitarism.”
The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel; former President of the United States, Gerald Ford, King of Morocco, Mohamed VI; the Prime Ministers of Canada, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Lithuania and Slovenia are some of the Heads of State who have recently joined the ranks of the IRWF.
