On April, Thursday 19th, 2007 the Legislative body of the City of Buenos Aires passed the Act 2,307 through which it was ordered that a Raoul Wallenberg Day (August 4, date of birth) be included in the educational agenda of the city. This was also ordered by Act 2,088 of September 14, 2006. The Project was proposed by Congressman Jorge Enriquez and voted by all present Congressmen except for Congressman Noemí Oliveto who voted against.
ACT 2.307
Passed by the Legislative Body of the City of Buenos Aires on Thursday,
April 19th, 2007.Section 1°.- Section n°2 of Act 2088 be amended. The final version of said section shall be the following:
”Section 2°.- May August 4 will be included in the Educational Agenda as the ”Raoul Wallenberg Day,” in honor of the memory of the Swedish diplomat.”
Section 2°.- be published, etc.
GROUNDS
Mr. President:On Thursday, September 14th, 2006 the Act declaring August 4 as the ”Raoul Wallenberg Day” in the City of Buenos Aires was passed. For the first time in South America a city dedicates one of its calendar days to remember the heroic deeds of the savior of thousands of lives during the Holocaust.
Raoul Wallenberg, a young man, only 32 years old, was a Swedish diplomat in Hungary towards the end of the Second World War, when Adolf Eichmann, one of the infamous war criminals who would later come to Argentina, decided to haste the implementation of the so called ”final solution to the Jewish matter.”
In his capacity as diplomat, Wallenbrtg began a rescue venture of unusual proportions, undertaking a path of no return.Today, numerous people around the world have heard about the extraordinary deeds of Raoul Wallenberg, during the Second World War, in rescuing Hungarian Jews.
His image was not one of the heroic type in the ordinary sense, but rather a brave organizer and negotiator. Moreover, he was a good actor, a talent which served him well when confronting the representatives of nazism.
Wallenberg would impress the Germans, and, in general, they would give in to his demands. Of course, one of the reasons the Germans respected him so much was him being a Swedish diplomat, an investiture the Germans dared not violate.
Once, when Wallenberg was forced to seek shelter due to the fact that Hungary’s nazis were after him, he stated: … ”I have no other choice. I have accepted this task and I could never return to Stockholm without knowing that I have done all that is humanly possible to save the greatest amount of Jews”… And he continued to do so until he was captured, not by the nazis, but by the Soviet army.
His brave and humanitarian actions helping the Hungarian Jews earned him the entrance to the gallery of the ”Righteous Gentiles of the World”, those gentiles who defying all sorts of dangers and endangering their own lives hawed us that, even in extreme situations, a profound feeling of solidarity and humanity may exist.
Therefore I hereby request that the honorable legislators give their affirmative vote to said project.
Translation: Belén Closas
