Raoul Wallenberg - Family

Family

In 2009, reporter Joshua Prager wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal profiling the long-term toll that Raoul Wallenberg's disappearance had on his family. His mother Maj and his stepfather Fredrik von Dardel spent the rest of their lives searching for their son. They both committed suicide by overdosing on pills two days apart in 1979. Their daughter Nina Lagergren, Raoul's half-sister, attributed their suicide to their despair about never finding their son. Both Nina and Raoul's half-brother Guy von Dardel established organizations and worked to find their brother or confirmation of his death. At the request of their parents, they were to assume he was alive until the year 2000.

Nina's daughter, Nane Maria Lagergren, married Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, and is active in many humanitarian efforts. Another of Wallenberg's nieces, Louise von Dardel, is the main activist in the family and dedicates much of her time to speaking about Wallenberg and lobbying various countries to help uncover information about her uncle. The extended Wallenberg family remains an influential part of Swedish society as major shareholders in banks and corporations including Saab and Scandinavian Airlines.

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