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.
Read more about this topic: Raoul Wallenberg
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“One theme links together these new proposals for family policy—the idea that the family is exceedingly durable. Changes in structure and function and individual roles are not to be confused with the collapse of the family. Families remain more important in the lives of children than other institutions. Family ties are stronger and more vital than many of us imagine in the perennial atmosphere of crisis surrounding the subject.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“You can read the best experts on child care. You can listen to those who have been there. You can take a whole childbirth and child-care course without missing a lesson. But you won’t really know a thing about yourselves and each other as parents, or your baby as a child, until you have her in your arms. That’s the moment when the lifelong process of bringing up a child into the fold of the family begins.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)