The story of Raoul Wallenberg - who, at immense personal risk, rescued many of Budapest's Jews from the Holocaust - is one of the most remarkable of World War II. Yet the complete account of his life and fate can only be told now - and for the first time in this book - following access to the Russian and Swedish archival sources, previously not used. Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman, recruited by the War Refugee Board to rescue thousands of Hungarian Jews. Once in Budapest, he created and distributed so called 'protective passports' among the Jewish population, thus managing to save up to 8,000 people. Through the 'safe houses' and clandestine networks that he established around the city, many thousands more were saved from the concentration camps. Yet, when Budapest was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945, Wallenberg was arrested, taken to Moscow and disappeared into the Soviet prison system. Using previously unseen sources, Bengt Jangfeldt has been able to reconstruct the events surrounding Wallenberg's capture almost hour by hour and, for the first time, he is able to shed new light on why Wallenberg was arrested and what happened to him after he disappeared.

Bengt Jangfeldt is an author and historian. His biography Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele (I.B.Tauris) was published in 2003 and won the Swedish Academy's prize for biography. A further large-scale biography, A Life at Stake, about the renowned Russian poet Mayakovsky, appeared in 2007 and was awarded the August Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.

1. Birth
2. A Wallenberg
3. Out into the World
4. The Archtitect
5. South Africa
6. Palestine
7. The End of an Era
8. Interlude
9. Recruitment
10. Budapest
11. Blood for Goods
12. The Ghetto
13. The Peak of Terror
14. Gas or Prisoner?
15. Moscow
16. A Diplomatic Betrayal
17. The Settlement
18. Aftermath
19. Honour