One has been called a great hero and humanitarian of World War II, the man who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis in the last years of the war.
The other is a symbol not just of Nazi brutality but of bureaucratic indifference, the kind that could rationalize sending millions of innocent people to their deaths as “just following orders.”
There’s been speculation for years that Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved Hungarian Jews, and Adolf Eichmann, the S.S. lieutenant colonel who helped orchestrate their deaths, had a meeting in Budapest late in 1944 at which Wallenberg helped dissuade Eichmann from completing his deadly work — in part by threatening to make sure he would be prosecuted for war crimes once the fighting ended.
Fact or fiction? In the end, it may never be known, but it makes for a great theatrical topic. That’s what prompted Roger Williams, Amherst College class of 1956, to write “Dinner in Budapest,” a play that will have a staged reading at the college’s Kirby Theater Friday at 4 p.m. It had a staged reading earlier this year at an Oxnard, California theater.
Williams, a semi-retired journalist and editor whose resume includes work for Time, Sports Illustrated and many other publications, says he turned to playwriting in recent years as one means to explore his interest in WWII history. In addition, editing a book on Wallenberg got him thinking about the story of him and Eichmann.
“A number of lower-level Swedish diplomats recalled this dinner,” said Williams, 82, during a recent telephone call from his home in Washington, D.C. “There’s certainly some compelling evidence that some sort of meeting or exchange took place between” Wallenberg and Eichmann.
“Dinner in Budapest,” staged as part of this year’s Alumni Reunion Week at Amherst, will include some members from the Valley’s theater scene, whom Williams was able to enlist with the help of Sam Rush, director of New Century Theatre in Northampton. That includes Rand Foerster of Amherst, who’s directing the production.
Matt Haas and Michael Nelson, both of Northampton, play Eichmann and Wallenberg, respectively, and Nelson’s 19-year-old son, Jake, takes on the role of Thomas Veres, a young Hungarian Jew who works with Wallenberg in the Swedish embassy in Budapest.
The play’s three other characters are handled by Williams and two of his Amherst classmates; Williams performs the role of Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s cynical, wine-swilling deputy.
“He’s not the most enlightened character,” Williams said with a laugh. “But he has an important part to play in the story.”
The two-act play will have a minimal set; as it’s a staged reading, the actors all met and rehearsed for just the first time this week. It’s also one of many events taking place at Amherst College this week. Returning classes such as that of 1956, which is celebrating its 60th reunion, are required to put on programs for the event, Williams said.
But he notes that those programs typically include panel discussions and similar presentations. “I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve ever put on a play,” he said.
Wallenberg, who came from a prominent Swedish family, was a successful businessman before and during the early years of WWII; he had numerous dealings in Hungary, traveled fairly often to the country, and learned to speak the language.
In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, its former ally, after discovering its leaders had been secretly discussing peace terms with the United States and Great Britain. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews, until that point spared from the Holocaust, were soon being rounded up and sent to death camps; Eichmann largely oversaw that effort, with help from Hungarian fascists known as the Arrow Cross Party.
Looking to save the remaining Jews, Swedish and U.S. officials agreed to send Wallenberg, because of his Hungarian ties, to the Swedish embassy in Budapest in July 1944. He used a variety of means to protect Jews, such as issuing them fake documents identifying them as Swedish subjects and renting dozens of buildings in Budapest as “safe houses” under Swedish embassy jurisdiction.
Williams’ play picks up the story in December 1944, when Russian forces are closing in on Budapest. Wallenberg has invited Eichmann and Krumey to dinner at the Swedish embassy to try and reason with them that with the war surely lost for Germany, there’s no point in sending Hungary’s perhaps 100,000 remaining Jews to their deaths.
“One of the ironies [of Nazi Germany] is that even as they’re collapsing militarily, they’re still devoting all these resources to killing civilians,” Williams said.
Eichmann is depicted as a humorless bureaucrat who insists Jews are only being sent to camps to work “for the good of the Reich,” and that he, personally, has no particular animus against them; he even claims to admire Zionists for wanting to create a Jewish homeland.
Whatever his doubts about the policy of continuing to pursue Jews, Eichmann is a true believer in Adolph Hitler and insists he must carry out the Führer’s orders — the same argument he would use after Mossad agents from Israel captured him in Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Jerusalem to be tried for war crimes. He was hanged in 1962, becoming a symbol of what the writer Hannah Arendt famously called “the banality of evil.”
Williams portrays the 30-something Wallenberg as much more adept than Eichmann, a slightly cocky man who uses his sharp humor and verbal skills as he jousts with the Nazi. Krumey, Eichmann’s deputy, shares a bit of that sardonic humor, calling Wallenberg “the Swedish Magician! Makes people — especially Jewish people — disappear from railway stations. From round-up points. Even from their houses just before they are to be detained.”
The play offers a number of other characters, like a nervous Swedish government official, Gunnar Sundstrom, and a leading Hungarian Jew, Rudolph Kastner, whose unexpected appearance at the dinner throws Eichmann and Krumey for a loop. As such, the play also explores other sordid aspects of the Holocaust: how certain Nazis spared some Jews from death in return for bribes, and how Jews themselves, to survive, were at times forced to strike bargains that challenged their essential moral codes.
“I’d read a number of things about Wallenberg and about this period of history, and I thought it sounded like a really interesting production,” said Nelson, a graphic designer of children’s books who studied film at New York University and has done various kinds of acting.
And Matt Haas, who’s been involved in Northampton’s 24-hour Theater Project and other area plays, says portraying Eichmann seems timely, given the odious talk that’s flared in the U.S. in the last several months about deporting illegal immigrants, building a wall on the Mexican border and banning immigration of Muslims.
“It’s important not to forget what happened [in Europe during WWII],” he said. “Plus I really like the idea of taking part in a staged reading — it’s a way of supporting theater and keeping it in the public eye.”
Much mystery still swirls around Wallenberg, who was taken prisoner by the Russians in January 1945 and was likely shot or poisoned in the former Soviet Union, though exactly where and when has never been revealed. The Russians eventually released conflicting stories, one alleging Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in a Moscow prison in 1947. Other accounts say Wallenberg was still imprisoned in Russia as late at the early 1970s.
Why did the Russians arrest him? Evidently they suspected he was also spying for the Americans, an issue Williams touches on in his play, as well as another reason Wallenberg may have come to Budapest: to make up for the shame he felt about Sweden’s business dealings with Nazi Germany during the war.
“It’s a fascinating story with a lot of twists and turns,” Williams said. “I think it makes for some good theater.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
“Dinner in Budapest” takes place Friday at 4 p.m. in Kirby Theater at Amherst College. The performance is free and open to the public.