Holocaust hero may have lived after death report

NEW evidence from Russian archives suggests Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was alive after Soviets reported that he had died in a Moscow prison, a Swedish magazine and US researchers reported yesterday.

The fate of Wallenberg, who was arrested in Budapest in January 1945 by the Soviet army, has remained one of the great mysteries of World War II.

The Soviets claimed he was executed on July 17, 1947, but never produced a reliable death certificate or his remains. Witnesses claim he was seen in Soviet prisons or labour camps many years later, although those accounts were never verified.