c. 1996 Religion News Service

Wallenberg helped U.S. espionage efforts, magazine says

(RNS)-Recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents and other files indicate that Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 20,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution, was also active in U.S. espionage efforts, according to U.S. News and World Report.

An investigative report published in the newsmagazine’s May 13 issue contends that Wallenberg’s mission was not only to save Jews, but also to provide the U.S. Office of Strategic Services-the precursor to the CIA-with access to anti-Nazi resistance forces in Hungary and information about Russian troop movements.

Over the years, U.S. officials have insisted that Wallenberg never was a spy, but the U.S. News investigation discovered his name in the National Archives on a list of 2,000 individuals who worked for the OSS.

The 31-year-old Wallenberg was sent to Hungary in 1944 to rescue Jews with funds provided by the U.S. War Refugee board, which U.S. News contends had an intimate connection with U.S. spy operations.

Working under the auspices of the Swedish embassy, which was officially neutral during the war, Wallenberg issued”certificates of protection”to Jews living in Budapest. He also resorted to bribes, threats and flattery to convince Nazi officers in the final days of the war to release imprisoned Jews as Russian forces held Budapest under siege.

But he apparently also collected field intelligence about the activities of advancing Russian troops, according to U.S. News. Thomas Veres, a photographer Wallenberg hired, told the magazine Wallenberg asked him to photograph Russian gun positions in the hills outside Budapest while the city was under attack.

In January 1945, as the Red Army marched into Budapest, Wallenberg dropped from sight, presumably arrested by Russian authorities on suspicion of espionage. He was sighted by fellow prisoners later that month in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.

And though the Soviets later claimed that Wallenberg was either shot or poisoned in captivity in 1947, some eyewitnesses contend he remained in captivity for decades. There are others who believe Wallenberg may still be alive.

In a related development, the U.S. Postal Service has announced it will issue a commemorative stamp honoring Wallenberg, who is credited with saving thousands of children from Nazi persecution-including U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.)

Rosen steps down as Jews for Jesus executive director

(RNS)-Moishe Rosen, the 64-year-old founder of Jews for Jesus, has announced his retirement as executive director of the international, evangelical Christian organization.

Susan Perlman, spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based group, said Monday (May 6) that the nine-member Jews for Jesus Council will meet Tuesday (May 7) to consider a successor to Rosen from among the ministry’s current staff of more than 100 missionaries.

Rosen will remain highly involved in Jews for Jesus, which was founded in 1970 and which today seeks to convert Jews to belief in Jesus in the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Argentina, the United States and elsewhere.

He said in a statement that he will remain on the Jews for Jesus staff and”will speak, write, advise, travel and serve as needed. … I will be very active. I am going to keep witnessing to everyone I can.” Rosen, a minister in the Conservative Baptist Association of America, said he was stepping down because”I am convinced that we need a younger, more energetic approach.” Rosen suffers from diabetes and a knee problem that sometimes requires him to use a cane. But spokeswoman Perlman said his decision to relinquish the organization’s top executive post was”absolutely not”health-related.

Rosen was born in Kansas City, Mo., and grew up in Denver, where his family attended an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. At 21, he professed belief in Jesus as the Messiah and worked for the American Board of Missions to Jews prior to organizing Jews for Jesus.

Over the years, he has become a leading strategist in the field of Christian mission work among Jews.

Rosen maintains that one can believe in Jesus and remain a Jew by virtue of culture and birth-just as Jesus remained a Jew throughout his life. Mainstream Jewish groups say that belief in Jesus is antithetical to religious Judaism, and that to remain a Jew one cannot accept another faith. To say otherwise, mainstream Jewish leaders argue, is to act deceptively.

As a result, Rosen and the mainstream Jewish community have long been at odds. In announcing his retirement, Rosen said Jews for Jesus'”message is no different than that of the rest of evangelical Christianity; it’s just that (our) methods and manner reflect our Jewish culture and heritage.”

Cardinal Suenens dies at 91

(RNS)-Belgian Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens, who helped modernize the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, died today (May 6) in Brussels at age 91, the Reuter news agency reported.

Suenens was one of four cardinals appointed to oversee the debate on the future of the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965.

He was an advocate of dialogue between Catholics and other Christian faiths. And he was a proponent of greater collegiality in the Vatican hierarchy.

Ordained in 1927, Suenens served as Archbishop of the Brussels-Mechelen archdiocese until he retired in 1980.

Hassan: Muslim extremism not inevitable

(RNS)-King Hassan of Morocco, on his first state visit to France in more than a decade, told French leaders Islamic fundamentalism will not necessarily prevail in Northern Africa.”There is nothing inevitable about fundamentalism,”the 66-year-old Hassan told the daily newspaper Le Parisien, in an interview published hours before his arrival for two days of talks.”The surest response to the fundamentalist drift is freedom, a judicious education and a fair balance between respect and protections of (Muslim) identity and the necessary achievements of modernity.” Conservative French President Jacques Chirac has worked hard to bolster Morocco and Tunisia as buffers against Islamic extremism in neighboring Algeria, Reuter reported.

And Chirac has been far less critical of Morocco’s limited democracy and its human rights violations than was his late predecessor, Francois Mitterand. The late president demanded progress in democracy and human rights as a condition of former colonies’ receiving aid from the French government.

In a speech defining France’s policy toward Arab nations last month, Chirac said attachment to human rights and liberty”must not prevent us from recognizing that these values can be expressed in different forms in our respective cultures and traditions.” Hassan has responded to criticism of human rights violations in his country by freeing some prominent political prisoners and by demolishing the squalid Tazmamart prison, Reuters reported.

But many on the left in France view Hassan’s human rights record with distaste. French Communist leaders and some Socialists announced they would boycott Hassan’s address Tuesday to the National Assembly.

Irish Protestants consider ending truce

(RNS)-The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a Protestant guerrilla group in Northern Ireland, is close to ending a 19-month truce to avenge a bombing campaign by the Irish Republican Army, the Irish Times reported.

The newspaper claimed senior sources in the Protestant group had polled their members and determined the ceasefire should end, Reuter reported. The bombings, which began with a blast in London’s Canary Wharf, have killed three people.

The Irish Times report was published just five weeks before Britain and Ireland are scheduled to hold peace talks in Belfast to reconcile Protestants who want Northern Ireland to stay British and Catholic Irish nationalists who want closer ties with Dublin.

Protestant militants, called Loyalists because of their allegiance to the British crown, fear that the Irish government is closing ranks behind the IRA’s political arm, Sinn Fein, which has been barred from peace talks until the IRA renews the ceasefire, the Irish Times reported. One fear cited in the article is that Loyalists feel Sinn Fein is being lured to the peace table.

Political wings of both the UVF and the Protestant umbrella group Ulster Freedom Fighters are scheduled to participate in the June 10 peace talks, the Reuter news agency reported. Britain and Ireland have declared that their invitations will be withdrawn if gunmen break the ceasefire.

More gun control, less violent TV for Australia

(RNS)-In the wake of a recent massacre in which a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia, lawmakers called for tighter gun controls and a crackdown on violent television shows and video games.

Prime Minister John Howard proposed Monday (May 6) that the federal government ban all automatic and semi-automatic weapons and called for a six-month amnesty during which owners could surrender their guns. There would be mandatory jail terms for those who do not give up their weapons, the Reuter news agency reported.

But gun control is not the only measure lawmakers are considering in response to the killings last week at a historic site 30 miles southeast of Hobart in Tasmania.”The causes of that dreadful event lie deeper than simply the inadequacy of our gun control laws,”Howard told parliament.”They go to aspects of the kind of society we are, they go to issues concerning violence on the screen and in videos. They also … raise legitimate questions about contemporary attitudes towards the treatment of mental health problems.” But Howard’s Attorney General, Daryl Williams, rejected links between mass murder and violent films or games.”The national committee on violence, which analyzed that sort of issue some time ago, concluded that the predominant factor that prompted people to commit homicide was not a prompt from watching a video or a film or anything like that,”Reuters quoted Williams as saying.”The predominant factor was the childhood development and the family history of the person.”

Quote of the day: Tony Campolo on life and death

Evangelist Tony Campolo, professor of sociology and urban studies at Eastern College, St. Davids, Penn., and self-described”progressive evangelical,”delivered the keynote address at the Colorado Prayer Luncheon in Denver Sunday (May 5).”Most of us are tip-toeing through life so we can reach death safely,”he said. Too many people, especially the young,”are increasingly dead. … So many people should be praying `If I should wake before I die.’ Life can get away from you. Don’t be satisfied with just pumping blood.”

LJB END RNS