Editing Raoul Wallenberg (section)

===Recruitment by the War Refugee Board===
On 21 June, 1944, [[George Mantello]] received and immediately publicized two important reports given to him by Romanian diplomat [[Florian Manilou]], who had returned from a fact-finding trip to Romania and Budapest at Mantello's request. Manilou received material from [[Miklos "Moshe" Krausz]] in Budapest, who worked with [[Carl Lutz]] to rescue Jews. One of the reports was probably [[Rabbi]] [[Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl]]'s abridged version of the 33-page [[Auschwitz Protocols]] (i.e., the [[Vrba–Wetzler report|Vrba-Wetzler]] and Rosin-Mordowicz reports). The reports described in detail the operations of the [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]] extermination camp.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/diplomats/list/george-mandel-mantello-485/|title=George Mandel-Mantello| website= raoulwallenberg.net |publisher= The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation}}</ref> The second was a six-page Hungarian report that detailed the ghettoization and deportation of 435,000 Hungarian Jews, as updated to 19 June 1944, by towns, to Auschwitz.<ref name= "Kranzler2000p87">{{cite book| first= David |last= Kranzler |title=The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's Finest Hour |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Cx3yenDCQC |year=2000 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=978-0-8156-2873-6 |page=87}}</ref>

Mantello publicized the reports' findings immediately upon receipt. This resulted in large-scale grassroots protest in [[Switzerland]] against the unprecedented barbarism against Jews and led to Horthy being threatened by US President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and UK Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]]. In a letter, Churchill wrote, "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world...."<ref>{{cite book| author-link= Winston Churchill| first= Winston |last= Churchill| chapter= Letter to Foreign Secretary |date= 11 July 1944| quote= There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world....| url= http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=6855 | title= Winston Churchill's The Second World War and the Holocaust's Uniqueness| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070726035533/http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=6855 |archive-date= 26 July 2007 | editor-first= Istvan| editor-last= Simon| publisher= Stanford University}}</ref>

Following the report's publication, the Roosevelt administration turned to the newly created [[War Refugee Board]] (WRB) in search of a solution to the genocide against Jews. [[United States Department of the Treasury|US Treasury Department]] official [[Iver C. Olsen]] was dispatched to Stockholm as a representative of the WRB and tasked with putting together a plan to rescue the Jews of Hungary. In addition to his duties with the WRB, Olsen was also secretly employed as the chief of "[[Economic warfare|Currency Operations]]" for the Stockholm station of the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS), the United States' wartime espionage service.<ref name="angel spy" />

In search of someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue program for the nation's Jews, Olsen established contact with a relief committee composed of many prominent [[History of the Jews in Sweden|Swedish Jews]] led by the Swedish Chief Rabbi [[Mordecai Ehrenpreis|Marcus Ehrenpreis]] to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the rescue operation.<ref name= JVL /> One member of the committee was Wallenberg's business associate [[Kálmán Lauer]].

The committee's first choice to lead the mission was Count [[Folke Bernadotte]], the vice-chairman of the Swedish [[Red Cross]] and a member of the [[Swedish Royal Family]]. When Bernadotte's proposed appointment was rejected by the Hungarians, Lauer suggested Wallenberg as a potential replacement.<ref name= JVL /> Olsen was introduced to Wallenberg by Lauer in June 1944 and came away from the meeting impressed and, shortly thereafter, appointed Wallenberg to lead the mission.<ref name= TWS/> Olsen's selection of Wallenberg met with objections from some US officials who doubted his reliability, in light of existing commercial relationships between businesses owned by the Wallenberg family and the German government. These differences were eventually overcome and the [[Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)|Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs]] agreed to the American request to assign Wallenberg to its [[legation]] in Budapest as part of an arrangement in which Wallenberg's appointment was granted in exchange for a lessening of American diplomatic pressure on neutral Sweden to curtail the nation's [[free-trade]] policies toward Germany.<ref name="angel spy" />