I also met this man named John Godfrey at the info session for the Waldenberg Fellowship. The first part of the session was basically a history lesson about who Raoul Waldenberg was—in 1931 he came to U of M from Sweden as an arch student. He needed to escape the elitist confides of Swedish Society. He was fluent in English, German, Swedish and French. He had the opportunity to go anywhere—Oxford, Yale..he chose U of M bc it’s a public school. He could be himself. He came to NY and took a train to Ann Arbor. It was culture shock. Ann Arbor was an 1/8 of its size than it is today.
He was an adventurer at school. He had a friend in the distant town of Owaso that he would ride his bike to have dinner with him and his family. He would kayak all the way down the Huron river. He refused to join a frat because he felt like it would close him off. He lived in boarding houses all over Ann Arbor instead so he could meet new people (one was on Madison). He had friends all over campus. He refused to go out for football games and worked in the arch studio instead because it was so empty. He never called home when he was in school. Instead, he sent his mother snapshots of him around various parts of the campus (I recognized a few of these like Angell Hall and near South U) He stayed in Ann Arbor for the summers.
He hitchhiked with his friend from Owaso to New York and Cali and mexico city. He learned a lot about himself while doing this. He got into the car with a mobster once and they stole his money. He joined the ROTC and said “If you’re in a uniform, people pick you up.” He learned how to grapple with the world when he came to college.
When it came time to leave Ann Arbor after graduation Waldenberg was upset. “I feel so at home in my little ann arbor that I am beginning to sink roots here and have hard time imagining having to leave. But I am not being very useful here.”
Waldenberg went home to Sweden for a while. His father tried to set him up with a job at a bank like the rest of his family but he refused. He said he didn’t want to live that life. He was in Stokholm and at some point he was in Budapest and ended up in an elevator was a man.
Waldenberg was able to get anyone’s level- no matter who they were. He knew how to interact with people on their own terms. He learned from the man in the elevator that he was sent directly from the President of the US at the time to save the last 150,000 jews that were living in Budapest from being sent off to the death camps by the germans. Waldedberg took on the mission.
He got 100 volunteers together- all young people some jews themselves and began fabricating Swedish documents in a workshop. They were artful forgeries. German soldiers took official documents very seriously. They were called Shutzpass and Waldenberg saved hundreds of thousands of lives with these documents. He showed up to huge warehouses where jews were being corralled to be shipped off to camps and train stations alike and saved their lives…….
What can I do with this story? Who was this man? His foundations were laid at Michigan…He felt a deep connection to Ann Arbor just like I do. Why? What did this place look like when he was there? Can I look through his lens? Can I do something to commemorate this man and his story?
