The Ark Project or Ark Project of Freedom was an organisation co-founded by Susan Mesinai in March 1991 in Waterbury, Connecticut to find out information on non-Russians taken prisoner by the former Soviet Union. [1] [2] These have included Raoul Wallenberg, American military POWs and others. Mesinai was a former program director of The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States. [3]
While searching for American POWs, the group discovered Victor Norris Hamilton in 1992. [4]
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, was an English actor, with more than 125 film and television credits. His well-known roles include the abortionist in Alfie (1966), Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Coleman in Trading Places (1983), and Mr Emerson in A Room with a View (1985).
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory.
The Lubyanka is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947. It was previously the national headquarters of the KGB; Soviet hammer and sickles can be seen on the building's facade.
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian businessman and former Fascist who, with the collaboration of official diplomats, posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved 5,218 Jews from deportation to Nazi extermination camps in eastern Europe. In 1989, Perlasca was designated by Israel as a Righteous Among the Nations.
The Wallenberg family are a prominent Swedish family, Europe's most powerful business dynasty. Wallenbergs are noted as bankers, industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats. The Wallenberg sphere's holdings employ about 600,000 people and have sales of $154 billion a year. The Wallenberg empire consists of 16 Wallenberg Foundations, Foundation Asset Management AB (FAM), Investor AB, Patricia Industries and Wallenberg Investments AB.
Per Johan Valentin Anger was a Swedish diplomat. Anger was Raoul Wallenberg's co-worker at the Swedish legation in Budapest during World War II when many Jews were saved because they were supplied with Swedish passports. After the war, he spent a lot of time trying to clarify Wallenberg's fate.
Marvin William Makinen has been a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago since 1974 and is a founding member of the Human Rights Board at the university.
The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States was created in May 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg".
The Raoul Wallenberg Award is bestowed by The Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States on "individuals, organizations, and communities whose courage, selflessness and success against great odds personified those of Raoul Wallenberg himself." It has been awarded periodically since 1985, when the inaugural award was given to Wallenberg himself.
Boris Nikolaevich Yuzhin is a former Soviet spy. He was a mole in the KGB, spying for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1970s and 1980s before being caught and imprisoned.
Victor Norris Hamilton was an American cryptologist who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963. He was discovered in a mental hospital in Russia in 1992, where he had been for 20 years.
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) is a non-governmental organization which researches Holocaust rescuers and advocates for their recognition. The organization developed educational programs for school to promote peace and civil service. Founded by Baruch Tenembaum, it has offices in Buenos Aires, New York, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro and Jerusalem.
Madubuko A. Robinson Diakité is a U.S.-born human rights lawyer and documentary filmmaker currently residing in Sweden. He has traveled widely throughout Africa and currently freelances as a guest lecturer and consultant on African migration, the African diaspora, human rights law, film history and mass media.
Imre Varga was a Hungarian sculptor, painter, designer and graphic artist. He was regarded as one of Hungary's most important living artists, and he has been called one of the "most skilled sculptors in Hungary."
Susan Mesinai is a poet, author and researcher/activist into the fates of foreign prisoners who disappeared into the Soviet Gulag during World War II and the Cold War. Co-founder of the Ark Project (1992–2005), she was founding president of the Independent Investigation into Raoul Wallenberg’s Fate, an educational human rights organization that furthers groundbreaking research carried out in the former Soviet Union, independently and under the aegis of an official Swedish-Russian working group.
The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR) is a Montreal-based non-governmental organization dedicated to pursuing justice through the protection and promotion of human rights. The RWCHR's name and mission is inspired by Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian legacy.
Nina Viveka Maria Lagergren was a Swedish businesswoman and the half-sister of Raoul Wallenberg, and the leading force to find out what happened to him after his disappearance. She was the founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Academy. She also presented Sommar i P1 in 2014 on Swedish Radio. She was the mother-in-law of Kofi Annan.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean and director of Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Raoul Wallenberg Forest is a New York City park located in Riverdale, New York named after Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jewish people.