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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • Swedish : ornamental name composed of the elements Wall + the suffix - en (originally German) + berg ‘mountain’, ‘hill’.
  • While working as a businessman in Budapest in 1944, Raoul Wallenberg (1912–?) was entrusted by the Swedish government with the protection of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. Wallenberg helped about 95,000 Jews to escape death by issuing them Swedish passports. When Soviet forces took control of Budapest in 1945, he was arrested, taken to Moscow, and imprisoned. The Soviet authorities stated that he died in prison in 1947.

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