Ann Weiszmann has a fascination for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat credited with saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives in Nazi-occupied Hungary by issuing them bogus Swedish identity papers, or “shutz-passes.”

Ms. Weiszmann’s interest in the man is understandable: Without Mr. Wallenberg there would be no Ann Weiszmann. She is the daughter of Wallenberg Jews and a consumer of all things — academic talks, articles, books and movies — related to the Holocaust hero.

Handout Copy of original schutz-pass belonging to Judith Weiszmann (nee Judith Kopstein).

And so it was on a recent evening in Toronto that she attended the screening of a film dedicated to the great man, at the conclusion of which event organizers informed the audience that Canada Post had issued a Raoul Wallenberg commemorative stamp on Jan. 17.

Ms. Weiszmann rushed out to buy a couple booklets, tossed them in her purse, pulled them out later to take a closer look and practically fainted. The stamp features Mr. Wallenberg and a shutz pass, and not just any shutz pass, but one belonging to Judith Kopstein — age 14 in 1944 and age 83 now — and, more importantly, Ann Weiszmann’s mother.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she says.

Neither could her mother, Judith, a retired structural engineer, Winnipeg resident and transplanted Hungarian Jew whose shutz pass — with picture included — is now immortalized on a stamp honouring a man she regards as the “greatest man” of the 20th century.

“It is just incredible that something like this would happen,” Judith Weiszmann says. “Wallenberg was fearless. He saved people’s lives by risking his own and having a stamp of him — that is very natural — but having my picture on it, that is something completely unexpected.”

It is also something of a mystery.

Canada Post bought the rights to the image from an image bank. How Ms. Weiszmann’s shutz pass came to be in that bank, however, is a happy subject of speculation among her family members that has produced a second startling philatelic revelation.

Sweden issued a commemorative stamp honouring Mr. Wallenberg in May 2012 featuring an image of the hero and a copy of you-know-who’s shutz pass.

“My son, Paul, found the Swedish stamp on the Internet,” Ms. Weiszmann says.

Behind both stamps is the story of a teenaged girl living in Nazi Occupied Budapest, the final redoubt of the Hungarian Jews in 1944 — the majority of whom had already been deported and murdered in places like Auschwitz.

Paul Weiszmann 

Judith Weiszmann on Friday.

Ms. Weiszmann’s father, a lumberman, had business ties in Sweden predating the war and when Mr. Wallenberg came to town and began issuing his life-saving documents the Weiszmanns’ rushed to the consulate door.

“I remember the lineup outside,” Ms. Weiszmann says. “I remember everything about those days as though it were yesterday.”

She remembers getting her picture taken, the picture that has come back to her after all these years — the original of which is locked in a bank vault in Winnipeg — and leaving the consulate with a phoney document and taking up residence in one of the scores of properties Mr. Wallenberg rented to house the phoney Swedes.

“He arranged dozens of these houses,” Ms. Weiszmann says.

He operated soup kitchens, ran a hospital and intervened when the Hungarian Gestapo seized Ms. Weiszmann and her mother.

“Those papers saved our lives,” she says.

She met Mr. Wallenberg once.

“He shook hands with me. I was only 14, and I was so very honoured because we all knew that what he was doing was something remarkable. He would go and talk to the German officers without fear, even though they attempted to assassinate him numerous times.”

Judith Kopstein met her husband, Erwin, another Wallenberg Jew, after the war. They became engineers, married and fled to Canada in 1956 after the Russians crushed the Hungarian Revolution. (The Russians seized Mr. Wallenberg in 1945. He is presumed to have been killed in a Soviet prison in 1947).

“Our second miracle was coming to Canada as refugees after the Hungarian Revolution,” Ms. Weiszmann says. “We were able to make a good life here. I cherish being Canadian.”

The couple had a son and a daughter, and now, grandchildren. Erwin passed away 16 months ago. He was 88. His widow remains in good health. Judith Weiszmann (nee Kopstein) is a “voracious emailer” with friends all over the world, she says, but she also enjoys posting letters the old-fashioned way and plans on mailing a handful of dispatches — with a Canadian-Wallenberg stamp attached.

“Some of my friends would be interested,” she says. “It is incredible, something like this happening.”

National Post