A man who saved the lives of up to 100,000 people during the Holocaust has become the first person to be granted honorary Australian citizenship.
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat working in Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II.
He provided false Swedish identity documents and shelter for tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
He disappeared in 1945 when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and is believed to have died in prison.
Australia is following the US, Canada, Israel and Hungary in conferring honorary citizenship on Mr Wallenberg.
Peter Wertheim from the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry says many people are alive today because of Mr Wallenberg's work.
"In late 1944 the battle front was moving into Hungary and into Budapest. There was a last minute attempt by the Nazis to speed up the mass murder of the remaining 100,000 Jews who were living in Budapest and to transport them to Auschwitz to be gassed," he said.
"Raoul Wallenberg, using nothing more than his diplomatic papers and a bit of creativity, snatched thousands and maybe tens of thousands of these civilians out from under the noses of the Nazis and prevented them from being transported.
"He pretended to know them and to confer Swedish citizenship on them... even though almost all of them would have had no connection with Sweden whatsoever.
"The fact that he was the official Swedish representative in Budapest meant that his word prevailed.
"He would sometimes even go down to train platforms when they were just about to be transported and snatch them off the trains or off the platforms and bring them back to safe houses."
'Back from the grave'
Professor Frank Vajda is a Melbourne neurologist who owes his life to Mr Wallenberg.
He says in 1944 the regent of Hungary called for a halt to the bloodshed, at which point many Jewish people tore off their Stars of David - the symbol used by the Nazis during the Holocaust as a method of identifying Jews.
The following day, Professor Vajda and his mother were lined up with about 30 others to be shot by the Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross fascists.
He was nine years old at the time.
"The Arrow Cross terrorists came and there was a shouting match between my mother and these young 25-year-old people armed to the hilt who demanded we show them the clothes which had the Jewish Star, the mark of discrimination, removed," he said.
"We went back to our rooms and of course the stars weren't there but they were lying around the floor. We tried to put them back on our jackets with a safety pin.
"Those two minutes are engraved in my memory with this intense pain and anxiety. I nearly wet myself knowing that our life depended on putting them back on with a safety pin.
"They all laughed at us... we were marched about 600 yards down the street to a military barracks, lined up in front of a machine gun in front of a wall.
"Suddenly civilians arrived and we were told it was Wallenberg.
"Then the atmosphere changed and we were taken back to a protected house. Everyone looked at us as though we had come back from the grave. It was really unbelievable."
Professor Vajda describes Mr Wallenberg as probably the "greatest humanitarian of the 20th century".
"He is very important because of the contribution he has made in saving many Jews from the Nazi murder machine in Hungary and contributing to the survival of about 100,000 people," he said.
"He also is an example of heroism, compassion and humanity... which has hardly ever been equalled."
Mr Wertheim says despite Mr Wallenberg's heroic efforts, his life had a tragic end.
"When the Soviets finally conquered Budapest they summoned Wallenberg, he presented his credentials, and that was the last anyone saw of him," he said.
"There are all sorts of stories about what happened to him. There were reports that he died in prison in 1947 in the gulag.
"There were other reports of sightings of him in the 1950s. Nobody really knows what became of him.
"But he was a very brave man who saved a lot of innocent people, and he deserves to be honoured."
Mr Wertheim says today is a significant day for the Australian and Jewish communities.
"We're not just honouring the late Raoul Wallenberg as a man who was brave and who faced down incredible evil, I think we're also saying something about who we are as a nation... that the qualities of courage, compassion and basic human decency are the very qualities by which we define our own national character at its best," he said.
'Exceptional human spirit'
The Governor-General granted Mr Wallenberg Australian citizenship at a ceremony in Canberra today.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also attended.
"Today, Raul Wallenberg becomes an honorary citizen of Australia - an expression of our deep gratitude for all that our nation gained when so many saved by Wallenberg come to these shores," Ms Gillard said.
"We are here today to celebrate something exceptional in the human spirit.
"Something that will keep teaching us lessons for as long as humans record their history.
"As the last witnesses to the horrors of World War II leave us, it is vital, it is imperative to keep alive the memory and example of individuals like Raoul Wallenberg."