MONTREAL — Agnes Lörinczi Kent says simply that she would not be here today, a proud grandmother, if it had not been for Raoul Wallenberg.

Among the tributes to the Swedish diplomat credited with saving as many as 100,000 Jews in Hungary during World War II, this 84-year-old Montrealer’s eyewitness account was the most affecting.

She told her story at a Wallenberg commemoration held at the square named for him behind the downtown Anglican Christ Church Cathedral to mark what would be the Holocaust hero’s 100th birthday.

She recalled how from October 1944 in Budapest, she and her parents were forced by the Nazis and their Hungarian Arrow Cross collaborators to move into a “Jewish house,” a four-storey apartment into which hundreds of families were crowded.

Soon after that, her father, a doctor, and her uncle were taken away and sent on a forced march to Austria.

Frequently, she could hear shots fired, as Jews were being taken to the banks of the Danube to be executed en masse.

Somehow her mother obtained for the family four of the 12,000 “schutzpasses” issued by Wallenberg. Under Swedish diplomatic protection, Kent and her mother relocated to one of the more than 30 safe houses he set up.

Her mother tried to send the coveted passes to her husband and his brother, only to learn it was too late: they had both been shot because they were too exhausted to keep walking.

Leaving the safe house, Kent and her mother were sheltered by a gentile family until the Hungarian capital was liberated by the Red Army in January 1945.

“In the decades since, I have honoured the courage and humanity of Raoul Wallenberg… I thank him from the bottom of my heart,” Kent said.

Two years ago, her son, Bruce Kent, said, he, his mother, his wife and their two teenaged daughters visited that apartment and safe house.

“It was painful for my mother to remember, it was painful for all of us, but we must remember,” he said.

The outdoor event, organized by a committee chaired by former Quebec Court of Appeal justice Joseph Nuss, was also addressed by Peter Rona, whose parents received the Swedish papers as well and survived.

Rona is president of the Canadian Friends of Raoul Wallenberg and was executive director of the Raoul Wallenberg International Movement for Humanity, founded by the late Vera Parnes.

He worked for 18 years with Parnes, an indefatigable Russian émigrée scientist who spent the last two decades of her long life to ensuring that Wallenberg’s life and legacy were more widely known and preserved. She died in 2010 at age 91.

It was largely as a result of Parnes’ legendary persistence that there is a Wallenberg Square in Montreal, dominated since 1996 by an impressive bronze bust of Wallenberg created by Hungarian Jewish survivor Paul Lancz, and an accompanying plaque summarizing the Wallenberg story.

“Nothing was ever quite enough for the cause of Raoul Wallenberg…” Rona said. “Her work ethic was incredible. At 90, she was at her computer at 6 a.m., sometimes until 9 p.m., e-mailing around the world.”

In her quest for a fitting, permanent Wallenberg memorial in Montreal, Parnes found a sympathetic ear with the then-Anglican Archbishop of Montreal, Andrew Hutchison. Now retired, Archbishop Hutchison came from his home in Victoria, to join in the tribute.

Nuss recalled that the City of Montreal refused to have a monument to anyone on municipal space, unless the person’s death had been confirmed. In the early ’90s, Wallenberg’s fate had not been conclusively determined, nor has it been to this day, if the Soviet claim of his early death in the gulag is discounted.

The late Alan Rose of Canadian Jewish Congress and real-estate developer Eugene Riesman, who was present, were also instrumental in arranging for the Wallenberg monument.

The square, now a tranquil public garden amidst the urban hubbub, is in an appropriate site, said Hutchison, pointing up to the Star of David window high on the cathedral wall that overlooks it. The other speakers were former Quebec premier Daniel Johnson, now the honorary consul of Sweden, and Mount Royal member of Parliament Irwin Cotler, who long championed the need to recognize Wallenberg’s courage. He pressed the Soviets, and then the Russians, to reveal the truth about why Wallenberg was taken into custody at war’s end and what became of him.

Cotler rejects the Soviet insistence that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in prison in July 1947.

“There is incontrovertible evidence that he did not die in 1947, compelling evidence that he was alive in the 1950s and ’60s, and credible evidence that he was living in the ’70s and ’80s.

“The burden of proof remains with the Russian successors today of the Soviet Union. The true fate of Wallenberg is still not known.”

The event was the start of a yearlong Wallenberg commemoration being organized by the committee Nuss heads.

“He was a giant of his time, a man who embodied the highest ideals of humanity. His life proves that a single human being has the power to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands,” Nuss stated.