Australia officially made Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg its first honorary citizen on Monday in recognition of the thousands of Jews he saved from the Holocaust, many of whom came to live Down Under.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the citizenship was “an expression of deep gratitude for all that our nation gained when so many saved by Wallenberg came to these shores”.

“We are here today to celebrate something exceptional in the human spirit,” she told a ceremony in Canberra.

“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.”

Wallenberg, who was posted to Nazi-occupied Budapest in July 1944, is believed to have saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the final months of the Holocaust by providing them with protective passports.