Finnish concentration camps in Karelia

urqh,

I consider you as a smart guy so don't let them drag you into thinking that these camps were simply "different". If you want to know the truth, focus your attention to the facts. Please read this and think:

"Lt Col. Helge Seppalii was a young soldier serving in Eastern Karelia during the occupation. He did not have the right to enter the closed camps, but at one time he was ordered to pick up inmates at the gate of a concentration camp and take them to work in a factory. According to him, the labour brigade was a depressing sight. There were children, women and the elderly dressed in rags. Every morning and especially on Mondays, wagons full of ready-made coffins followed the brigade. There was a terrible smell of death hanging over the gate." (From: Seppälä, Suomi, 83)

 

Oh I think you have me wrong Tamino...I'm speaking in general terms on any camps..All concentration camps are wrong...Those of world war 2 were criminal. I don't though relate Japanese camps as any different in their cruelty. I know nothing of Finnish camps, except to say if they existed then they were as all camps were, inhuman, immoral, cruel places run by folk who themselves would be inhuman, imooral and cruel. I have no fence to sit on here. Any one running any concentration camp if still alive today, guards included should not be shairing the air we breeth today and got off lightly if they were allowed to live afterwards...Japanese included...No following orders or duty excuses allowed.

My comments are mostly to do with today...and before ww2...As I see little difference in some nations today who have concentration camps. Wether they be indoor with cells or just behind razor wire. My own countries history included. It is though related..As I believe we have not learned that much from ww2 camps. Immoral, inhuman and cruel camps still exist...and similar folk still run em...

 

Meanwhile I have been investigating this subject more in detail.

Finland planned to create an ethnically 'clean' Eastern Karelia, consisting only of a Finno-Ugric population (Finns, Karelians and Ingrians). It was to become a new province under the sovereignty of Finland. How was this going to be done, when over 70 per cent of the population of Eastern Karelia were Russians or other non-Finno-Ugric inhabitants (in 1939 overwhelmingly Slavic)? What were the Finns prepared to do with the thousands of Russian inhabitants? Were the Finns perhaps planning to follow the example of their powerful ally, Nazi Germany, and engage in a policy of extermination?

If someone is already jumping and shouting "Goodwin" seat down please and relax. Just calm down. The above text is written by a Finn: Lauri Hannikaninen.

 

My little country was invaded too during the world war and was divided 50:50 between Italy and Germany. A small chunk was handed over to Hungary. The most of population remained at their homes except those involved in combat. Some joined the Wehrmacht, some joined our domestic collaborators units and some joined the resistance. Some were expulsed too but just a negligible fraction of population was deported to the camps.

My wife's grandpa was working in Germany and was allowed to come home on leave on regular basis. Many people worked in a local factory, which produced engines for German industry. People do not complain too much about the life under occupation. Similar situation was also at the west under the Italian region.

In contrast, civil population of Karelia was separated according to their ethnicity. These un(trust)worthy were dumped into the camps where many died from starvation.
My impression is that we in the Central Europe had better invaders.

 

Thanks L. Russo for these links. Sources dealing with this subject are really scarce and any further source is indeed valuable.

Obviously, it is not me who compares Finnish concentration camps to the Nazi camps. These pseudo-scientific Finnish studies do that and attempt to lead us to wrong conclusions; directly without any analysis they claim that their camps were different from the Nazi camps without comparing them head-to-head and without identifying the comparison criteria. They claim their camps were simply different and I tend to agree: they were worse.

In their studies the Finnish "experts" differentiate violent and not violent death. However, it is utterly tasteless to consider the death from starvation as a non-violent death. Compared to starvation a bullet into the brains is mercy. I must admit that now I'm glad that my country was invaded by the Germans and by the Italians. Especially Italians were kind guys – they were the invaders anyone would wish to have at the doorstep if an invasion is unavoidable..

Now, I have realized that an area starting from Murmansk at the north to the shores of the Caspian at the south was continuously subject to fierce violence against unarmed civil population. Territories invaded by the Finns aren't exception whatsoever. They just had their own different "Jews" – the Russians.

I intend to study this subject more in detail.

 

Everyone has their own different sscapegoats Tam

 

... and we all have "our" own perpetrators. I have no doubts whether it is correct to protect them or to deny their wrongdoings just because they belong to "us"? I would like to see all "my" criminals behind the bars.

Mannerheim has issued an order to separate population on purely racist basis and to detain untrustworthy inhabitants in concentration camps. Celebrating him as a hero is outright wrong. Also, Finnish soldiers have executed that order. Denial of that fact is shameful.

 

History opens up new nightmares to us daily. And a good thing it does.

 

I am happy to see the truth is told. However, Tamino, will you judge the US for the awful treatment of the Japanese Americans as well in the camps, or the Hungarians for the Odessa massacre for example. I am waiting for you to be as tough on those questions. Military wise Finland did not move after reaching the lines they did in 1941/42, did not attack Leningrad, so in a way I´d call this a method to lose the war and help the Allied win the war. Stalin himself said the Finns will walk to Siberia already in early 1940. Because we did not give in during winter war. How many children would have died during that march,Tamino?

 

Relativization of crimes is not the right way to approach the subject of this theme. Injustices have been committed on both sides and "scientific" comparisons would neither reduce the real size of a crime nor change its character. Even today, problems between Russia and Finland remain unsolved because the both sides fail to address this subject properly. Mutual accusations are the way to dead-end even though both countries need to find a way to establish warmer relationships. Who knows, maybe once in the future Karelia would became an independent region of all nations that inhabit it. Perhaps, once in the future, both Finns and Russians will live in Viipuri/Vyborg as good neighbors. This however requires effort, not an endless repetition of old grudges. What I observe there is a mutual incapability to admit own faults from the past and find a way to sincere reconciliation and to find a way of sharing a common border and territories. Capability to understand, forgive, confess and regret is missing at the both sides. I might sound now as a Catholic priest in a pulpit but this is what I sincerly mean. I will give you an example: in August 2000 Polish Catholic Church asked forgiveness for intolerance and Anti-Semitism. That is a small step indeed, but a step towards reconciliation among the Poles and the Jews. Among Jews and Catholics too. Russians and Finns should follow that example. I do indeed welcome such initiatives.

 

Yes, because they needed to be fed and none of them could have survived without the Finnish help. Almost all healthy adults had been evacuated by the red army. The children, the sick and the elderly were left behind - without food...

 

You don't see nor understand the facts, as have clearly been shown already before...

Yes, the death rate was far too high - for the first year of the Continuation War. Later the death rate of the children dropped dramatically and reached the Finnish level even at the camps - well below the "normal" soviet peace time level.

The reasons for the high death rate during the first war year are known. Although the Finnish army did not live of the land nor was there any food export from East Karelia to Finland, the harvest of 1941 in Eastern Karelia was lost. What the red army did not transport away was destroyed. Unfortunately Finland was not able to export any food to the East either, because Finland herself was not self-sufficient even at peace time and the USSR had robbed 12 % of the best farming land. The harvest of 1941 was also bad, and because of the new war - again started by the soviets - not all of it could be harvested. Next winter was also very severe and the grain ships from Germany got stuck in the ice. In Finland the mortality rose too - especially in the institutions - were people were less able to gain extra food by gardening, fishing, picking berries etc.

The health of the civilians in Eastern Karelia was generally quite bad. People were already badly fed to start with, not to mention all kinds of diseases - as the health reports of the Finnish officials clearly tell. Typhus epidemic in 1942 did not help either. After the next harvest in 1942 the mortality in the camps dropped and reached soon the "normal" level.

The "racist" separation of the population is not true, since not all non-Finnic people were in the camps - as a matter of fact only less than half of them at the most, and on average even less. Most of the non-Finnic population was not original population of Eastern Karelia, but had been moved there by the stalinistic regime by force or were refugees from the part of Karelia, which the soviets had robbed from Finland and inhabited only one year earlier. They did not have any homes nor any means of survival outside the camps.

As I wrote before, without the Finns ALL those civilians would have died. Only way to try to feed them was to concentrate them to the camps.

 

Helge Seppälä is the most notorious and sorry example of the Finnish historians of the worst soviet butt licking period. Nobody today uses him as a reference in any serious research.

Yes, surely the civilians were a sorry sight during the war - as were all soviets even at the peace time. The Finnish civilians did not look that spectacular then either, since there was lack of everything. Many Finnish civilians used e.g. wooden and/or paper shoes, since there was not enough leather available. New cloth was rare and everything was used and re-used - and then re-used again.

Also yes, during the first war year the death rate was high and surely the smell was not good either.

 

Yes, there were Finnish concentration camps, which were not extermination nor death camps, but camps were some people were gathered to:
- for getting civilians away from the front area and to house and feed them
- for housing and feeding the refugees without houses nor means to survive
- for guarding some suspicious elements

Some of the guards were not fit for the task, most were. Most of those Finnish guards have nothing to be ashamed of. The few who had were already searched and judged after the war, when the soviets and the Finnish commies tried their best (=worst) to accuse as many of the Finnish soldiers as possible - with very minor results.

 

Tamino - that Stalin's little helper - is on the run again...

Eastern Karelia - the Murmansk railway area not included - was practically ethnically "clean" until the Stalin's forced population transfers and changing of the borders in the 30's by adding some Russian populated areas East of lake Ääninen (Onega) to Eastern Karelia , The soviet recent newcomers were not the indigenous people of Karelia.

Yes, those newcomers were to be returned back to their original homes. What's so wrong with that?

As you well know, the Finns had no extermination policies what so ever.

Which Lauri Hannikainen are you talking about and what did he exactly write? When quoting someone, the quote and source should be clearly shown!

 

Was not. Less than half of the non-Finnic population was ever in the camps - on average less than that.

It is much easier to die of starvation in the North, were there's less food available in general and winter is long and cold. As I wrote before, under the Finnish administration the health of the local civilians - even at the camps - was eventually BETTER than it had been during the soviet peace time!

 

It's worth noting, that the amount of people in the relocation camps was indeed 24.000 at the most (less than half of the total 50.000 non-Finnic people), but sunk to 11.000 towards 1944.
Also the food and health situations were very different in the first war year from late 1941 to mid-1942 compered to the later periods.

With the POW camps the situations was mainly the same. The worst period was the same - before the new harvest of 1942. Also when the hectic fighting period of 1941-early 1942 was over, the military command took over the administration of the POW camps and implemented several improvements - with more professional staff.

In the beginning of the war the war was expected to be short and the POW camps to be only temporary. Also the amount of the POWs was expected to be much smaller. The amateurish POW organization was not up to the task of dealing, feeding and housing the great number of POW's for long times - at the time of near famine in Finland.

When the military took over and the new harvest was available the situation got better dramatically. The death rate took a plunge and many POWs were sent to private farms to work - were they were often treated like members of the family, eating the same food at the same table as the family. Sometimes the treatment was even too good - as the app. 200 babies fathered by the POWs prove...

Many "kotiryssä" ("home ruskie") - as they were often called - was crying when they had to return to the USSR. Some were even helped to escape to Sweden.

 

1. Naturally you can and should compere - and see and understand the differencies.

2. If you do not agree feel free to show some credible studies which prove your claims.

3. In other words the Hitler's extermination camps were more merciful than the Stalin's Gulag then...?

4. Despite your unproven claims there was a big difference. The Jews did not attack Germany (not so sure of this after all...) but the Russians did attack Finland in 1918, 1939 and 1941.

5. Keep on studying. You really need some education...

 

Yes, as a professional military leader Mannerheim knew, that the untrustworthy elements had to be guarded. Those elements however were a minority in the camps.

The soviet forced immigrants were to be returned back to their homes. Don't suppose many of them would have objected the ticket back to their home area - away from the cold North.

Couple of years back Mannerheim was elected as the greatest Finn ever - as he always is in all such polls. Wartime president Ryti came second. Naturally the Finnish soldiers executed Mannerheim's orders. Nobody is denying anything. Mannerheim was never accused of any crimes.