Finnish concentration camps in Karelia

No, Taminovitsh. I'm not. That comment only asks after the relevance of that particular photo. He does not have any answers to his questions, only a suspicion, which he cannot prove either way. Neither can I.

So - we don't know whether that particular photo was staged or not. It still might be totally original and correct. Until somebody proves otherwise, that's how it stays.

 

As have been explained to you many times, there were no "death camps" in East Karelia. The fact that some people died in (all) camps (all over the world) - as they do outside the camps as well - does not make them "death camps", as we understand them.

What is this delegation, which you have named as a "Nazi delegation"? Were they all members of the Nazi party? Were they representatives of the Nazi party? Why should there be any kids at all? Most of the war time pictures do not have children in them.

What is the purpose of this continuous soviet propaganda of yours?

 

The soviet aggressors were not gentle with anybody before the war, during or after it. They were harsh to everybody from babies to grannies, without any possible excuse of "Nazi aggressors". Thousands/tens of thousands of Finns (and millions of others) were starved/frozed/exhausted to death already in the 20's/30's. This however does not seem to be disgusting (note the spelling...) to you for the least...

Actually I'm quite surprised of the humane Finnish attitude towards the soviet citizens despite of the already known soviet crimes against the Finns. Personally I might have found it hard not to pay back...

For the umpteenth time - ALL those kids would have died without the small amount of food the Finnish authorities provided. The soviet government wouldn't have blinked an eye...

 

As have already been explained to you, the food situation from the first winter of the new war - until autumn 1942 - was extremely bad. After that the situation got better and the death-rate normalized. E.g the child mortality reached the Finnish level - well below the "normal" level of the peace time USSR.

The civilians in the camps were those, who did not have houses/farms to feed them, for the reasons already explained to you. Naturally people living in the farms had much better possibilities to get additional food - and thus smaller death-rate. Those people were naturally often Karelians - who had been living there for thousands of years, unlike the newcomer Russians/Ukrainians etc,

The same happened in Finland too. People in hospitals/institutes - and to certain extent also in the cities - had less possibilities to get additional food - and thus higher mortality.

Stalingrad had nothing to do with the improvements in the camps nor with the food situation. The battle of Stalingrad did not end until 2nd February 1943. The situation in the Finnish camps changed already in the autumn of 1942, as can easily be seen from the statistics.

For comparison: the situation in the Finnish POW and civilian camps got better from autumn 1942 onward. In the soviet POW camps however nothing changed. The mortality of the Finnish POW's captured by the soviets was 43 % - despite of the fact that the vast majority of them was captured in the summer 1944 - and their captivity time was only half a year.

 

So you are already falsifying the sources now...?

There was never such plan - which you know perfectly well.

 

You mean like the Finns and all those other nationalities from the USSR? You seem to be very confused...

 

Dear Taminov - you only "find" the "truth" you want to find - as in here...

The difference in those other occasions you mentioned is that there actually had been several ethnic groups living in the same areas for hundred of years or even longer. Not so in Karelia, where the newcomer Russians had invaded the Karelian and Finnish lands (in Ingria) - as they had been doing for centuries elsewhere in all over the Northern Russia.

The Russians etc. couldn't have been "ethnicly cleansed" from Karelia, since the majority of them had not been living there in the first place.

Finland did not seek war with the USSR in the first place - for obvious reasons for anybody with half a brain to understand. When the great evil continued her aggressions Finland had to do everything possible to prevent further soviet attacks. Unfortunately that was not enough.

I find it difficult to understand, how a citizen - if you really are who you claim to be... - of a small European democracy can totally 'buy' the propaganda of the soviet imperialistic dictatorship. I would have thought the Slovenians have some bad experiences of that as well.

 

You certainly do not sound like an "unaffected observer" but like Ilya Ehrenburg...

The Finnish press, which does not leave a leaf without turning when smelling a war-time scandal - whether real, imagined or invented - can't start outright lying. There wouldn't have been nothing wrong to collaborate with the Germans to avoid the soviet occupation, but since we were not allied - unlike Germany and the USSR were - nor had the same objectives nor even the same values, it would be a lie to claim so. After all the British and the Americans don't seem to regret allying with Stalin's dictatorship.

Finland only fought against the Germans because the soviets demanded so. It was either fighting the Germans or continue fighting the soviets - and to be eventually destroyed. You can thank the soviets for that totally unnecessary war, which neither side wanted.

The Finns have basically nothing to regret - except living next to the soviets/Russians and not having more of us...

 

Krajala, the main problem with you is that you can not stick with the theme of conversation. You are capable of turning every discussion into your monologue about the Continuation war. I am sorry to say this but you sound like a parrot.

Here, in this theme, I have learned a lot about the real meaning of ethnic cleansing. Before this tread I have axiomatically considered ethnic cleansing as bad but now, I have realized that ethnic cleansing is indeed very efficient solution to ethnic conflicts. Ethnic cleansing separates enemies and eliminates possibility of escalating the conflict though it doesn't eliminate the source and the existence of ethnic hatred.

Now that a mutually agreed border has been drawn to separate the Finns and the Russians there is a chance for peaceful coexistence of these two nations. Ethnic cleansing has beneficial effects on the both involved sides. Who knows, in future relationships might even warm-up.

Regarding the uggly fate of these kids I am still wondering how that could have happened. I mean, it is true that the Russians had awkward methods of interrogation of enemies but, at least, they left kids alone.

 

Ahem.... no, they didn't. And they didn't before, during, or after the "Great Patriotic War".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371768/Testimony-Gulags-forgotten-victims-Steal-mans-bread-die-.html

"HAVA VOLOVICH was a newspaper sub-editor who was arrested in 1937, aged 21, for being publicly critical of the damage done to Ukrainian peasants by the new collective system, which grouped together dozens of farms to make one giant super-farm. She remained in the Gulag for 16 years, where she became one of the tens of thousands of young prisoners to become pregnant and have a baby. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death.

A number of men offered their ‘services’ — and I did not choose the best by any means. But the result of my choice was an angelic little girl with golden curls. I called her Eleanor.
There were three mothers in our barracks and we were given a tiny little room of our own. By night, we brushed from our babies the bedbugs that fell from the ceiling like sand. By day, we left them with any old woman who had been let off work, knowing these women would calmly help themselves to the food we left for the children.

Every night for a year, I stood at my child’s cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying, begging God to prolong my torment by 100 years if it meant I wouldn’t be parted from my daughter.
But God did not answer my prayer. Eleanor had barely started walking and had just uttered her first, heart-warming word — ‘Mama’ — when we were dressed in rags, despite the winter’s chill, bundled into a freight car and transferred to the ‘mother’s camp’.
Here, I was expected to work in the forest, felling trees as normal during the day — while my pudgy little angel with the golden curls, back at the camp’s infant shelter, soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips.
I caught a chill on the bladder, terrible lumbago and shaved my hair off to avoid getting lice. My appearance could not have been more miserable and wretched. But in return for bribes of firewood, the guards let me see my daughter outside normal hours. But the things I saw!
I saw nurses shoving and kicking children out of bed before washing them in ice-cold water. I saw a nurse grab the nearest baby, tie back its arms and then cram spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat.
My little Eleanor began to fade faster. ‘Mama, want home,’ she cried one evening, her little body covered with mysterious bruises.
On the last day of her life, when I picked her up to breast-feed her, she stared wide-eyed into the distance, clawing and biting at my breast, begging to be put down.
In the evening, when I came back with my little bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year and four months in this world and died on March 3, 1944. "

A prison system which kills children aged 16 months....



http://www.lituanus.org/2005/05_3_2Balkelis.htm


"One of the Lithuanian child deportees, Jūratė Marcinkevičienė, arrested at the age of four, describes one of the typical cases:


Our entire family was deported in the early morning of June 13, 1941. Seven soldiers came, forced us from our sleep; they seated father on a stool, ordered him to raise his hands and pointed a pistol at him. They seated us, four children, at the table; we were crying and screaming, afraid for father... After they finished the search, they piled all our books in the yard and set them on fire telling us that they were bourgeois literature. My youngest sister was only two years old."

Further:

"The Íirka family (wife and four children) were mistakenly deported instead of the Šurka family. After the family head was released on July 18, 1941, he desperately tried to prevent the deportation of his wife and children. Unfortunately, efforts came too late: his entire family was already in Trofimov, Yakutia, where all of them, except a sixteen-year-old daughter, starved to death in 1943."

Garmutė recalls how in the Trovimovsk Island, after the death of the family head Baranauskas, his wife and five children die of deprivation:

...Their eight-year-old daughter Birutė was still around people. She was asking everyone to take her in their family, promising, “I’m not going to eat much.” ...After several days, she was found dead on her bed.


The Soviet system of Gulags was incredibly cruel and inhumane. Furthermore, the Soviet Union under Stalin and Beria was a vicious, malicious, evil state. From forced starvation of Ukrainians, to forced deportations of entire populations, and this in times of peace!

 

Can we stay on-topic, please? And, what is the point of these gigantic difficult-to-scroll copy-paste posts?

 

I'll happily stay on topic. You brought the subject of Russian treatment of children up, not I.

Respectfully, If you want to stay on topic, you have to refrain such making such comparisons. "the Russians had awkward methods of interrogation of enemies but, at least, they left kids alone." I've shown that statement to be false, as far as "leaving kids alone".

The purpose, is to highlight the relevance of the posted link, in order to dissuade your view, that the Russians "left kids alone". Because they didn't. Children died of starvation and mistreatment in the Gulag system, and during the mass deportations, during the Stalinist era.

The links themselves contain a lot of further information, that of themselves, isn't immediately relevant to the question "How did the Russians treat kids" as they are focussing on the brutality of the Soviet Gulag system on one hand, and the mistreatment of an entire population (the Lithuanians). Therefore, as a service to the reader, the relevant passages are copy-pasted, but the discerning can read the entire passage for themselves. As opposed to just posting a statement, without any corroborating links or proof. Such as stating the Russians left kids alone.

How is it difficult to scroll?

 

Russians left kids alone? The Partisans going behind the lines in Finland certainly were there to cause death,terror and nothing else. Big heroes in the USSR.

In East Karelia, most partisans attacked Finnish military supply and communication targets, but inside Finland proper, almost two-thirds of the attacks targeted civilians,] killing 200 and injuring 50, mostly women, children and elderly.] On several occasions the partisans executed all civilians, leaving no witnesses to the atrocities. One such incident was the attack of Lämsänkylä Kuusamo on July 18, 1943, in which the partisans attacked a lonely house and killed all of the seven civilians there, including a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old child, before fleeing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans

 

Death in a combat is expected and normal but death of an innocent kid is always an unnecessary tragedy. In my view, a murder of a kid is an ultimate crime.

Therefore, I would refrain from making quantitative comparisons by numbers. However, it is quite disturbing when a state and regular army are involved in events leading to death of many thousands of children. When I look into my sources, there were too little efforts to allocate those responsible, at the both sides.

The both sides in this conflict aimed territorial gains even though the cost in corpses per acre of gained land was horrific. I do not know how some people can accept loss of human life in return for few square meters of soil. This was yet another instance of bloody hunger for soil – at the both sides.

 

1. Taminov, I respond to all your propagandistic provocations, whether with the theme or not. If you want to stick with the topic, then do so yourself.

2. "Monologue about the Continuation War"? When? Where? As I already have explained to you before, it's difficult not to talk about the Continuation War when discussing about events that happened during that war. However I can't find such "monologues".

3. It takes one to know one. Unfortunately I feel the same as well - when I have to respond to the very same false claims of yours time after time.

4. Seems like you have learned nothing. Ethnic cleansing, which was a standard practice in the USSR, is still a crime. Finland did not do ethnic cleansing - since a mere plan to return the (often forced) immigrants was not it.

5. "Mutually agreed" as in a rape where a rape victim "agrees" to be raped when the rapist puts a knife on her throat...

The only mutually agreed border agreement between Finland and the USSR was the peacy treaty of Tartu 1920.

6. The USSR/Russia has shown time after time, and continues to do so, that a "normal" co-existence with her is impossible. We in Finland too believed it to be possible in the 90's - but found out to have been too optimistic, once again.

The Finnish-Russian relationships are always officially "normal" and "very good". Still any problem Finland ever has with any other country is always with Russia - and never with any other country. The official "good relationships" are nothing but lies and wishful thinking. How could it be anything else, since those relationships are based on lies and soviet crimes, which the modern Russia still supports.

Few years ago there was a survey of the Finnish attitudes towards different immigrant nationalities: "who would you prefer to have as living next to your home and who not to?" The Russians (and the Somalis) came last. Can't see that changing until the Russians start changing their attitudes and start to conciliate the soviet crimes - like the Germans did...

7. You seem to have difficulties in understanding...

8. No, they did not, as you very well should know by now!

 

1. That's exactly the point. The soviet war criminals (a.k.a. partisans) murdered the Finnish civilians in planned attacks, not in a "combat". They carefully avoided the military targets and chose isolated civilian villages or single houses - raping and murdering from babies to granmothers. Back home their official reports were filled with fairytales of destroyed "garrisons" and "fascist officers".

2. And still you don't find the organized murdering by the soviet war criminals at all "disturbing"...

Those civilians in East Karelia which died in 1942 did so because of the soviet deliberate actions - and despite of the Finnish ones, which admittedly but understandably were not adequate enough at first.

3. Did not. The USSR tried to occupy Finland - three times (1918, 1939-41 and 1944-48). (Unfortunately) Finland did not try to attack soviet-Russia, although there would have been a good chance for that in 1918-19. The accute need for new, more easily defencable borders only came with the continuous soviet aggressive expansionism.

4. For Stalin the casualties were mere statistics - nothing more.

5. Was not. For Finland it was a struggle for existance.

 

Notice how the Allied themselves were "surprised" by the prisoner figures...Wonder who invented the idea to send all the prisoners to Britain in the first place...what a show that would have been.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager

 

I have not seen an occasion when any power has been fully prepared to handle all the PoW's/detainees they take into custody except in situations where the numbers are vanishingly small.

 

I can just agree with that. Wehrmacht was also taken by surprise when they realized how many Jews populated the Pale of Settlement. Their food supplies were insufficient to feed all of them too.

 

I am afraid that this is a very poor analogy. By the time of Invasion of Russia, the German position on the fate of Jews in Russia was well documented as being genocidal. I see far less evidence of this on the part of Finland regarding Soviet non-combatants.

While I can not fully accept the argument that the exceedingly high mortality rate during the first year of the Continuation War where due to conditions beyond the control of the Finnish authorities, they are not wholly without merit either. The fact that neither Finnish troops at the front or her population in general did not endure such mortality rates during the same period due to inadequate shelter/care/food strongly suggests that some measure of choice can not be denied.

This is not to say that Finland had some equivalent to the infamous Wansee Confrence, but rather the all too common human failing of bureaucrats everywhere to cross ones fingers and hope for the best while not taking the active measures they know are needed to remedy the situation. The fact that rather far reaching efforts to reduce the mortality rate were made is a strong indication that the self same bureaucrats realized their error and took the steps necessary to treat their charges in something of a civilized manner.

This could never be said about the Nazi's and their treatment of the unfortunate Jews of Europe.