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• Finland in World War II

• By 1942, there are 2,000 Finnish Jews in Finland
• Before the war, the population of Finnish Kale, a Romani ethnic group, numbered approximately 4,000. Stereotyped as undisciplined and lazy, they were subject to various discriminatory measures including the 1936 Act on the Regulation of Vagrancy (irtolaislaki) which mirrored similar anti-Romani measures introduced elsewhere in Europe.
• Finland introduced the Act on the Obligation to Work (työvelvollisuuslaki) in May 1942 as part of the mobilisation of the Finnish labour force. Alongside this measure, it also began to target groups supposedly unable to work including Finnish Kale. The government legislated in autumn 1943 for the introduction of "special labour camps" (erikoisleirit) specifically targetting the Kale, alcoholics, and prostitutes. In spite of these measures, the policy proved unworkable in practice and was soon abandoned.
• Toivo Horelli, Minister of the Interior, was a "known antisemite". Arno Anthoni, Director of the State Police (Valpo), was close to Gestapo officials in German-occupied Estonia. Between them, they sponsored a policy whereby foreign refugees, including Jews, were detained in the Arctic Circle and later in regions subject to Soviet attack

Background

Finnish independence and the Jews

Helsinki Synagogue, built 1906. There were about 1,800 Jews living in Finland by the end of the 1920s.

See also: History of the Jews in Finland

Inspired by Enlightenment ideals, Jews were granted toleration in Sweden-Finland in the Judereglementet of 1782. This paved the way for Jews to integrate into Swedish society. Although some wealthy Swedish-speaking Jewish families lived in the Finnish territories, there were very few Jews living in the region before it became a semi-autonomous Grand Duchy under Russian rule in 1809. Russian-Jewish conscripts serving with the Imperial Russian Army were permitted to settle in the region from 1858. They became known as "cantonists" and worked primarily as peddlers and small-scale traders. By the 1870s there were approximately 700 Jews, mainly cantonists, living in communities in Helsinki, Viipuri, and Turku.

Although their status was legally precarious and their status was criticised by nascent Finnish nationalism, their status compared favourably with that of Jews in other parts of the Russian Empire before the Grand Duchy's legal autonomy was terminated in 1890. The Jewish population declined as a result of discriminatory legal measures imposed over the following two decades. The measures were ultimately voted down by the Finnish legislature in 1909 but could not be repealed without the approval of the Russian Tsar.

Amid the Russian Revolution, Finland regained its autonomy in March 1917 and declared its independence in December 1917. At the same time, legislation based on the 1909 precedent was passed which finally initiated Jewish emancipation. A four-month civil war in 1918 led to victory of the conservative White Guard led by General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim and the consolidation of a democratic non-communist regime. Over the following decades, the moderate Finnish Social Democratic Party (Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue, SDP) remained ascendent. Antisemitic sentiment nonetheless remained widespread in Finland throughout the 1920s and 1930s although it remained most politically relevant only among radical nationalists. A history of Swedish and other foreign condescension towards the supposedly inferior "racial and physical characteristics" of the Finns has been argued to have made Finns less receptive to claims about racial inferiority of Jews.

Winter War and rapprochement with Nazi Germany

Map of Europe in 1942 at the height of German military control in continental Europe

Soviet Russia launched an invasion of Finland in November 1939. Although inflicting unexpectedly heavy losses in the ensuing Winter War, the Finns were ultimately defeated and forced to cede a substantial portion of the country's historic territories in Karelia in the Moscow Peace Treaty signed in March 1940.

• Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939 and the Soviet occupation of Karelia. In June 1941, Finland joined the German invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa
• Nazi discrimination against Jews was widely known in Finland before the Second World War but was largely ignored as the country sought to cultivate closer ties. Several hundred German Jews arrived in Finland as refugees after 1938 but Finland had "no consistent policy" and initially allowed some foreign Jews to settle in Finland while turning back others.
• By 1942, the number of Jews in FInalnd was estimated at 2,000 Finnish Jews and about 400 refugees.
• Finland's status similar to German allies such as Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Finland and Finnish Jews

German-Finnish relations and the Holocaust

• "the "Jewish Question" barely appeared on the agenda of Finnish-German relations, since antagonizing Finland would have endangered its valuable military contribution on the northern wing of the Eastern Front" and parallels have been drawn with the relatively low-profile of the issue in Germany's dealings with neutral Sweden.
• 20,000 German soldiers were on Finnish territory in Lapland by 1942 from the 20th Mountain Army (20. Gebirgsarmee) and it has been argued that the extermination of Finnish Jews been the main priority for German forces it could have easily been achieved.

Valpo-Gestapo relationship

Heinrich Himmler meeting Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, commander-in-chief of the Finnish Army, during his visit to Finland in 1942

• The Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) conducts an investigation into Finnish Jews in March 1941.
• 2,300 Jews were listed as living in Finland in the Wannsee Conference in January 1942
• Himmler's visit to Helsinki in July 1942 - [1]
• Anthoni of the Valpo visited Tallin in German-occupied Estonia in November 1941 and was informed about mass-killings of Jews which had already occupied in the region although it is unclear whether he understood that this formed part of a German policy.
• Abortive plan to transfer Jewish refugees from Finland to Sweden came to nothing in 1942 when the Swedish government refused them entry.
• "There is little doubt that the Finnish authorities, Anthoni included, had some idea of what was happening to the Jews, even if the scale was not yet realized."
• Anthoni's visit to Berlin in April 1942 where he met with Heinrich Müller during which details of transfer of "politically suspect people" was sketched out at Anthoni's own initiative. It has been argued that Anthoni provided the Germans with a list of all Jews resident in Finland at this meeting although the factual accuracy of this claim has been disputed.
• Himmler's visit to Finland in July-August 1942 during which he raised the issue of refugee and Finnish Jews in which he stated, in particular, that Austrian-Jewish refugees should be transferred back to German control. Finnish officials pushed back at the idea of deporting assimilated Finnish Jews.

Deportation of "Those Eight"

• Valpo-orchestrated deportation of eight Jews from Finland to Tallin in German-occupied Estonia on 6 November 1942 as part of a group of 27 "undesirables" from the Soviet Union or Estonia. The Jews where they were transferred into the custody of the Gestapo.
• Deported straight to Auschwitz concentration camp and all but one killed in the Holocaust.
• Controversial at the time. Termed "those eight" (ne kahdeksan) in Finnish historiography. Extremely controversial in scholarly literature.
• Move coincides with round-ups of Norwegian Jews and seen as a possible sign that Finland intend to fall into line with German policy towards the Jews amid concerns about continuing food supplies for Finland.
• Has been argued that deportation arose from the arrest of a stateless refugee called Walter Cohen, a former physician with a minor history of criminality, who had agitated to have himself exempted from compulsory labour duty in Lapland.
• Deportation was devised between Anthoni and Horelli (Minister of Interior) and only came to attention of the rest of the cabinet by chance when one of the deportees managed to send a postcard to the Jewish activist Abraham Stiller who alerted other Social Democrat ministers. The deportations were discussed in cabinet and the government informed Stiller that the deportations were justified by various actions of minor criminality committed by the individuals involved. President Ryti and Commander-in-Chief Mannerheim did not intervene in what they considered to be Horelli's jurisdiction.
• Both Anthoni and Horelli shared anti-semitic views. Karl-August Fagerholm (Minister of Social Affairs) offered his resignation in protest at the deportation but this was rejected by Ryti.
• Context of "a larger framework of population transfer" from Finland to Germany, including communists, prisoners of war, ethnic Estonians and Ingrians which pre-dated the Holocaust.

The deportation "those eight" (ne kahdeksan) has been an controversial subject in Finnish scholarship. As the move coincided with the first round-ups of Jews in German-occupied Norway, it has occasionally been argued as a sign that Finland intended to fall into line with the Final Solution pursued by Nazi Germany at a time of heightened concern about the national food supply.

Eastern Front

Finnish participation in Nazi massacres

1,408 Finnish volunteers enlisted with the SS Division Wiking within the Waffen-SS. A 2019 historical report conducted by Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center concluded that it was "very likely" that Finnish soldiers in Wiking had been among the active participants in mass killings of Jews in the Soviet Union.

Jews in the Finnish Army

A photo of the "field synagogue" established by Finnish-Jewish soldiers on the Eastern Front in 1942

It is thought that approximately 300 Jews served in the Finnish Army on the Eastern Front of whom 22 were killed in action. According to the historian Hannu Rautkallio, the number who served in the medical roles was "remarkably high" and Swedish-speaking Jews from Helsinki made up a large proportion of a company in the 24th Infantry Regiment (Jalkaväkirykmentti 24, JR 24). Soldiers from this unit established a "field synagogue" behind the front line in Soviet territory in 1942 with the permission of its divisional command, although no rabbi was ever engaged as a chaplain. It has been described as "certainly the only Jewish synagogue in a sector where German troops were operating" although its existence appears to have been ignored, deliberately or not, by other Axis forces. Jewish soldiers were also granted leave on Jewish religious festivals in accordance with the army's religious policy. Rautkallio argues that Jews were treated with more tolerance by Catholic and Lutheran officers within the Finnish Army than Karelians who, as Orthodox Christians, suffered open discrimination and attempts at forced conversion.

The majority of Finnish Jewish soldiers never came into contact with Germans on the Eastern Front. Jews serving in medical roles were most likely to do so and sometimes treated German casualties, including members of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. The historian Hannu Rautkallio notes that "[t]he attitude of Finland's Jewish soldiers towards the Germans fighting a common enemy varied greatly" but noted that most reported that contacts appear to have been "businesslike" with neither friendliness or ostentatious animosity. He noted that "[n]o instances have come to light of incidents involving Jewish and German soldiers that had any really serious consequences". Two Finnish officers who were Jewish were offered the Iron Cross although both rejected the award.

Soviet prisoners of war and Valpo co-operation

64,000 Soviet soldiers came into Finnish captivity during the Continuation War and the majority remained in Finnish prisoner of war camps. In Autumn 1942, two separate labour camps were established to segregate Jews from other Soviet citizens.

Arrangements were made by the Finnish authorities to have prisoners deemed to be communist agitators into German captivity of the Einsatzkommando Finnland which operated in Lapland across the northern frontier of German-occupied Norway and Finland. Among the 524 prisoners transferred, there were around 47 Soviet Jews (9%). Given that this number was significantly larger than the overall proportion of Jews serving in the Red Army, the Finnish journalist Elina Sana argues that this reflected a deliberately discriminatory anti-Jewish policy on the part of Finnish national authorities who knew that the individuals handed over would probably be killed. This claim is disputed by other historians.

End of the war

• Clostening of relations with Germany with Ryti–Ribbentrop Agreement of June 1944
• Finnish-Jewish community made plans to evacuate itself to Sweden.
• Finland made peace with the Soviet Union in September 1944.

Postwar

• A "remarkably large" proportion of Jewish veterans travelled to Mandatory Palestine and fought in the Israeli War of Independence.
• "the Holocaust has remained on the margins of Finland's historical consciousness not only because of the historical context and politics of history but also because of the lack of interest from Finnish historians in the subject matter".
• Little interest in the Holocaust in post-war Finland where "Finnish scholarship has been slow to recognize the Holocaust as a valid and pertinent research theme"
  • "Separate war" thesis, cultivated by the Finnish government during the war, which argued that Finland and Germany were fighting entirely separate and "parallel" wars against the Soviet Union which permitted the country "to escape questions of Finnish responsibility and participation in Nazi atrocities, the Holocaust being the most morally loaded of them".
  • Gradual emergence of scholarly interest after 1979. Scholarly debate focused on whether the deportation of "those Eight" was an intentional part of an abortive plan to deport Finnish Jews or whether, as had previously been believed, it represented an apolitical administrative decision. Discussion echoed the intentionalism-functionalism debate in foreign historiography with Sana and Rautkallio notable figures on opposing sides of a wider argument about the involvement and uniqueness of Finland's position in the Holocaust.
  • After the end of the Cold War, the subject expanded significantly and sought to place the Finnish case in a wider European history.
  • Contrary to arguments that Finland's case was unique, scholars have pointed out that "Hungary and Bulgaria [...] are better examples than Finland of the capability of Axis 'satellites' to remain aloof of German pressure" and that "an argument about Finland’s involvement in the Holocaust along the lines of whether she was involved or not is obsolete today".
• Lack of visible manifestations of anti-semitism in Finland meant that there was limited interest in studying the Holocaust among Finnish historians
• Memorial Day for Victims of Persecution (Vainojen uhrien muistopäivä) has officially observed in Finland on 27 January since 2002. In contemporary Finland, the Holocaust is taught as a compulsory subject in comprehensive and upper secondary school.

References

Bibliography

• Rautkallio, Hannu (1994). "'Cast into the Lion's Den'. Finnish Jewish Soldiers in the Second World War". Journal of Contemporary History. 29 (1): 53–94. doi:10.1177/002200949402900103. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 260956. S2CID 161316856.
• Gerstenfeld, Manfred (2008). "Finland's Tarnished Holocaust Record: An Interview with Serah Beizer". In Gerstenfeld, Manfred (ed.). Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews (PDF). Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. pp. 209–18. ISBN 978-965-218-066-7.
• Holmila, Antero; Silvennoinen, Oula (2011). "The Holocaust Historiography in Finland". Scandinavian Journal of History. 36 (5): 605–619. doi:10.1080/03468755.2011.627500.
• Worthen, Hana (2009). "Tip of the Iceberg? Finland and the Holocaust". East European Jewish Affairs. 39 (1): 121–133. doi:10.1080/13501670902750337. S2CID 162473567.
• Silvennoinen, Oula (2013). "Beyond "Those Eight": Deportations of Jews from Finland 1941–1942". In Muir, Simo; Worthen, Hana (eds.). Finland's Holocaust: Silences of History. Basingstoke: Springer. pp. 194–217. ISBN 978-1-137-30264-9.
• Gasche, Malte; Holler, Martin (2021). "Selective Memories: Finnish State Policy toward Roma in the 1930s and 1940s in Its European Context and Post-War Perception" (PDF). Journal of Finnish Studies. 24 (1–2): 94–111.
• Holmila, Antero (2012). "Varieties of Silence: Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Finland". In Kinnunen, Tiina; Kivimäki, Ville (eds.). Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations. Leiden: Brill. pp. 519–60. ISBN 9789004214330.
• Muir, Simo (2016). "The Plan to Rescue Finnish Jews in 1944". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 30 (1): 81–104. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcw006.

Further reading

• Holmila, Antero (2009). "Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 23 (3): 413–440. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcp041.
• Rautkallio, Hannu (1987). Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland's Jews. New York: Holocaust Library. ISBN 978-0896041219.