Finland
Finland, though a cobelligerent of Germany during the war and dependent upon that country for food and arms, adamantly refused Nazi orders to deliver the Finnish Jewish community of approximately 2,000 for "Hitler's final solution." Likewise, its police did not cooperate with the Gestapo when action was sought by force. Virtually all of the country's Jews were saved.
Finland in Wartime:
The situation Finland faced during the Second World War differed significantly from that of Denmark. During a period of six years, Finland fought two wars against the Soviet Union. In 1939, Finnish territory was attacked by Soviet armed forces, which annexed an eastern province of Finland in the course of what became known as the Winter War. When the Third Reich in 1941 declared war against Stalin, Finland joined as a cobelligerent—not an ally—in order to gain back its former territory. At that time, the Jewish community numbered more than 2,000 members. Among those were some hundred foreign Jews who had escaped from Central Europe. History has produced no definitive answer as to whether there was ever an earnest discussion between German and Finnish leaders demanding the deportation and liqui-dation of Finnish Jews. But German troops, including the Waffen-SS, were present throughout the country. Some say that Heinrich Himmler broached the subject directly with the Finnish Prime Minister Jukka W. Rangell, who replied that his country had “no Jewish question.” The Finnish government regarded its Jewish residents as fully integrated into the society. Moreover, there were over 300 Jewish soldiers who served in the Finnish national army in both wars against the Soviet Union. However, in November 1942, eight foreign Jews were arrested and handed over to the Gestapo; only one of them would survive Birkenau. “The surrender of eight Jewish refugees to the Nazis in 1942 is a stain on Finland ’s history. The wrongdoing cannot be undone nor can it be justified under any circumstances. Neither does the number of the extradited refugees give any grounds for writing off the issue. Every man has but one life and all lives are equally valuable.” — Paavo Lipponen, Finnish Prime Minister, 2000 Due to strong democratic traditions, Finnish Jews were protected by the government and never faced annihilation. The community today consists of about 1,500 members. boat on water
Even though Finland had a military alliance with Germany, the Finns succeeded in protecting their Jewish compatriots.
THE HOLOCAUST 1933-1945
Between, January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), when Germany surrendered and the war in Europe came to a close, European Jewry was virtually annihilated. Six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered in the Nazi atrocities, and some three million more were uprooted from their homes and became refugees.
The nightmare began shortly after Hitler’s rise to power. In Germany, all Jewish businesses were boycotted, Jews were forbidden to practice law, fired from civil service jobs, and forced to leave school. The German expansion eastward, including Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland placed the great population centers of European Jewry within the Nazi grasp. Ultimately, the Nazis implemented a cruelly efficient program of systematized mass murder.
In 2000, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen apologized to the Jewish community, as did the Lutheran Church. In recognizing Finland’s shortcomings in helping the Jews, the prime minister said:
The surrender of eight Jewish refugees to the Nazis in 1942 is a stain on Finland’s history. The wrongdoing cannot be undone nor can it be justified under any circumstances. Neither does the number of the extradited refugees give any grounds for writing off the issue. Every man has but one life and all lives are equally valuable.
During the Holocaust, Jews in the Nordic countries received uncommon levels of support and protection. What happened to the Jews of Finland is one of the most extraordinary and unusual chapters in that story.
How could Finland align itself with Germany knowing the poor state of human rights (anti-Semitism) inherent in Nazi policy?
What are democratic values and how did they play a role in saving the Jews of Finland?
It is in the nature of truly a democratic society to defend the rights of its minority citizens. Finland’s defense of its Jewish community during an extremely trying time in history is an especially important case.
Thanks To Scandinavia is committed to having the world learn about the efforts involved in saving Jews during World War II. Our goal is to make sure these commendable stories are heard and never forgotten. Every year, dozens of Scandinavian educators and students are chosen to receive grants that enable them to study in the United States, Israel, and Europe.
Such is the enduring message of courage and humanity that our generation and every generation to come should hold dear to their hearts.
The Only Democracy to Fight on the side of Hitler
Finland’s Story
Finland had, since her independence in 1917, lived as a neighbour of a country that in 1922 became the Soviet Union. The relationship between a democratic Finland and the Soviet dictatorship was uneasy throughout the inter-war period. In 1939, the Soviet Union finally attacked Finland in order to make her a part of the Soviet empire, as outlined in the Nazi-Soviet pact. In the ensuing Winter War of November 1939 - March 1940 Finland was able to fight the Soviets off, but had to sign a peace treaty conceding large tracts of her territory. Around 400 000 Finns were made homeless and had to be settled elsewhere in the country.
A possibility to rectify the situation seemed to offer itself when Germany began to make overtures towards Finland in 1940, in preparation of her assault upon the Soviet Union. Finland agreed to join the coming German offensive to win back the lost territories. Finnish forces began their advance into the Soviet Union in the summer 1941, thus initiating what in Finland is known as the Continuation War of 1941-1944.
During the course of the war, the Finnish army captured around 70 000 Soviet soldiers, some whom were Jewish. At the same time Finland had a Jewish community of her own, numbering about 2 000 persons, most of whom were citizens of Finland. In addition, there were in the country a few hundred Jewish refugees from mainly central European states occupied by Germany. What were the fates of these separate groups of people in the pressure of Nazi schemes for total annihilation?
The Fate of Finnish Jews
Like all able-bodied Finnish males, also the Finnish Jews were subject to conscription. Some 200 Jewish men served in the Finnish armed forces. Several dozens of Jewish women served in the voluntary auxiliary organization for women, Lotta Svärd. Thus, there were also Jews who in the ranks of the Finnish army ended up fighting on the same side as Nazi Germany. In Finland, however, the conflict was widely perceived to be between Finland and the Soviet Union only. The Jews in the service of the Finnish armed forces saw themselves as fighting for their homeland, not for Hitler.
The Nazi plans of extermination, however, included also the Jewish minority of Finland. In one of the preparatory meetings for the Holocaust, the Wannsee conference in January 1942, it was agreed that the small Nordic Jewish minorities could, for the time being, be left outside the plan of Final Solution. Thus, Germany never made an official request for the handing over of the Jews of Finland. Neither did the Finnish legislature pass any discriminatory legislation affecting the status of Jewish citizens of Finland.
The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, the man in charge of the practical arrangements of the Holocaust, seems to have put out informal feelers towards the political leadership of Finland, sounding Finnish willingness to join in the Final Solution. During his visit to the country in the summer 1942, his demands for a sharper policy against the Jews in Finland were met by the Prime Minister Johan Rangell with a retort: “There is no Jewish question in Finland”.
The Fate of Jewish Refugees in Finland
Finland received hundreds of refugees from countries fallen under the Nazis from 1938 onwards. Most of them came to Finland only temporarily and continued to other countries, but a few hundred remained in Finland at the outbreak of the war. As foreigners, they were mostly considered by the Finnish authorities as a liability in a crisis situation. Antisemitism was also not unknown in Finland, and the Jewishness of the refugees often made them doubly suspicious. The authority with most to say in the treatment of foreigners at the time was the Finnish security police Valpo. In its eyes, Jews and ethnic Russians were the groups of people most likely to be communists as well.
Upon the outbreak of the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, the Jewish refugees in Finland were submitted to internment, which meant that they were sent to country parishes to settle, away form the capital. Some of the male refugees were also conscripted for labour and they worked in road-building and fortification tasks. The security police deported a total of eight Jews (latest research has found 12 Jews) as unwanted aliens into German-controlled areas and into the hands of the German authorities. Most of those deported lost their lives in Auschwitz. A public outcry raised in both the Swedish and Finnish press in late 1942 seems to have ended the deportations of individual foreign Jews from Finland.
The security police saw the Jewish refugees as useless mouths to feed as well as a security risk and pressed for their removal from Finland. By late 1942, a plan was materialized to send the foreign Jews in Finland into Sweden, which finally, in 1944, did receive a few hundred refugees from Finland. As a group, the foreign Jews residing in Finland were not made victims of the Holocaust, even though some authorities clearly took a view that they must not remain in the country.
The Fate of Jewish Prisoners of War
During the course of the Continuation War, Finland took some 70 000 Soviet prisoners of war. Among them the Finnish military authorities recorded over 700 Soviet Jews. The Soviet prisoners in general experienced very severe conditions in Finnish prisoner-of-war camps, where the death rate climbed to over 30 percent during the winter 1941 - summer 1942 period due to malnutrition and disease.
The Finnish military authorities adopted the German method of separating the prisoners according to their nationality, of which Jews were one. This was done to ease the management of a large group of prisoners and facilitate their use as labour. The Jewish community of Finland was able to give help to the Jewish prisoners-of-war by sending them food and clothing. This reduced the death rate among the Jewish prisoners to under 20 percent, which, while still high, was markedly lower than among the ethnic Russian prisoners.
The Finnish military authorities also delivered over 500 Soviet prisoners of war into the hands of the German security police operating in Northern Norway and Northern Finland, which had been agreed to constitute a German theatre of war. Among this group there were also 47 persons identified as Jews. All of them were handed over because the Finns suspected them of being active communists. The most likely fate for this group in German hands, however, was execution.
Despite of the pressures of the war and despite her alliance with Nazi Germany, Finland remained a democracy, with important sections of a civic society functional through the war. This explains why, despite the actions of the security police and the military authorities, Finland never came to fully participate in the Nazi plans for the Holocaust.
A Brief History of Jews in Finland
Finland formed a part of the Swedish empire from the Middle Ages into the year 1809, when it was annexed by the Russian empire and formed into a grand duchy. During the period of Swedish rule, Jews had not been permitted to settle in the country. The first Jews to settle in Finland were soldiers in the Russian army, who were permitted to stay after completing their military service following the statute by the emperor Alexander II in 1858. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were approximately one thousand Jews living in Finland.
In 1918, one year after the collapse of the Russian empire and after Finland had declared her independence, Jews in Finland were granted civil rights. Earlier projects to extend the civil rights to Jews in Finland had foundered either on domestic opposition or been ultimately blocked by the Russian government. After Finland had granted civil rights to her Jewish inhabitants, Romania remained the only sovereign European state not to have done so.
Today, the size of the Jewish community in Finland numbers about 1 500. Jews in Finland are mainly settled around the capital, Helsinki, with a synagogue, a Jewish school and a lively social scene.
