Finland
Although it was a co-belligerent of Germany during the war, Finland 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 agains tStalin,Finland joined as a co-belligerent—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.
Like all able-bodied Finnish males, the Finnish Jews were also subject to conscription, and as such, 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. Although this meant that Jewish Finnish soldiers were fighting on the same side as the Nazis, the conflict was widely perceived in Finland 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 January 1942 Wannsee conference, 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.
History has produced no definitive answer as to whether there was ever an earnest discussion between German and Finnish leaders demanding the deportation and liquidation 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. However, in November 1942, eight foreign Jews were arrested and handed over to the Gestapo; only one of them would survive Birkenau. 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.
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, Prime Minister Lipponen 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.”
Today, the Jewish community in Finland numbers about 1,500 people. Jews in Finland are mainly settled around the capital, Helsinki, with a synagogue, a Jewish school and a lively social scene.
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