Abstract
Finland’s response to the liberation of the concentration camps was considerably different from the British and Swedish responses; the Finnish press wrote far less about the liberations than their British and Swedish counterparts; the event hardly sparked any public discussions in Finland; and there was almost no pictorial record of the atrocities to accompany the news. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to establish what the Finnish press wrote about the liberation of the camps — to investigate what type of discourses the Finnish press subscribed to; and second, to analyse why they wrote in the way they did — to understand why the news was framed in certain ways.
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Notes
For example, Markku Jokisipilä, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Alftan, Aseveljet. Saksalais-Suomalainen Aseveljeys 1942–1944 (Juva: WSOY, 2005), p. 23. He writes that since Finland never came across ‘Hitler’s real Germany’ it is understandable that many Finns viewed the information on German brutality as exaggerated Allied propaganda. See also Marianne Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä. Suomalaisen siviiliväestön ja Saksalaisen sotaväen rinnakkaiselo Pohjois-Suomessa 1941–1944 (Helsinki: SKS, 2000), pp. 168–80.
Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Basingstoke and Oxford: Pan Books, 2001), p. 429.
Markku Jokisipilä, Aseveljiä vai liittolaisia? Suomi, Hitlerin Saksan liittosopimus-vaatimukset ja Rytin-Ribbentropin sopimus (Helsinki: SKS, 2004), p. 30; Junila, Kotirintaman aseveljeyttä, pp. 168–80, esp. p. 175. For a recent evaluation of Finland and the Holocaust, see Holmila, ‘Finland and the Holocaust — A Reassessment’.
See Antti Kujala, Vankisurmat: Neuvostosotavankien laittomat ampumiset jatko-sodassa (Helsinki: WSOY, 2008); Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisiyhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki: Otava, 2008); Lars Westerlund, Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ja raja-alueilla 1941–1944 (Helsinki: Tammi, 2008) and Osmo Hyytiä, Helmi Suomen maakuntien joukossa’: Suomalainen Itä-Karjala 1941–1944 (Helsinki: Edita, 2008).
Lars Westerlund, Sotavankien ja siviili-internoitujen sodanaikainen kuolleisuus Suomessa: Muonahuolto, tautisuus ja Punaisen Ristin toimettomuus 1939–44 (Helsinki: SKS, 2009), p. 12.
Sinikka Wunsch argues that the modern image of Russia as Finland’s nemesis has a long historical pedigree, deriving from ‘the Great Wrath in 1714–1721, a period in Finland’s history when it was occupied by Russia as a result of the Great Northern War’. See Sinikka Wunsch, ‘Lupa vihata — propaganda ja viholliskuvat mielipiteen muokkaajina konfliktitilanteissa’, Historiallinen Aikakausikirja, 2 (2003), pp. 170–1. See also Heikki Luostarinen, Perivihollinen. Suomen oikeis-tolehdistön Neuvostoliittoa koskeva viholliskuva sodassa 1941–44: Tausta ja sisältö (Tampere: Vastapaino, 1986).
For example, see Heikki Luostarinen, ‘Finnish Russophobia: The Story of an Enemy Image’, Journal of Peace Research, 26: 2 (1989), pp. 123–37; Outi Karemaa, Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä. Rasistinen venäläisviha Suomessa 1917–1923 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998). For a gender aspect, see Johanna Valenius, Undressing the Maid. Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Construction of the Finnish Nation (Helsinki: SKS, 2004). Among other things, the book argues that the imaginary Finnish Maid (Suomineito) who was a symbol of Finnish nation, an eternal virgin, was raped by the Russians.
Kari Immonen, Ryssästäsaa puhua … Neuvostoliitto suomalaisessa julkisuudessa ja kirjat julkisuuden muotona 1918–1939 (Helsinki: Otava, 1987), passim.
Eino Pietola, Sotavangit Suomessa 1941–1944 (Jyväskylä: Gummerrus, 1987), pp. 246–7.
Cited in Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War, p. 89; see also Ohto Manninen, Suomi Toisessa Maailmansodassa. Suomen Historia 7 (Espoo: Weilin-Göös, 1987), p. 341.
Simo Muir, ‘Anti-Semitism in the Finnish Academe. Rejection of IsraelJakob Schur’s PhD dissertation at the University of Helsinki (1937) and Åbo Akademi University’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34: 2 (2009), pp. 142–3; Karmela Bélinki, ‘Shylock in Finland: The Jew in the Literature of Finland 1900–1979’, Nordisk Judaistik, 1–2 (2000), pp. 45–55.
Max Jakobson, Väkivallan vuodet I. 20. Vuosisadan tilinpäätös (Helsinki: Otava, 1999), p. 328.
Ibid., pp. 318–28.
Sakari Lappi-Seppälä, Haudat Dnjeprin Varrella. SS-Miehen Päiväkirjan Lehtiä (Helsinki: Kirjapaino AA, 1945), pp. 215–17.
For example, see Rautkallio, ‘Cast into the Lion’s Den’, pp. 53–94; Jakobson, Väkivallan Vuodet I; and Petri Raivo, ‘Oblivion without Guilt: The Holocaust and Memories of the Second World War in Finland’, in Judith Tydor Baumel and Tova Cohen (eds), Gender, Place and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience: Re-Placing Ourselves (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), pp. 108–25.
Rony Smolar, Setä Stiller Valpon ja Gestapon välissä (Helsinki: Tammi, 2003)
For a good analysis of the situation in Germany in the later stages of war, see Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler. Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Chapter 10.
SSd, the leading social democratic paper in Finland, had as early as 4 January 1942 proposed in its editorial that Finland should seek a separate peace. However, the censorship would not have allowed the paper to write that Germany was likely to lose the war. See also Jakobson, Väkivallan vuodet I, p. 342; Väinö Tanner (Soc. Dem.), a Minister of Finance, had warned the members of the Foreign Policy Group (Ulkoasiainvaliokunta) in November 1942 that they should not count on German victory. See Ilkka Seppinen, ‘Saksan sotaonni kääntyy’, in Jorma Järventaus (ed.), Suomi sodassa. Talvi- ja jatkosodan tärkeät päivät (Helsinki: Valitut Palat, 1983), pp. 314–15.
For example, see Sharf, The British Press, pp. 20 and 83; Roy Greenslade, The Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profit from Propaganda (London: Macmillan, 2003), pp. 27–8.
See US and SSd, 8 May 1945. The story of Auschwitz first appeared in Pravda in early February 1945, following the liberation by the Red Army, and was important in forming the future frame of reference with regard to Auschwitz. See Robert Janc Van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 158–64.
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© 2011 Antero Holmila
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Holmila, A. (2011). The Finnish Press and the Liberation of the Concentration Camps. In: Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press, 1945–50. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305861_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305861_4
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