Abstract
History is written by historians; but history is also written in a variety of popular media, and across Scandinavia journalists and non-academic writers have often been among the first to unsettle the truisms of professional “history.” The challenging interpretive issues posed by the varied “national” histories of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland during World War II have galvanized the unsettled relations between academic historians and journalist provocateurs, a conflict animating the public discussion of Finland’s possible role in the Holocaust emerging in the last quarter of the twentieth century. This dynamic is particularly engaging in Finland. Long a colony of Sweden, Finland is an officially bilingual state, and its Swedish-speaking minority (about 5.5 percent of the population) not only maintains a distinct cultural and political identity, but maintains a significant Swedish-language press as well. Here, I examine the treatment of emerging studies of Finland and the Holocaust in Finland’s Swedish-language press, placed in dialogue with comparable accounts in the Swedish press. Analyzing articles and reviews in Finland’s daily Swedish-language newspapers (Hufvudstadsbladet, Västra Nyland) as well as the Helsingin Sanomat International Edition and comparing them with counterparts in Sweden (Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, and Aftonbladet), I aim to show how the “dark past of Finland,” Finland’s link to the Holocaust, has been negotiated in the public sphere, a sphere that once marks and complicates the national borders, and national histories, relating and distinguishing Finland and Sweden today.
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Notes
See for instance Antero Holmila, “Varieties of Silence: Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Finland,” in Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations, ed. Tiina Kinnunen and Ville Kivimäki (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 519–60
Hana Worthen, “Tip of the Iceberg? Finland and the Holocaust,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 1 (2009): 121–33
Antero Holmila, “Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 23, no. 3 (2009): 413–40.
Elina Sana, Luovutetut: Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle (Helsinki: WSOY, 2003)
Elina Suominen, Kuoleman laiva s/s Hohenhörn: Juutalaispakolaisten kohtalo Suomessa (Porvoo: WSOY, 1979).
Henrik Arnstad, Spelaren Christian Günther: Sverige under andra världskriget (Stockholm: Wahlström and Widstrand, 2006).
Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisiyhteistyö 1933–1944 (Helsinki: Otava, 2008)
Henrik Arnstad, Skyldig till skuld: En europeisk resa i Nazitysklands skugga (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2009).
For a comparison of the reception of the TV series in Sweden and Denmark, see Ulf Zander, “Holocaust at the Limits: Historical Culture and the Nazi Genocide in the Television Era,” in Echoes of the Holocaust: Historical Cultures in Contemporary Europe, ed. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2003), 255–92.
For a discussion of previous research, see Lars Westerlund, “The Mortality Rate of Prisoners of War in Finnish Custody between 1939 and 1944,” in Prisoners of War Deaths and People Handed Over to Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report by the Finnish National Archives, ed. Lars Westerlund (Helsinki: National Archives, 2008), 16–17.
Cecilia Trenter, “I mötet med minnet: Historiekulturer i Skandinavien” [Encountering memory: History-cultures in Scandinavia], Historisk Tidskrift 122, no. 2 (2002): 300.
see also Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 8.
National Holocaust research centers were established in Sweden in 1998, in Denmark in 2000, and in Norway in 2001. See Holmila and Silvennoinen, “The Holocaust Historiography in Finland”; Henrik Arnstad, “Finland och alliansen med Nazityskland 1941–44: En nordisk Historikerstreit” [Finland and the alliance with Nazi-Germany 1941–44: A Nordic Historikerstreit], Historisk Tidskrift 130, no. 3 (2010): 485–92.
Lars Westerlund, ed., Prisoners of War Deaths and People Handed Over to Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report by the Finnish National Archives (Helsinki: National Archives, 2008).
Silvennoinen’s book appeared alongside Westerlund’s Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ja raja-alueilla 1941–1944 [German prison camps in Finland and border areas 1941–1944] (Helsinki: Tammi, 2008)
Antti Kujala’s Vankisurmat: Neuvostovankien laittomat ampumiset jatkosodassa [Execution of the prisoners: Illegal shootings of Soviet POWs in the Continuation War] (Helsinki: WSOY, 2008).
Henrik Arnstad, “Har Förintelsen för stor plats i historien?” [Is the Holocaust playing too big a role in history?], Hufvudstadsbladet, October 17, 2009. See also Henrik Meinander, Finland 1944: Krig, samhälle, känslolandskap [Finland 1944: War, society, emotional landscape] (Helsinki: Söderströms, 2009).
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Geverts, K.K. (2013). Negotiating a Dark Past in the Swedish-language Press in Finland and Sweden. In: Muir, S., Worthen, H. (eds) Finland’s Holocaust. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302656_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302656_8
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