Strada 16th December 2011

[Anne G,]

What did you thinj yesterday's Strada:

http://areena.yle.fi/ohjelma/15269

[Hanski]

So, in that TV program there were interviews of recent Jewish and Finnish authors of new books. The first one is a Jewish gentleman who made allegations of Finnish SS volunteers executing Jews, based on his research for 13 years, with very little concrete evidence to show.

The narrator then tells "there are young novelists who open the wounds of war with the means of fiction". There is a young lady, who had written a novel on Finnish SS-volunteers committing war crimes, rapings etc. When asked, she smilingly said she had no answers why she had written fiction like that. The second one is another fiction writer, who had used some factual information as the basis of his novel about a Finnish concentration camp in Eastern Karelia. The third one was supposedly a documentary writer, who had written on the Finnish treatment of Soviet POW's and claimed the post-war report by the International Red Cross was fake. There was nothing actually new in the interviews, but platitudes like "the prisoner camps were initially called concentration camps, but later on they were renamed transit camps as the word 'concentration camp' gained a certain meaning in Germany".

The Strada program proves there are Finnish people, now in their 30's-40's, who like to entertain their imagination by placing their fictional characters, imaginary Finnish soldiers, in the middle of criminal activities, mixing their fantasies with propagandistic stereotypes of Nazism, its atrocities, Greater Finland enthusiasm and the like. The "documentaries" sounded rather weak, based on unsupported conclusions but rather on vague allegations like "it was recorded the prisoner was shot when escaping, while in reality it had not been the case".

This is a rather new phenomenon in Finland, now emerging as the generation who fought the wars are diminishing in their number and soon no more around to point out false allegations. Perhaps readers who cannot distinguish between fiction and fact start confusing them in their minds, which will distort their perception of history.

Of course, there are ugly sides in all wars, which is self-evident to any sensible person, like there are ugly sides to even present-day civilian life if you start digging for various extreme forms of cruelty, sadism, corruption, perversion, violent crime, and the like. But what does it ultimately serve to fantasize these, dress the fantasies in uniforms, and place them in past historical environments to write "fiction based on real historical events"? Seeking attention, when you then get real TV reporters to interview you and ask you a lot of questions? The motives for these writers attract more attention than their texts, but perhaps that's what they are after.

[Vaeltaja]

Yeah, first was yet another reference to the lonely crusade of Boris Salomon which after 13 years still hasn't produced anything credible. The girl, who wrote a fantasy tale of Finnish SS soldiers, indeed stated that she had no answers as to why she had chosen such a topic but at least acknowledged that she had no evidence to support the story either.

[Seppo Koivisto]

Boris Salomon´s proof seems to be the interrogation protocol of SS-man Thor-Björn Weckström by State Police (Valpo), after he returned to Finland in 1947 from the English occupation zone in Austria. He had left Finland for Germany in September 1944 and rejoined the SS. In Finland he was sentenced 3 years 9 months for treason.

Weckström had told that once 6 or 7 men of his company were ordered to execute 5 jews. He had purposely missed, because he didn´t accept that kind of activity.

Page 44 of Rintamalta Ratakadulle : suomalaiset SS-miehet kommunistisen Valpon kohteina 1945-1948
https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/12159

[Hanski]

Page 44 of Rintamalta Ratakadulle : suomalaiset SS-miehet kommunistisen Valpon kohteina 1945-1948
https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/12159

Thank you, Seppo, for this most interesting link to an academic dissertation for Master's degree, a so-called pro gradu -research report for Finnish history at Jyväskylä University on 28 August 2005 by Anu Vertanen.

The title Rintamalta Ratakadulle means "From the front to Ratakatu Street [the HQ in Helsinki of the State Police/Security Service]", and the subtitle Suomalaiset SS-miehet kommunistisen Valpon kohteina 1945-1948 translates as "The Finnish SS-men as targets of the Communistic Valpo [abbreviaton from State Police] in 1945-1948".

There is a difference like between night and day with this study, which is done using scientific methods of history research, and the previously discussed sample of sensationalist low-level TV "journalism" in Strada. Unfortunately, this excellent report is written all in Finnish, without even a summary in English. It is out of the question that I would undertake the translation job of more than 70 pages of very demanding expert text. But because I would like especially Vely to get an idea of its contents, I will try to translate its last summary pages when I find time. Please stay tuned on this thread!

[Anne G,]

The narrator then tells "there are young novelists who open the wounds of war with the means of fiction". There is a young lady, who had written a novel on Finnish SS-volunteers committing war crimes, rapings etc. When asked, she smilingly said she had no answers why she had written fiction like that.

It was Isänmaan tähden (For the Fatherland) by Jenni Linturi. I rather liked her novel. It's basic point was actually how the memories were told or not told decades later. One can't tell that you were so afraid that didn't go to help your comrade, or that you accused your comrade of your own crime, or even killed him letting otherts belive it was done by the enemy.

The second one is another fiction writer, who had used some factual information as the basis of his novel about a Finnish concentration camp in Eastern Karelia.

I haven't yet read Äänislinna, just saw it in the bookshop and wondered that the Finnish officer had a German name "Wolff". Now I heard that this officer was a Jew.

The third one was supposedly a documentary writer, who had written on the Finnish treatment of Soviet POW's and claimed the post-war report by the International Red Cross was fake.

Well, ordered by the Finnish government in the fall to prove that the Soviet accusations were false.

I don't think that the Finnish government, especially as it has just lost the war, could "order" international organizations. What it could, was maybe to make the camps a little better for inspection. But the hunger crisis was already over then and many POws have worked in the farms.

but platitudes like "the prisoner camps were initially called concentration camps, but later on they were renamed transit camps as the word 'concentration camp' gained a certain meaning in Germany".

Even in Germany, the POW camps weren't called concentration camps.

The Strada program proves there are Finnish people, now in their 30's-40's, who like to entertain their imagination by placing their fictional characters, imaginary Finnish soldiers, in the middle of criminal activities, mixing their fantasies with propagandistic stereotypes of Nazism, its atrocities, Greater Finland enthusiasm and the like. The "documentaries" sounded rather weak, based on unsupported conclusions but rather on vague allegations like "it was recorded the prisoner was shot when escaping, while in reality it had not been the case".

This is a rather new phenomenon in Finland, now emerging as the generation who fought the wars are diminishing in their number and soon no more around to point out false allegations. Perhaps readers who cannot distinguish between fiction and fact start confusing them in their minds, which will distort their perception of history.

Of course, there are ugly sides in all wars, which is self-evident to any sensible person, like there are ugly sides to even present-day civilian life if you start digging for various extreme forms of cruelty, sadism, corruption, perversion, violent crime, and the like. But what does it ultimately serve to fantasize these, dress the fantasies in uniforms, and place them in past historical environments to write "fiction based on real historical events"? Seeking attention, when you then get real TV reporters to interview you and ask you a lot of questions? The motives for these writers attract more attention than their texts, but perhaps that's what they are after.

A novelist has a right to invent anything he or she likes. It's mustn't have happened, it is enough that it's possible.

Linturi refused to claim that her story was based on the documents. It was the interviewer who supposed that if somebody writes something like that, it must be true.

[Anne G,]

As a good example who a novelist can rather well mix facts and imagination, is a detective story of Jim Thomson, An American living in Helsiki, Kylmä kuolema where Germany demands that Finlands gives up a 90-yer-old war veteran, Arvid, for war crimes committed in Germany's POW camps in Lapland: http://wsoy.fi/yk/products/show/94191

Thompson uses Silvennoinen's study Salaiset aseveljet, but in his story the changes the researcher's name, so he can make invent much graver concluses.

There are a few mistakes. I suspect if Valpo recruited 18-old youths, how good relationship their father had. They hadn't been in the army yet. And of course one couldn't have a Mannerheim cross for deeds in the Winter War.

The novel is called in English Helsinki White and it will published next year. http://wsoy.fi/yk/products/show/94191

I you like noir and/or Helsinki, I can recommed the book. Notice that the auhor's name is in English James Thomson.

[Jagala]

"Kylmä kuolema" appeared as "Lucifer's Tears" in English. An interview with the author: http://www.sixdegrees.fi/6d/index.php/w ... erspective - I haven't read the book, but the character Arvid Lahtinen,the Winter War hero turned Valpo detective and war criminal is indeed quite unrealistic. Alas,the rules of writing this kind of fiction dictate that the lone hero must deal with hostile superiors and coverup attempts from government officials and politicians...

The main character of "Äänislinna" by Pekka Manninen is even more "impossible": a Jewish officer from Vaasa who joins the AKS and who graduates first in his UK class! (And that is just to begin with,,,) At least the author readily admits that he did not intend to write a historical novel but a "Dostoyevskian human relations thriller".

[Hanski]

A novelist have a right to invent anything he or she likes. It's mustn't have happened, it is enough that it's possible.

Linturi refused to claim that her story was based on the documents. It was the interviewer who supposed that if somebody writes something like that, it must be true.

I agree: for example The Unknown Soldier is a good novel, not factual history, and it captures a lot that is not presented in scientific history writing. Yet, Väinö Linna is wise enough to avoid overdoing his share of condemning the Finns he disliked and making his book into a caricature -- if he had included in his novel orgies of gang rape or sadistic atrocities in excess, he would have never gained the status in Finnish literature that he now has. Rauni Mollberg's film version feasts with such aspects, which makes his movie rather hollow compared to Edvin Laine's older classic film, despite the latter's obsolete way of acting.

I also agree that Linturi was quite honest in saying it was all her fiction, not documentary material, and like you point out, that absurd conclusion "if somebody writes it so, it must be true" was made by the Strada interviewer, which is why I call it sensationalist low-level TV "journalism". The obsession of trying to prove "that must have been the truth, because that's how I feel" is a childish source of bias which makes this whole program a mockery of journalism. What makes it worse, the program uses clips of authentic documentary film interspersed between fantasy, which makes the whole appear as gross misleading of the TV audience.

I have not read any of the texts referred to in the "Strada" program, so I cannot judge their artistic value. Artists certainly have their freedom. In the years gone by, there was a painter who made a point of mocking Finnish traditional values with his paintings of The Pig Messiah crucifix and The Pig Coat of Arms (replacing the lion by a pig in the Coat of Arms of the Finnish Republic). Apparently there are currently also loads of writers of this same genre, waiting to present us their fantasies of various war crimes by Finnish soldiers and wrongdoings of Finnish WWII era statesmen and prominent military leaders. In some countries they would get prosecuted for slander, while in Finnish TV they get applauded for their "bold" views.

[Anne G,]

"Kylmä kuolema" appeared as "Lucifer's Tears" in English.

Yes, my mistake, sorry. The First book, Snow angels, set in Lapland, is also quite good.

the character Arvid Lahtinen,the Winter War hero turned Valpo detective and war criminal is indeed quite unrealistic.

Of course a war hero can make war crimes, but why shouldn't they have kept this excellent soldier in the front? On the other hand, working with the Germans in the POV camp, one had to speak both German and Russian well, and if the charcacter joined Valpo when he was 18 years old (which I doubt very much - he wasn't even of age then), he had no time to study.

Although I like the book, I doubt that if somebody has done war crimes, he calls them such, but tries his best to convince others that "actually, it wasn't wrong at all". And if a father had done such in 1918, he hardly had told about them to his son.

a Jewish officer from Vaasa who joins the AKS and who graduates first in his UK class!

Why should any Jew even want to join AKS?

There were some Jews in RUK in the 20ies, but not in the 30ies. During the war there were some, f.ex. Max Jakobson. His brother Leo worked in the intelligence.

[Anne G,]

The Unknown Soldier is a good novel, not factual history, and it captures a lot that is not presented in scientific history writing. Yet, Väinö Linna is wise enough to avoid overdoing his share of condemning the Finns he disliked and making his book into a caricature -- if he had included in his novel orgies of gang rape or sadistic atrocities in excess, he would have never gained the status in Finnish literature that he now has. Rauni Mollberg's film version feasts with such aspects, which makes his movie rather hollow compared to Edvin Laine's older classic film, despite the latter's obsolete way of acting.

Well, in Kristian Smedlund's version in Kansallisteatteri (National theatre) there was a symbolical rape scene with the Russian dolls, but I didn't understand it was rape when I see it (and I doubt if many others did either).

Vilho Kankare tells Mennään kun käsketään (We go as we are ordered) which was written after the war but published only recently, evidently quite realistically, tells that the there was robbing (or at least trying things and leaving them in disorder) and drinking in the capture of Petroskoi (Petrozavodsk). The reason according to Kankare was that the army police came only a few days later.

However, Kankare he denies rapes, saying that the soldiers could even then easily buy women with bread. One could make a guess that if a armed soldier comes to the house, women can be too afraid to say no (cf. what William H. Hitchcok in Liberation tells about American soldiers and German women).

[Hanski]

And here comes the translation from Finnish which I promised:

Rintamalta Ratakadulle : suomalaiset SS-miehet kommunistisen Valpon kohteina 1945-1948
https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/12159

7. Summary

The SS-men as a group interested [the State Police] Valpo for several reasons. Collecting material about them was started at once after the war had ended, although political activity was still then believed to be limited to a couple of individual SS-men, the others being blameless soldiers. When the communists took over the Valpo in the spring of 1945 and its personnel was purged, the new officials were instructed to pay attention to the political right while collecting material. At this stage, the interest towards SS-men was based simply on them having belonged to the SS-troops of the National Socialist Germany, which was criminalized in many countries after the war. Thus the State Police also in Finland got interested in whether these men were guilty of crime already when joining the SS-troops. Valpo wanted to get hold of material collected abroad on the SS-men and interrogated the Finnish men on recruiting as well as what these men had done in Germany. In addition, Valpo had an interest especially during 1945 in all special training that was given in Germany, which in its view was connected to espionage, and the possible connections of the men with Gestapo. Attention was also paid to the moods of SS-men and their getting organized to some new activity. Valpo's interest towards the SS-men as such shows in all material collected on them. In the personnel file on each man who had served in the SS troops, the SS marking is found, and in the interrogations nearly without exception the questions related to recruiting were found out, as well as main features of service in the SS. As it is seen from personnel files, interrogations, and personal folders, Valpo had information on 726 SS-men, while 1151 men returned to Finland in August 1943 after the SS Battalion had been disbanded. Of the personnel files, 308 have no other data besides personal information than the man having belonged to the SS troops.

The other main reason for the attention that Valpo paid to the SS-men was their membership in some organisation that had been abolished. According to its internal instructions, Valpo had to make files on all men who had belonged to such organizations, and keep an eye on those associations that could act against either the lawful society or against the Peace Treaty in the future. The majority of SS-men became thus filed at least on two different grounds. In addition to their SS background, nearly 300 men had belonged to some organisation that had been abolished in accordance with the provisional Peace Treaty: most of them like many other Finnish men had belonged to the Civil Guards. As the SS-Brothers-in-Arms Association was one of the first abolished organizations, it became Valpo's task to make sure that the SS-men did not try to continue their activity in any new organization. Valpo seemed to have a firm belief that SS-men had continuously their own secret activity and meetings, of which now and then information emerged via informers and the like. In the papers on SS-men there are a few entries on both meetings proper and also encounters on name days or bithday parties. An entry was made on the personnel file if the man was known to have kept in contact with his former brothers-in-arms or even being ”an underground fascist organizer” in his own place of residence. In the interrogations it was attempted at least on a general level to find out the post-war whereabouts of the SS-men, as well as inquire about new activity or possible plans. However, there was no great conspiracy that Valpo could have revealed during its action, as only a single man was arrested suspected of secret organized activity of SS-men. When the authority of Valpo in the eyes of the citizens started to diminish from the fall of 1947 on, it tried to support its own need of existence by attempting to prove that the rightist circles of Finland still tried to keep up action against both own country and the Soviet Union. Valpo's desire to prove its own necessity is shown also in the numbers of personnel files and interrogations made. After the peak year of 1945, both were done most just in 1947. Not until 1948 was a report made, according to which even the SS-men themselves wanted to keep at bay the most radical men among them, lest those would cause problems to everyone else. The detective who wrote the report believed that the SS-men will not get involved in all sorts of ”childish secret societies”.

The third most common reason for the SS-men to get involved with Valpo was their various applications. According to the entries in their personnel files, the SS-men made a total of 36 applications and in addition, there are entries on them in the interrogation records. Most of the applications had to do with permission to travel, for which getting approval was most unlikely before the year 1948. According to a report written in 1948, what annoyed the SS-men most were indeed the the travel permits that had been denied them – in the same year, the first travel permits were granted to the SS-men. Many also applied for certificates of not having hindrance to be able to work as seamen, but in Valpo's opinion that was not desirable. Of the ten certificates applied for, Valpo granted it for only two SS-men after addressing them. A passport application was never supported. The applications nevertheless gave Valpo an opportunity to fetch the applicant for a hearing, which enabled it to increase its general material on SS-men. Because of various applications, about ten SS-men got a hearing at Valpo, and in addition a few sent themselves a report to Valpo on their personal course of life.

Valpo also tried to find out what those Finnish men had done in Germany who had remained or even returned there after the provisional Peace Treaty was made. Investigating this lot had to do with suspicions of treason and various organizations of espionage, and as considered at present, it was clearly the most valid reason for Valpo's interest towards SS-men. According to the entries in the personnel files, nearly every third one of arrests was due to suspected treason, and also a third of the interrogations was somehow connected to investigating the suspect of treason. In the personnel files this material constituted the most in quantity, as nearly half of the men with a personnel file made on them were either interrogated or even convicted of treason. A report of the Lead of Valpo from the year 1945 depicts well the belief of the institution in the treacherousness of the SS-men. According to the report, Germans had a widespread organization of espionage in Finland, with a great deal of its members being Finnish SS-men. In the report it was believed Finns having been involved in this already before the provisional Peace Treaty was made. According to the report, men had been recruited especially among the wounded Finnish SS-men. From the interrogation reports of Valpo, it appears that the allegation held true at least partially: five Finnish SS-men, who had been wounded in Germany, had left for Germany after the provisional Peace Treaty had been made. Their explanation for their departure from the country was that they believed they could get free treatment for their injuries only in Germany. Only a part of these men ended up in Germany in Sonderkommando Nord, instead of a hospital. As the men who had left for Germany started returning to Finland from 1945 on, Valpo quickly made sure about for example the existence and nature of Sonderkommando Nord. Arrests related to this were made especially in the spring of 1946. Among the men who had been in Germany after making of the provisional Peace Treaty, there were a few who had been guilty of many breaches of the law. All of them were suspected for treason, but also for recruiting Finnish POW's of the Lapland War to Germany's side. Investigating these men took for Valpo's hearing also many other SS-men, from whom Valpo tried to get information of the actions of those men who remained in Germany. Although a few SS-men were convicted for imprisonment just for treason, also in this group belonged some playing major roles, who managed to slip away from the reach of Valpo by escaping immediately far from Finland. When one compares the numbers of all arrests made by Valpo with verdicts given, it becomes clear that only very few arrests led to further action.

The demands of the extreme political left and also partially practical reality led to the situation where a man who had served in the SS troops could no more work in the new situation for example in the Defence Forces. In August 1945 the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave an order to remove former SS-men from the service of the Defence Forces. The men who worked in the Defence Forces were either forced to resign themselves or they were sacked, and it was not desirable for the men to act in other positions of authorities or in public life. It was just the personnel file which offered a tool for Valpo to keep an account on where the SS-men worked. As the public office organization was purged, also the SS-men who had worked at Valpo were discharged, even though some of them might still act as its informants or helpers. Equally work contracts of the men in the service of the Mobile Police were discontinued. Some trade unions did not accept SS-men for their members, especially negative was the attitude of the Sailors' Union. Public apologies might improve the status of an SS-man in his trade union, but in general the SS-men themselves disliked a person who would regret his actions in the press. Purging the holders of public office is also related to suspicions of SS-men forging documents. In the forging it was a question of either obtaining false ID documents to facilitate leaving the country or of removing the SS-entries from one's military personnel file. Those prosecuted for forging the personnel files were nearly without exception in the service of the Defence Forces after the making of the provisional Peace Treaty. Valpo believed that such forgeries had been made extensively and even in an organized manner, but in the seven interrogations made it could only find out that it was mostly a question of grabbing an opportunity. Those interrogated had got an opportunity of getting new military documents without the SS entry. They had used the opportunity, as they believed that there was more harm than benefit from the SS entries in the postwar situation. Sometimes the decision had also been affected by rumours of strict punishments for SS-men, which is why a part of the SS-men also escaped abroad.

There was also plenty of material collected on the SS-men related to their escapes. About twenty men were known with certainty to have escaped abroad, mainly to Sweden, soon after the provisional Peace Treaty was made, but the majority of them returned or was returned to Finland swiftly. There were not many among them who had remained abroad permanently. Eight men having returned to Finland were arrested, suspected of unauthorised crossing of the national border, and some were interrogated already on grounds of information given about a possible intention of escaping abroad. Anyway, Valpo was interested in the used and possibly still active passageways with safe houses and persons, who would help SS-men to leave Finland. In many interrogations it was also asked who of the SS-men the interrogated knows having escaped abroad. Information was collected into archives on men who could escape abroad. It was found out in the interrogations that a shared thing for many of those who had escaped from the country was the belief in measures of revenge and punishment depending on SS background, as the Soviet Union would occupy the country. A lot of rumours about that circulated among the SS-men, and the pressure against the political right was due to add to wishes of escape.

In addition to other themes, Valpo was very interested in war-time events and possible war crimes. When in the Main Department it was heard of a Finn having shot Soviet citizens while in Germany, it was decided to report the matter also to the [Allied] Control Commission. Entries were made in the personnel files even in a case where the subject knew something of a possible war crime or someone with the same name had been guilty of the act. Also those with a negative attitude towards communists were followed: ripping an election poster of the Finnish People's Democratic League led immediately to an entry, as well as rumours, according to which a certain gang would have shot communists. Files of men who were regarded as extreme political rightists could be entered this as well as of being politically unreliable. Despite of all, among the SS-men there were a couple of such whom Valpo regarded as passive, non-political, or even the right kind of men, of whom it had no unfavourable information. On the other hand, such ”right kind of men” were only six of those about 1150 men, who returned alive from Germany to Finland. An open attitude towards Valpo or a critical attitude towards one's own background did not even mean that Valpo would have regarded these men reliable. On the contrary, such ”turning coats” mostly showed according to the entries that the man in question was always thinking of only his own interest and was already unreliable therefore.

The SS-men interested Valpo especially as a unified group and their acts as a collective. Even if Valpo heard in the interrogations many statements on the men having no more joint activity after the abolishment of their own association, but them only wanting to adapt to the society, it didn't easily believe that. In the interrogations it was stated many times that individual SS-men certainly were involved in many sorts of activities, but as a collective they would not get involved in any projects. So it seems that Valpo's beliefs of SS-men did not correspond to the truth, or at least Valpo was unsuccessful by its own entries in proving those. Valpo paid constant attention to possible secret operations, and suspected the SS-men of preparing activities jeopardising the society, but it failed to gain evidence of any widespread activity of this kind. Instead, it kept finding out all the time a number of different, at times isolated pieces of information that coud not serve as grounds for convicting all SS-men. When reasons are explored why SS-men in general got involved with Valpo, and what the entries in their documents where made about, it is seen that the most common reason was the man's SS background as such. An individual SS-man could in every case get into Valpo's books for several different reasons in addition to his background, and no single reason can explain Valpo's interest. In a group of a thousand men many kinds of people fitted in, who had been, and who still were involved in many different matters. Part of those were clearly unlawful, and a part were at the brink of lawlessness. Part of the men were suspected of for example black market trade, smuggling of people, and hiding weapons. These kinds of cases were nevertheless the own activities of single individuals, with no great union of SS-men being found behind them. Despite it all, for the contemporary SS-men having heard rumours, the feeling of all SS-men being under surveillance must certainly have been the most important. As a whole, the interest of the communist Valpo in the SS-men was based first and foremost in the opposite view on the world that the employees of that bureau represented after the purge of Valpo, compared to the SS-men. The pressure applied by Valpo as well as other communists was finally left at the level of propaganda, because from the side of the Finnish State the SS-men in Finland were never convicted as war criminals just because of their participation in the SS-troops.

[Philip S. Walker]

@Hanski

Thanks. Great work, much appreciated!

Regards, Vely

[Jagala]

Why should any Jew even want to join AKS?

Because he is a Dostoyevskyan character! Because the author wants to play with the fashionable - but so last year - central theme of otherness! Because the author is too dumb to realize that a Jewish Finn from Vaasa would be a Swedish-speaking Finn as well!

There were some Jews in RUK in the 20ies, but not in the 30ies. During the war there were some, f.ex. Max Jakobson. His brother Leo worked in the intelligence.

I would not make such a sweeping statement. (If you wish, I can comb through the rolls of graduates.) It is true that there were cases where potential candidates for reserve officer training were discriminated against because they were Jewish - or, more to the point, they weren't considered "Finnish enough" by their commanding officers - but such discrimination did not become more systematic or universal in the 30's.

During the Continuation War there was also one (IIRC) case when a Jewish "officer student" was sent back to his unit just before graduation, but I would hesitate before calling this a glaring instance of Nazi-influenced antisemitism; this took place when there was an endemic culture of harassing Swedish-speakers in one or two companies at the UK.

[Anne G,]

There were some Jews in RUK in the 20ies, but not in the 30ies. During the war there were some, f.ex. Max Jakobson. His brother Leo worked in the intelligence.

I would not make such a sweeping statement. (If you wish, I can comb through the rolls of graduates.) It is true that there were cases where potential candidates for reserve officer training were discriminated against because they were Jewish - or, more to the point, they weren't considered "Finnish enough" by their commanding officers - but such discrimination did not become more systematic or universal in the 30's.

During the Continuation War there was also one (IIRC) case when a Jewish "officer student" was sent back to his unit just before graduation, but I would hesitate before calling this a glaring instance of Nazi-influenced antisemitism; this took place when there was an endemic culture of harassing Swedish-speakers in one or two companies at the UK.

I didn't call these cases anything. In any case, there was anti-Seminitism before Nazism, based on religion, ideas of homogenous nation, fear of unknown or exonomic competion etc.

The Jews got the right to the Finnish citizenship only on 22nd December 1917, but votes in Parliament were convincing: 163-6. However, during the Civil War, they had to fear first the Reds to whom, they were bourgeois and then to the Whites to whom they were Russians. (Source Max Jakobson: Väkivallan vuosisata p. 177, in Swedish Våldets århundrade.)