Political Prisoners and Concentration Camps during the WW II in Finland - little known facts of Finland and its human rights violations - Erkki Salomaa

From: SecQrilious (waeg_at_latinmail.com)
Date: 01/28/05 

Date: 28 Jan 2005 01:20:54 -0800

Political Prisoners and Concentration Camps during the WW II in
Finland - little known facts of Finland and its human rights
violations - Erkki Salomaa

Little has been known about concentration camps that were organized in
Finland during the WW II. Of course, there were camps for Soviet war
prisoners, but then there were those German-style camps for Finnish
political dissidents and prisoners. Often these prisoners were
leftists and followed the teachings of Karl Marx. These concentration
camps were similar to those in Poland such as Auschwitz and others,
where people were forced to do labor and they were not allowed to read
books, write any paper notes or do practically anything else but some
manual labor.

I recently found an interesting free book "Asenteita ja Ihanteita"
"Attitudes and Ideals" by Erkki Salomaa published in 1967 (on the year
of my birth). On the page 188 he describes in detail some of the
conditions in these war time concentration camps and how they lived in
these areas that were surrounded by three barbed wire fences and how
there was shortage of everything. There were people such as Captain
Kartano and Lieutenant Eerola who acted as chiefs and guards of these
camps and behaved as little fuhrers applying those teaching methods
from the German 3rd Reich. These dissidents and political prisoners
lived in some barracks and often there were over 100 men living in
one. There were at least five different concentration camps for
Finnish political dissidents during the WW II: Koylio, Kangasjarvi,
Saamajarvi, Kovero and Karvia.

by

DI Markku J. Saarelainen
The Spiked Octapoint Society (The SOS)
Varkaus, Finland, The European Union

P.S. It was interesting that I found this free book on the day of the
memorial for those Auschwitz victims on 1/27/2005. Maybe there should
be the day for remembering those who died in these Finnish political
labor concentration camps. But of course, the government of Finland
does not want this, because it might be too embarrassing.

P.S. It is also interesting that the writer of those book, Erkki
Salomaa, was the chairman of the Builders and Construction Workers
Union (Suomen Rakennustyolaisten Liitto) in Finland and my father is
the member of this union currently as he has been for decades. It is a
good book.