Abstract
Although the end of the Cold War enabled the investigation of suppressed questions concerning collaboration, resistance, and the impact of Nazism, until very recently, a general belief has prevailed that Finland was almost entirely free of antisemitism during World War II and before, and for this reason is exceptional.1 Historian Dan Stone duly points out that although the inquiry into a national mythology is “a potentially dangerous development breeding resentment and reopening old wounds, it also permits a more thoroughgoing critical treatment of the past than has hitherto been possible.”2 For Stone, antisemitism has been among the most neglected topics in Holocaust Studies because historians have taken it for granted that without a history of antisemitism the Holocaust would not have taken place.3 Yet as historian Klas-Göran Karlsson points out, “the old Cold War structures have been replaced by new or new-cum-old patterns of identity, developments and allegiances,” especially in Eastern Europe, where national and nationalist ideas confront demands for an international accounting for the past.4 Indeed, as social psychologist Florin Lobont, who has researched antisemitism and Holocaust denial in the former Soviet Bloc, explains, “Due to the deeply selective character of collective memory, and the distressing character of a negative past affecting the shaky self-image and self-identity of majority national communities, a proposed vision of the past that obliterates negative aspects is often eagerly welcomed.”5 Many of these countries see themselves as victims of Soviet imperialism, and so both admitting their participation in the Holocaust or taking the Holocaust as a unique, archetypal genocide would undermine their own self-victimization.
People in Finland like to claim that antisemitism never existed here.
Tapani Harviainen, 2004
“Never mix with a yid, if you can be among Christians,” that is my motto.
Urho Kekkonen, 1932 (President of Finland 1956–82)
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Notes
The epigraphs are from the Orientalist Tapani Harviainen, “Juutalainen historia ja länsimainen juutalaiskuva” [Jewish history and the western image of the Jew], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 102, no. 2 (2004): 175
Urho Kekkonen, Rakas Häiskä: Urho ja Sylvi Kekkosen kirjeenvaihtoa vuosilta 1924–1945 [Dear Häiskä: Urho and Sylvi Kekkonen’s correspondence from the years 1924–1945], ed. Ari Uino (Helsinki: Otava, 1997), 185.
Dan Stone, introduction to The Historiography of the Holocaust, ed. Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 1.
Stone, introduction, 2; see also Walter Laqueur, The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 35.
Klas-Göran Karlsson, introduction to The Holocaust on Post-War Battlefields: Genocide as Historical Culture, eds. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Malmö: Sekel, 2006), 11–12.
See also Thomas C. Fox, “The Holocaust under Communism,” in The Historiography of the Holocaust, ed. Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 420.
Florin Lobont, “Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” in The Historiography of the Holocaust, ed. Dan Stone (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 450.
Oula Silvennoinen, “Still Under Examination: Coming to Terms with Finland’s Alliance with Nazi Germany,” Yad Vashem Studies 37, no. 2 (2009): 74.
Juha Sihvola, “Juutalaisuutta ja antisemitismiä koskevaa asiantuntemusta ei ollut riittävästi edustettuna” [There was not enough expertise on Judaism and antisemitism], in Hyljättiin outouden vuoksi: Israel-Jakob Schur ja suomalainen tiede-yhteisö [Rejected due to strangeness: Israel-Jakob Schur and the Finnish scholarly community], ed. Simo Muir and Ilona Salomaa (Helsinki: Suomen Itämainen Seura, 2009), 211.
Elina Suominen [Sana], Kuolemanlaiva s/s Hohenhörn: Juutalaispakolaisten kohtalo Suomessa [Death ship SS Hohenhörn: The fate of the Jewish refugees in Finland] (Porvoo: WSOY, 1979), 67–73.
Torvinen further declares, “There was hardly any Jew-hatred.” Taimi Torvinen, Kadimah: Suomen juutalaisten historia [Kadimah: The history of Finland’s Jews] (Helsinki: Otava, 1989), 118.
Santeri Jacobsson, Taistelu ihmis-oikeuksista: Yhteiskunnallis-historiallinen tutkimus Ruotsin ja Suomen juutalaiskysy-myksen vaiheista [The struggle for human rights: A socio-historical study of the history of the Jewish question in Sweden and Finland] (Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 1951).
Hannu Rautkallio, Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland’s Jews, trans. Paul Sjöblom (New York: Holocaust Library, 1987)
Eero Kuparinen, Aleksandriasta Auschwitziin: Antisemitismin pitkä historia [From Alexandria to Auschwitz: The long history of antisemitism] (Jyväskylä: Atena, 1999), 270–7
Matti Myllykoski and Svante Lundgren, Murhatun Jumalan varjo: Antisemitismi kristin-uskon historiassa [Shadow of the murdered God: Antisemitism in the history of Christianity] (Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2005), 359–66.
Allan Megill proposes three orientations in history-writing: one position sees “history-writing as having the function of binding together and affirming the community, group, Volk, state, nation, religion, political commitment, and so on out of which it arises. The opposing position sees history as having a primarily critical and negating function with regard to the community out of which it arises and the past it studies. Between a historiography that affirms and historiography that engages in critique, there is a third, didactic position that seeks to guide the Volk, or the flock in the direction of a better future.” Alan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 27, 47.
Megill, Historical Knowledge, 47. In 1987, eminent historian Mauno Jokipii commented on the German-Finnish military collaboration, claiming that it was “as clean as warfare can possibly be.” Mauno Jokipii, Jatkosodan synty: Tutkimuksia Saksan ja Suomen sotilaallisesta yhteistyöstä 1940–41 [The origin of the Continuation War: Studies on Finland’s and Germany’s military cooperation 1940–41] (Helsinki: Otava, 1987), 398–9
see also Oula Silvennoinen, Salaiset aseveljet: Suomen ja Saksan turvallisuuspoliisiyhteistyö 1933–1944 [Secret brothers-in-arms: The cooperation of the Finnish and German security police 1933–1944] (Helsinki: Otava, 2008), 329–30.
Oula Silvennoinen, Geheime Waffenbrüderschaft: Die sicherheitspolizeitli-che Zusammenarbeit zwischen Finnland und Deutschland 1933–1944, trans. Klaus Reichel and Kaija Reichel (Darmstadt: WBG, 2010).
Petri J. Raivo, “Oblivion without Guilt: The Holocaust and the Memories of the Second World War in Finland,” in Gender, Place, and Memory in the Modern Jewish Experience: Re-placing Ourselves, ed. Judith Tydor Baumel and Tova Cohen (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), 111.
For instance, in his article “Holocaust under Communism,” Fox uses the words “ignoring,” “minimizing,” “sidelining,” “distorting,” “understating,” and “underplaying” when describing the historiography regarding antisemitism and the Holocaust. Michael Shafir uses in his book Between Denial and “Comparative Trivialization” the classificatory scheme: “outright Holocaust negationism,” “deflective negationism,” (including “deflecting guilt onto the Nazis,” “deflecting guilt to the ‘fringe,’” and “deflecting guilt to the Jews”), “selective negationism,” and “comparative trivialization” of the Holocaust; see Michael Shafir, Between Denial and “Comparative Trivialization”: Holocaust Negationism in Post-Communist East Central Europe (Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 2002), accessed November 7, 2011, http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/shafir19.htm.
Hannu Rautkallio, Holokaustilta pelastetut [Spared from the Holocaust] (Helsinki: WSOY, 2004), 136.
Henrik Meinander, Suomi 1944: Sota, yhteiskunta, tunnemaisema, trans. Paula Autio (Helsinki: Siltala, 2009).
Zdzislaw Mach, “Poland’s National Memory of the Holocaust and Its Identity in an Expanded Europe,” in The Holocaust: Voices of Scholars, ed. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs (Cracow: Austeria, 2009), 63, 69.
Oula Silvennoinen, “En krönika över fortsättningskrigets minne och glömska” [A chronicle of the memory and oblivion of the Continuation War], Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 95, no. 2 (2010): 341.
Henrik Meinander, Finland 1944: Krig, samhälle, känslolandskap (Helsinki: Söderströms, 2009).
Antti Kujala, Vankisurmat: Neuvostosotavankien laittomat ampumiset jatkoso-dassa [Execution of the prisoners: Illegal shootings of the Soviet POWs in the Continuation War] (Helsinki: WSOY, 2008).
See also Sari Näre and Jenni Kirves, eds., Ruma sota: Talvi-ja jatkosodan vaiettu historia [The ugly war: The silenced history of the Winter and Continuation Wars] (Helsinki: Johnny Kniga, 2008).
On the definition of cultural Judeophobia, see Saul Friedländer, The Years of Persecution: Nazi Germany & the Jews 1933–1939 (London: Phoenix, 2007), 56, 347.
Torvinen, Kadimah, 32–79; Jacobsson, Taistelu ihmisoikeuksista; Vesa Vares, “Meurman, Agathon (1826–1909),” in Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu [The National Biography of Finland, Web version], Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: SKS, 1997–2011), accessed September 13, 2011, http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/4569/.
Eero Kuparinen, Antisemitismin musta kirja: Juutalaisvainojen pitkä historia [The black book of antisemitism: The long history of Jewish persecution] (Jyväskylä: Atena, 2008), 278
Oula Silvennoinen, “Suomalaisen antisemitismin luonteesta 1930-luvulla” [On the nature of Finnish antisemitism in the 1930s], in Hyljättiin outouden vuoksi: Israel-Jakob Schur ja suomalainen tiedeyhteisö, ed. Simo Muir and Ilona Salomaa (Helsinki: Suomen Itämainen Seura, 2009), 215.
Simo Muir, “Israel-Jakob Schurin väitöskirjan hylkääminen Helsingin yliopistossa 1937: Antisemitismiä, kielikiistaa ja henkilöintrigejä” [The rejection of IsraelJakob Schur’s PhD dissertation at the University of Helsinki, 1937: Antisemitism, the Language Struggle, and personal intrigues], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 105, no. 4 (2007): 474–5.
Laura Ekholm and Simo Muir, “Isänmaasuhteen rakentaminen ‘kansallisten’ nimien avulla: Helsingin juutalaisessa seurakunnassa tehdyt sukunimien vaih-dot 1933–1944” [Building a relationship to the fatherland with “national” names: Family name changes in the Jewish community of Helsinki 1933–1944], Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 109, no. 1 (2011): 31.
Ida Suolahti, “Prisoners of War Transfers During the Continuation War,” in Prisoners of War Deaths and People Handed Over to Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939–55: A Research Report of the Finnish National Archives, ed. Lars Westerlund (Helsinki: National Archives, 2008), 153–5.
Simo Muir, “Anti-Semitism in the Finnish Academe: Rejection of Israel-Jakob Schur’s PhD Dissertation at the University of Helsinki (1937) and Åbo Akademi University (1938),” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 2 (2009): 150–3
Simo Muir and Ilona Salomaa, eds., Hyljättiin outouden vuoksi: Israel-Jakob Schur ja suomalainen tiedeyhteisö (Helsinki: Suomen Itämainen Seura, 2009).
Pauli M. K. Niemelä, Antti Filemon Puukko: Suomalainen Vanhan testamentin tut-kija ja tulkitsija [Antti Filemon Puukko: A Finnish Old Testament researcher and exegete], Suomen eksegeettisen seuran julkaisuja 74 (Helsinki: Suomen eksegeet-tinen seura, 1999).
Heikki Räisänen, “Puukko, Antti Filemon (1875–1954),” in Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu, Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: SKS, 1997–2011), accessed March 14, 2011, http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/3026/.
Gerhard Kittel, Die Judenfrage (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1933).
see Alan E. Steinweis, Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), especially 68.
The Luther Academy was a corporation of Lutheran churches in Europe and received funding, for instance, from the German Ministry of Propaganda. Andreas Åkerlund, “Åke Ohlmarks in the Third Reich: A Scientific Career between Adaptation, Cooperation and Ignorance,” in The Study of Religion Under the Impact of Fascism, ed. Horst Junginger (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 560, 553–70.
see Heikki Räisänen, “Gyllenberg, Rafael (1893–1982),” in Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu, Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: SKS, 1997–2011), accessed March 14, 2011, http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/3021/.
Some outspoken antisemites opposed National-Socialism; see Fredrik Lindström, “The First Victim? Austrian Historical Culture and the Memory of the Holocaust,” in The Holocaust on Post-War Battlefields: Genocide as Historical Culture, eds. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (Malmö: Sekel, 2006), 147.
Ilona Salomaa, “1930-luvun asiantuntijuuden turhuus: Westermarckilainen koulukunta ja suomalaisen uskontotieteen rooli ja merkitys Israel-Jakob Schurin tapauksessa” [The vanity of expertise in the 1930s: The Westermarckian school and the role and significance of the Finnish study of religions in the case of Israel-Jakob Schur], in Hyljättiin outouden vuoksi: Israel-Jakob Schur ja suomalainen tiedeyhteisö, ed. Simo Muir and Ilona Salomaa (Helsinki: Suomen Itämainen Seura, 2009), 112–13.
The proceedings of the seminar were published in 2009; Salomaa and Muir, Hyljättiin outouden vuoksi. See also Hana Worthen’s review article “Israel Jakob Schur and the Finnish Scholarly Community,” East European Jewish Affairs 40, no. 3 (2010): 299–304.
Rautkallio, Holokaustilta pelastetut, 150–1. Rautkallio refers to their article: William B. Cohen and Jörgen Svensson, “Finland and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9, no. 1 (1995): 70–92.
Hana Worthen, “Tip of the Iceberg? Finland and the Holocaust,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 1 (2009): 122.
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Muir, S. (2013). Modes of Displacement: Ignoring, Understating, and Denying Antisemitism in Finnish Historiography. In: Muir, S., Worthen, H. (eds) Finland’s Holocaust. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302656_3
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