Language:
English
Year of publication:
2009
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
23,3 (2009) 413-440
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Based on recent research, calls for a reassessment of the relationship between Finland, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. The debate concerns Finnish collaboration with the Nazis, participation in the murder of POWs (including communists and Jews), POW and refugee extradition, Finnish antisemitism, and the survival of all Finnish Jews. Focuses on the sensitive issue of the handing over of eight Jewish refugees to the Germans in November 1942, and argues that the polarization that has prevailed between Hannu Rautallio's "structuralist" and Willian B. Cohen and Jörgen Svensson's "intentionalist" interpretations has obfuscated a better appreciation of the dilemmas Finland faced during the war. Both structural and intentional factors led to the deportations. The structuralist context evolved in part during the visit of the head of the Finnish State Police (Valpo), Arno Anthoni, to Berlin in April 1942 and an oral agreement between him and Heinrich Müller on "alien deportations" to Germany. However, although the possibility of transfer existed, the intention was not to hand over all foreign Jews. A purely intentionalist approach is contradicted by the nature of the Finnish-German relationship, the role of Fnnish Jewry in Finnish society, and the low level of antisemitism. However, although the handover was originally unplanned, as events unfolded - including the activities of the German Jewish refugee Walter Cohen and bureaucratic battles that ensued in the Cabinet - intention became more perceptible, especially on the part of Valpo and its head, and the Interior Minister, Toivo Horelli.
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