“Your inquiry is an interesting confluence,” Pasi says. “I’m also researching a so-called war criminal. Lauri Torni.”
I know about Torni. He fought for Finland, then for Germany in the Waffen-SS, and finally for the Americans. He changed his name to Larry A. Thorn, joined the Green Berets and died in a helicopter crash in Laos in 1965, while on a covert mission.
We go inside. A custodian type meets us and checks our IDs. He has the files Pasi requested ready for us and escorts us to a jail cell in the basement. It only contains a wooden table with a reading lamp on it, and a couple of chairs. The custodian sets our files on the table and leaves.
I think of the Lubyanka again. “Did Valpo torture enemies of the state in this cell?” I ask.
“No,” Pasi says, “they did that in the interrogation rooms.”
“I was only half serious. I can’t picture Finnish police torturing anyone.”
“Don’t be naive. Of course they did. In general, not as brutally as the Nazis or Soviets, but interrogations sometimes employed physical coercion. Beatings. Hitting the soles of the feet with nightsticks. Things like that.”
We sit. He hands me files on Arvid and Ukki. “Let’s take a look,” he says.
The dossiers are thin. I open Arvid’s first. Pasi and I read it together. The photo clipped to it is nearly seventy years old, but it’s Arvid. The top sheet gives vital stats.
DOB: January 3, 1920. Arvid enters Valpo service in 1938, at age eighteen, is stationed in Helsinki. I wonder how he got into the security police at such a young age. By 1940, he receives two citations for distinction in service. Reasons not stated.
He’s fluent in German and Russian. He leaves Valpo service for a time to go to the front during the Winter War. He’s wounded in action. After recovery, he goes back to work for Valpo, this time up north, in the Rovaniemi station. In 1941, he’s attached to Einsatzkommando Finnland. The sheet states only Salla. No mention of a stalag. In January 1943, he’s again stationed in Helsinki. He’s fired by Valpo in June 1945. I ask Pasi why this might have been.
“Anti-Communist White Valpo was replaced by Red Valpo, Communists and leftist radicals. The new security police were by and large men that the old security police once investigated. Out with the old and in with the new.”
Arvid’s sheet details his commendations and medals. The Mannerheim Cross-the medal of honor. The Commemorative Medal of the Winter War. The Badge for Wounded Veterans. The Nordfront Crosses-awarded by Germany. The Order of the Cross of Liberty. The Order of the White Rose of Finland. The Order of the Lion of Finland. The list goes on.
The last page of the dossier is a letter of recommendation dated August 12, 1938. The writer is Bruno Aaltonen, deputy director of Valpo. He requests that Arvid be accepted into Valpo service forthwith.
“Arvid Lahtinen was connected to people high up in the intelligence community,” Pasi says. “Aaltonen took such matters seriously and wouldn’t have taken Lahtinen into Valpo unless he had the highest confidence that he was detective material.”
I open Ukki’s dossier. In his photo, he’s nineteen years old. Ukki was a year older, but other than that, their files are nearly identical. Ukki and Arvid entered Valpo service at the same time, worked in the same duty stations during the same time frames, won almost all the same medals. Everything. The last page is a recommendation from Bruno Aaltonen that Toivo Kivipuro be taken into the security police as a detective. The date: August 12, 1938. It’s like reading about twin brothers.
“Arvid lied,” I say. “He told me he didn’t know my grandpa.”
“Given that they were so young, and Aaltonen wrote the letters on the same day, there must be a connection between your family and Arvid’s. My guess is that Aaltonen knew their fathers, and together, they asked Aaltonen for their appointments. That also might explain their assignment to Einsatzkommando Finnland.”