“I better get it started. Kate, I have to go out to work again. If I prep it now, can you pop it in the oven at five, so it will be done when Jari and his family get here?”
“Sure,” she says. “What happened to your hand?”
“I slipped on the ice, and rock salt in the snow cut it. No big deal.”
“What is karjalanpaisti?” Mary asks me.
“Something good. You’ll see.”
“How’s your headache?” Kate asks.
“Not bad.”
My head is splitting. I go to the bedroom and get a painkiller, so I can make it through the evening without my migraine singing songs that tell me to do bad things, and put dinner together. When I’m done, I go to the living room, sit down next to Kate and read the newspaper. I come across an article about the harsh treatment of Jews in Finland, and Helsinki in particular, during the nineteenth century. I think of the word Pasi Tervomaa used. Confluence. The persecution of Jews is suddenly everywhere I look.
The article says Jews were confined to living in designated areas. Jews were denied passports. Jews were forbidden to conduct many types of business, including, of course, moneylending. The list of citizens’ rights denied Jews is long. Because of these oppressive laws, a quarter of Finnish Jews either left Finland on their own or were deported.
This runs contrary to my perception of the Finnish treatment of Jews. Our country takes pride in its wartime record in that regard. Common wisdom holds that we protected Jews. During the war, they fought alongside other Finnish troops. Strangely enough, this means that Jews also fought alongside Germans. Finnish soldiers even operated a field synagogue.
Heinrich Himmler pushed for the deportation of our Jews to concentration camps. Our legendary general Gustaf Mannerheim replied, “While Jews serve in my army, I will not allow their deportation.”
Mannerheim’s hero status is such that he’s viewed as Finland’s Messiah. His military prowess and adroit political abilities allowed him to play the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany off one another, and ensured that neither overran us. On Independence Day in 1944, Mannerheim visited the Jewish synagogue in Helsinki and took part in a commemorative service for the Jewish soldiers who had died in the Winter and Continuation Wars, and presented the Jewish community with a medal. These things are common knowledge.
An SS stalag, manned in part by Finns, where Jews were sent by the Finnish government with full knowledge that they would be murdered, is antithetical to history as written. We love Jews. We hate Jews. Which is it? I call Pasi Tervomaa and explain my confusion and misgivings. “Did Mannerheim know about the slaughter in 309?” I ask.
“Let me put it this way. Mannerheim had the means to know if he chose to, and as such, he bore responsibility. If the Stalag 309 case had been brought before a tribunal at the end of the war, under the Nuremberg principles, Mannerheim would have been prosecuted as accessory to murder. That said, a lot of papers hit his desk, and he was an old man. He could have overlooked something. And the responsibility wasn’t his alone. The president and the interior minister at the time, Risto Ryti and Toivo Horelli, probably also gave their indirect blessings to Finnish collusion in 309 and the events that occurred there.”
“I remember that President Ryti and some ministers were convicted in war responsibility trials. Is there any connection?”
“No. Ryti and the others were sentenced in a show trial as a sop to the Soviets. They were charged with influencing Finland to wage war against the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in 1941, and for preventing peace during the Continuation War. By the way, it’s rumored that Mannerheim wasn’t charged because Stalin intervened. He liked Mannerheim. Or maybe Stalin didn’t actually like anyone, but found Mannerheim useful.”
“This is all demoralizing,” I say.