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Finland and the Holocaust: The Rescue of Finland's Jews

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This intriguing book details the fate of Finland's Jews during the time that Finland was an ally of Nazi Germany. Finland's fate can be contrasted with that of another of Germany's allies--Horthy's Hungary. When Horthy balked at sending the Hungarian Jews to the death camps, German forces invaded Hungary and largely completed the job. This book details how Finland's Jews escaped destruction (or, more accurately, how they were never seriously targeted for destruction).

Rautkallio traces the history of both Finland's Jews and the local influence of the Nazis. He notes that Finnish Jews were afraid that admission of a large number of Jewish refugees into Finland would incite anti-Semitism, which up to now had been almost absent. (p. 75). If accurate, this suggests that the virtual absence of anti-Semitism in the Nordic countries owed not to some unique Nordic virtue of tolerance, but to the smallness of the numbers of Jews living there.

Rautkallio contends that certain Finnish actions have been misrepresented as anti-Jewish measures when in fact they were not: "There has been an attempt to blow up a single incident involving the handling over to the German police of a few fugitive Jews accused of criminal offenses into a symbol of Jewish persecution by the Finns." (p. 131)...The extradition of these Jewish refugees had no racial basis, although attempts were made to represent it as such during the postwar threshing out of the affair..." (p. 237).

Although not written with this in mind, this book has major implications relative to the supposed uniqueness of the Holocaust. Proponents of this view (e. g., Yehuda Bauer, Steven T. Katz, etc.) contend that the Holocaust was unique because this was the first and only time in history that an ENTIRE group was targeted for physical extermination. What's more, it is alleged that, unlike its treatment of other groups, German polices would not allow practical matters to stand in the way of its central goal of destroying as many Jews as possible.

Rautkallio does not discuss how Germany could have invaded Finland had the latter refused to turn over its Jews for extermination. But it is easy to see how close Finland was to German-occupied Estonia. In fact, Estonian men fled to Finland in order to avoid military service or forced labor (p. 140). In the absence of an actual invasion, Germany still was in a position to apply severe pressure to Finland, had it sought to do so. After all, Finland was firmly locked in Germany's military, political, and economic sphere of influence (p. 1, 130).

Finland's Jews were mentioned in the Wannsee protocol (p. 47, 150). However, Rautkallio also writes: "There is nothing to indicate that Adolf Eichmann had at any stage actually planned to deal Finnish Jews death blows of the kind that before long began to be aimed at the Jews residing in Germany's other allies." (p. 179). Actions speak louder than words. Germany did NOT cause, by one means or another, the killing of Finland's Jews, even though it could easily have done so. The facts are unmistakable: "The top SS command, which was responsible for the execution of Nazi racial policies, had left the Jews of Finland alone, even though they had been mentioned in connection with the overall `Final Solution'...And Adolf Eichmann, who had been assigned the task of overseeing the `Final Solution', never in fact got to touch a hair on the head of a single Finnish Jew." (pp. 258-259). This raises serious doubts about the reality and earnestness of the German commitment to kill ALL European Jews, as demanded by Holocaust-uniqueness contentions.

Rautkallio stresses that Finland was a very valuable ally to Germany, and so: "In the prevailing situation, the top Nazis could ill afford to endanger relations with Finland by making an issue of their racial policy." (p. 254). So it is furthermore obvious that, contrary to Holocaust-uniqueness contentions, practical matters very much DID get in the way of killing as many Jews as possible.

The case against Holocaust uniqueness may be even stronger. Rautkallio contends that, not only did the Germans make no move to kill Finland's Jews, but they did not even pressure the Finns VERBALLY to turn their Jews over for extermination! He suggests that such pressure is actually a myth, one which originated from Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler's masseur and confidant (p. 257). Kersten had asserted that Heinrich Himmler, during his visit to Finland, tried to pressure the Finnish government to deport its Jews. However, Kersten has repeatedly shown himself to be unreliable as a witness (p. 168, 256). In a caption to the photograph of Himmler visiting Helsinki (located after p. 114), Rautkallio concludes that: "Contrary to persistent rumors, there is no documentary proof that Himmler put pressure on the Finns to deport their Jews." Furthermore, Rautkallio cites Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, who also concluded that Germany never pressured Finland to turn over her Jews (p. 178).

Perhaps ironically, Rautkallio reflects on the fact that Finns have taken credit for resisting a verbal German pressure that in fact never existed: "Ultimately, what decided the issue was the circumstance that no move was ever actually made by Germany to include the Jews of Finland in the `Final Solution'. This undoubtedly amounted to a significant exception to the measures envisioned by Hitler and Himmler for the fulfillment of racial ideology. The fact that the Nazis left Finland out of their Endlosung grand design has had the effect to some extent of deflating postwar Finnish boasts, sometimes smacking of complacency, that Finnish resistance to Nazi pressure prevented the handing over to Germany of Jewish refugees--and even native Finnish Jews as well!" (p. 259).

mr rautkallio's book the rescue of the finnish jews is an impressive body of information. it describes the angst of the finns to gain freedom from the soviets. to avoid total destruction the finns sought assistance from nazi germany. this of course meant trouble for the small jewish population. rautkallio describes in immense detail how the jews were kept out of hitlers reach

Although the topic is well-researched and reasoned, the somewhat poor translation from the original Finnish text and repetitive passages detract from this already very dry book. However, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the overall subject and kudos must go to Dr. Rautkallio for having documented this commonly ignored area of Jewish history. Read the book with high-lighter in hand and you can return to the salient parts!