A second home left behind in Skåne
The war and a shortage of food took Elsa and Eila Rapeli from Kokkola to Sweden for four years
By Pauliina Grönholm in St. Olof
In 1942, on June 9th, sisters Elsa and Eila Rapeli stood side by side in the yard of a hotel in Sweden. Five-year-old Elsa squeezed the hand of her three-year-old little sister Eila tightly.
Gunni Nilsson felt a pang in her heart: they are so small and thin.
A group of twenty children had arrived on the Eastern shores of Skåne in Southern Sweden two weeks earlier. Most of the children had already settled in foster homes, but Elsa and Eila remained.
The Nilssons had arrived with their neighbours, who had come to pick up a war child. Upon seeing the girls, they immediately decided to take the other sister to live with them.
"They simply could not be separated from each other", explains 92-year-old Gunni Nilsson, over sixty years later.
In addition to Eila, the dairy farming Nilsson family had one older daughter. Elsa moved in next door, joining the Eklund family, and their son and daughter.
"The beginning was not easy, as the girls did not speak a word of Swedish", Gunni Nilsson recalls.
Elsa declined to eat, and cried constantly. Eila was in the habit of running around after a bald local farmer, who resembled the sisters’ father.
Their departure for Sweden had been absolutely necessary. Their father, Armas Rapeli, and their eldest brother Pentti were both at the front. Their mother Hellin Rapeli was caring for five children alone. There was a constant shortage of food.
Before they left Kokkola, their mother dressed the girls as carefully as possible, so that they would look presentable. What did their mother think at the time, the sisters do not know to this day. The subject was never discussed.
The letter that Elsa’s foster-father received soon after Elsa arrived in Sweden speaks about the feelings of their mother: "I was happy to hear that you have taken my daughter to live in your home, because I have been a bit concerned for my children. I hope that Elsa remembers to be a good girl like we discussed at home when she left", Hellin Rapeli wrote.
Little by little the home-sickness evaporated and the sisters became accustomed to life in Sweden, including Sunday school, the Lucia-festival at Christmas time, and camping trips to the seaside.
"We were aware the entire time that we were in Sweden only temporarily. Neither one of us imagined that we would stay there permanently", Eila Rapeli explains.
The departure from the home in Sweden in 1946 felt difficult nevertheless. Friends, classmates, and a second family were left behind. Neither girl spoke Finnish anymore.
In the spring, slightly before Eila left, a second daughter was born in the Nilsson family.
"We would have wanted to adopt Eila, and our neighbours would have adopted Elsa, but it was not allowed", Gunni Nilsson recalls.
Their home in Kokkola felt small at first to the sisters.
However, they received packages from Skåne at regular intervals. They contained lovely clothes that made the girls’ Finnish classmates envious.
"Was Mother sometimes secretly jealous of the fact that we had a second home in Sweden? I do not know, because she kept her private thoughts strictly to herself", Elsa Rapeli, nowadays named Elsa Hellsten, muses.
Gunni Nilsson regrets that the foster-mothers never had the chance to meet the girls’ real mother. It is difficult to part with your daughter, she understands that well. "Eila felt like my own daughter to me too."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 31.10.2004
More on this subject:
 Over 70,000 children sent to Sweden to avoid war sixty years ago
PAULIINA GRÖNHOLM / Helsingin Sanomat
pauliina.gronholm@hs.fi
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