Finnish-German seminar examines wartime cooperation between Finnish Valpo and Gestapo

Cooperation based on close personal relations

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Personal relations between the wartime security police of Finland and Nazi Germany appear to have been very close.
      According to Oula Silvennoinen, a researcher at the Finnish National Archives, the relationship between Bruno Aaltonen, the number-two man at the Finnish State Police (Valpo), and Heinrich Müller, the head of Germany’s Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizeiamt), could be considered to have been one of friendship.
      "These personal ties became the basis for collaboration between German and Finnish officials", Silvennoinen says.
      He presented his findings on Thursday at a seminar held at the Finnish-German Institute in Berlin, which was also attended by ten other experts.
     
Aaltonen and Müller engaged in extensive correspondence, and dozens of their letters have been preserved. The letters go into family and work issues, as well as world politics.
      The good personal relations went back to the 1930s - before the war, and even before the rise to power of the Nazis.
      The seminar is part of an ongoing research project which was sparked by a study published in 2003 by Elina Sana.
      In her book, Sana found that Finland had deported about 3,000 prisoners of war and more than 100 civilians to Nazi Germany during the war. The deportees included about 70 Jews.
      The news brought reactions from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which contacted Finnish leaders.
      On the basis of a report by Professor Heikki Ylikangas, the offices of the Finnish Council of State launched a project to thoroughly investigate the issue of deportations of prisoners of war to Germany and, later, to the Soviet Union.
     
Silvennoinen says that nothing indicates that the Jews would have been sent to Germany specifically because they were Jews, but rather because of their political background - they were communists.
      German Professor Bernd Wegner pointed out, however, that Jews were separated into their own groups at camps for political prisoners.
      "What was the reason for this separation? Did the Finns take the initiative themselves, or had the instructions come from Germany?" Wegner asked.
      The Finns at the seminar did not have a comprehensive answer, but Valpo archives that have not yet been examined might shed more light on the matter.
      Silvennoinen emphasises that it is nevertheless clear that there was a certain amount of anti-Semitic sentiment brewing beneath the surface among Finnish military officers and in the police command. He mentions the frequent appearance of a derogatory expression for Jews in Valpo documents.
     
The Finnish experts pointed out that Finland did not send any of its own Jewish citizens to Nazi death camps.
      Men who were part of Finland’s small Jewish minority at the time fought in the Finnish Army against the Soviets - on the same side as the Germans.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Book details history of extradition of Soviet defectors and refugees (20.9.2005)
  President Kekkonen insisted on sending back Soviet defectors (15.9.2005)
  Finland may have deported up to 50 Jewish prisoners of war to Nazi Germany (21.11.2003)
  Government orders investigation into extradition of POWs to Germany during Continuation War (20.11.2003)
  Wiesenthal Centre wants more information on Finnish wartime deportations (19.11.2003)
  Wartime refugees made pawns in cruel diplomatic game (11.11.2003)

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