Russian POW returns to Finnish camp after 65 years
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By Pyry Lapintie
At the age of 89, St. Petersburg resident Samuil Tirkeltaub, who was held as a POW at the Finnish Prisoner of War Camp no. 1 in Köyliö, revisited the place on Monday for the first time in more than 65 years.
He stands silently at the camp’s cemetery, at a monument for the Russian soldiers who died there. Next to it is a plaque with the names of prisoners who died there - the ones whose names are known.
Tirkeltaub says that he found the names of some of the fellow prisoners that he knew.
According to a Finnish study, 121 of the 3,600 prisoners who were held at the camp died there.
Tirkeltaub believes that the real number has to be much bigger; he remembers that on some days 50 prisoners would die of hunger, and more ditches were constantly being dug for new bodies.
He attributes his own survival to the Finnish enthusiasm for sports. He weighed just 40 kilos when he got a transfer to a work camp in Rovaniemi, where a sport pitch was being prepared for an athletic event between Finland and Germany.
The Köyliö Society, which recently published a book on the prisoners of war that had been kept there, also arranged the possibility for Tirkeltaub and his wife Margereta to visit the minimum security prison that still operates in the community.
“Is this still a prison? I thought that this was a museum”, Tirkeltaub says as he tours the facility.
He gets a chance to exchange a few words with the 70 inmates. Their looks indicate respect when they hear who the visitor is.
He seems dumbfounded when he is shown a cell of the minimum security prison.
The inmates have their own keys, showers, and the windows, which do not have bars in them, open up to a well-kept yard. The shelves have television sets, digital decoders, and stereos.
Tirkeltaub shakes his head with disbelief. “This is like a hotel. In Russia, if you’re in prison, you’re in prison. There are no TVs”, he says.
Tirkeltaub feels no bitterness toward the Finns. “I am better friends with many Finns now than with Russians.”
He says that when he arrived in Finland, he got the same kind of reception as Putin gets.
“All of the residents gave us gifts. I understood it to be a kind of apology.”
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.10.2009
PYRY LAPINTIE / Helsingin Sanomat
pyry.lapintie@hs.fi
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| 20.10.2009 - THIS WEEK |
 Russian POW returns to Finnish camp after 65 years
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