Last June when I visited the Museum of
Jewish Heritage in New York City, I couldn't help but notice the
praise for Denmark and the resistance there how 8000 Jews were saved
and sent to neutral Sweden by sea.
And where was Finland in all this? It
gives me great discomfort to learn about the actions of this
country during WWII. No matter how you try to twist and turn it,
Finland got blood on its hands.
Even though Finland remained
democratically-ruled and was never invaded, for a moment it fought
alongside Nazi Germany. The Jews who had Finnish citizenship were
never subject to the mass persecution and were protected by the
government, but unlike our noble neighbors, eight Jewish refugees
with no Finnish passport were sent back to death. And this was eight
too many.
Sure, Sweden, Norway and Denmark didn't
have the Red Army breathing down their neck and trying to rip them
from their independence. Some try to justify the actions of Finland
by saying that the enemy of our enemy was our friend during desperate
times. Until things turned sour with this ”friend” of course, and
they burned our Lapland.
The Finnish Prime Minister made an
official apology somewhat 50 years later. In 1971, a small group of
Finnish Christians founded Yad HaShmona in Israel, naming it in the
memory of these eight unfortunate people. All good gestures, but it quite
doesn't change what happened.
If anyone raises this topic at a dinner
table in Israel with me, I've got nothing to defend Finland with.
I would bow my head in shame and sadness - saying sorry wouldn't make
a difference (this could be called the Finnish guilt?). The treatment
these eight refugees received pains me. It doesn't sound like the Finland I
was born to. God forbid similar events ever happening again, but if
it did, I hope my country would act otherwise.
Yes you are right, sometimes 8 is too much but when you look at the broader picture and examine history closer you can see that in comparison to the world Finland is in a good place.
ReplyDeleteBecause Back then not a lot of countries where willing to give asylum, and ofcourse there were some who didn't do enough to rescue the fleeing jews: the incidents concerns SS St. Louis in 1939.
You can comfort the fact that unlike all of the countries who where under German occupation and collaborated. I am talking about countries such as Hungry, Ukraine, Croatia and even France and The Netherlands where people cooperated with the nazis (in quite a big extent if you look on the percentage of volunteer among the general population), but you didn't and no Finnish jew suffered, it shows that unlike other countries the Finns didn't share the German/ European ideology - and that's the biggest difference.