In the 20th century, Finland experienced two waves of camp terror that claimed tens of thousands of lives. First, in 1918, the victorious White Finns imprisoned 80,000 of their compatriots behind barbed wire; a quarter-century later, Nazi Germany established around 200 camps for prisoners of war in Finnish Lapland. Both stories remained in the shadows for decades, overshadowed by other tragedies of the century.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Finland’s geopolitical situation resembles that of Poland – squeezed between great powers, it has for centuries served as a buffer and battleground for foreign interests. For over a hundred years, it was part of the Russian Empire and endured brutal Russification at the hands of the tsarist authorities. When Russia plunged into revolutionary chaos in 1917, the Finns seized their chance for independence.
But freedom came with deep social divisions. Just weeks after declaring independence, the country was engulfed in civil war. On one side stood the Whites – monarchists supported by Germany; on the other, the Reds – socialists and communists, backed by the young Soviet Russia. The conflict lasted less than four months, but its consequences were terrifying.
In the spring of 1918, the White forces under General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim claimed decisive victory. What followed has gone down in history as one of the most ruthless acts of political revenge in Europe of the time. Mannerheim, later a national hero and symbol of Finnish resistance against the Soviets, acquired nicknames that his official biographies prefer to ignore – he was called the Executioner and the Butcher.
The victors established concentration camps, detaining about 80,000 people suspected of leftist sympathies. This number is even more striking when we consider that Finland at the time had only three million inhabitants. Almost one in every 40 citizens was locked up. Eight thousand prisoners were executed, including 364 women and 58 children. The terror spared no one.
Starvation Behind Barbed Wire
The conditions in the camps defied all standards of humane treatment. In just four months, 11,000 inmates died from hunger, disease, and exhaustion. Survivor accounts describe scenes almost too disturbing to read. Prisoners fought over any piece of vegetation, desperately trying to ward off the hunger ravaging their bodies.
One inmate, Viljo Sohkanen, left a harrowing testimony: a fellow prisoner, upon receiving a sausage in a parcel, devoured it whole and then vomited.
Others immediately threw themselves at the vomit, fighting for pieces of undigested food. Paradoxically, more Red Finns died due to White terror than in the battlefield fighting of the civil war itself.
Nazi Camps in the North
A quarter-century later, Finland once again became the site of mass detainment—this time at the initiative of Nazi Germany. During World War II, about 200 camps for prisoners of war operated in Finnish Lapland – as recent archeological research shows, twice as many as previously believed. Archeologists from the universities of Helsinki and Oulu have been conducting excavations in these areas since 2009, systematically uncovering more sites of imprisonment.
The camps mainly held Soviet prisoners of war and people assigned to forced labor. Prisoners cut down forests and built roads to serve the needs of the German army. Historians estimate that about 30,000 people may have passed through this Lapland camp system. Thousands died from hunger and exhaustion, their graves still waiting to be discovered.
When the Wehrmacht withdrew to Norway in 1944, the Germans systematically destroyed the camps, trying to erase the evidence of their crimes. For decades, knowledge about the scale of the Nazi presence in Lapland remained fragmentary. Only modern archaeological research now allows us to reconstruct a fuller picture of the events. Among the findings are canned food tins, dishware, pieces of uniforms, and remains of clothing.
The most poignant testimony to the prisoners’ presence, however, are fragments of shoes handmade by the inmates themselves. These improvised shoes, cobbled together from whatever materials were available, tell more about life behind the wires than any document could. The victims’ remains still rest in Finnish soil, waiting for a dignified burial and remembrance by future generations.
Autor
Margot Cleverly
Margot's journey into women's history began with a box of forgotten letters in a Cambridge archive – suffragettes whose voices had been silenced for over a century. Since then, she's been on a mission to uncover the stories history overlooked.
What she writes about: Queens who ruled from the shadows. Scientists whose male colleagues took credit. Revolutionaries who risked everything. But also ordinary women – those who survived wars, raised families through upheaval, and shaped their communities in ways no one bothered to record.
Margot turns historical figures into real people. She writes with warmth and detail, making centuries-old stories feel surprisingly relevant. Rigorous research meets accessible storytelling – no dusty academic jargon, just compelling narratives backed by solid facts.
When she's not writing, you'll find her in regional archives, collecting oral histories, or visiting sites connected to the women she writes about.