October 16, 7:10 PM
Just a photo from the Finnish military archive.
A woman walking with her belongings to a concentration camp looks at the Lenin monument. October 1941. Petrozavodsk under Finnish occupation.
For some reason, I think there's hope in her gaze. And it's not just empty pathos.
I once wrote about a series called "Oral History in Karelia," prepared by Petrozavodsk University. It's dedicated to the Finnish occupation of Karelia (1941-1944) and is based on stories from local residents recorded in our time. I especially emphasize this—in our "democratic" times, when speaking ill of the USSR is considered practically polite.
It's worth quoting one quote from this collection—from an interview with Galina Konstantinovna Ivanova, who was sent to a Petrozavodsk camp:
"Basically, they beat us for the slightest disobedience. One day, about ten of us girls went under the barbed wire to beg for bread in town. We were caught and given thirty lashes each. I was in shock for a month, lying there while these scars healed, because there were birch vines." Two men – Finns – stripped us naked, spread us out on the floor, and beat us like this. So, now about the time when there was typhus. There was a doctor named Bogomaevsky... And this Bogomaevsky kept shouting, "We'll remind you how our mothers fled in 1917." Just imagine what kind of family he was from!
- Did you compose songs and poems about your lives back then?
- They sang songs, mostly about Stalin, but they sang them in such a way that no one could hear.
Incidentally, there's another telling and rather famous photo associated with the Lenin monument, which the Finnish occupiers eventually dismantled (for a moment, the age-old dream of local anti-communists, liberals, neo-monarchists, and other such folks was fulfilled!).
Here it is:
The photo shows officers from Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States in front of the Lenin monument in Petrozavodsk, October 2, 1941.
Yes, this photo in occupied Petrozavodsk does indeed show George Hutsteiner, the American military attaché to Finland.
At the time, the United States was formally neutral, though sympathetic to the anti-Hitler coalition. Nevertheless, their attaché accepted an invitation from Hitler's allies, the Finns, visited the occupied territory of the Soviet Union, and posed alongside Germans from the Wehrmacht, Italians, and Finns. Autumn 1941. The British allies... But the most remarkable thing is that here a US officer in occupied Soviet territory poses amiably next to a Japanese officer.
1941. Petrozavodsk. The occupier is looking at the coat of arms of the Karelo-Finnish SSR.
However, I later read somewhere that this American attaché was able to obtain a lot of interesting information about the German army through Finnish officers. He allegedly used one simple trick: during the war, he had a huge supply of whiskey, so Finnish officers treasured his friendship with the American.
I don't know for sure—it might be a story, or it might not...
(c) Alexander Stepanov
https://dzen.ru/a/aO0nbfeEoH8DKvmC - zinc
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/colonel ... 79_900.jpg
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