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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Petrozavodsk: October 1941 |
| 2025-10-17 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. Text taken from the dzen.ru page of Aleksandr Stepanov Go to the page at the link to view the referred to photos. [ColonelCassad] Just a photo from the military archive of Finland. A woman walking with her treasure to the concentration camp looks at the monument to Lenin. October 1941. Petrozavodsk under Finnish occupation. For some reason, it seems to me that there is hope in her eyes. And this is not empty pathos. Once I wrote about the publication "Oral History in Karelia", prepared by Petrozavodsk University. It is dedicated to the Finnish occupation of Karelia (1941-1944) and is based on the stories of local residents recorded in our time. I would like to emphasize that in our "democratic" time, talking badly about the USSR is considered almost a good tone. It is appropriate to cite one quote from this collection — from an interview with Galina Konstantinovna Ivanova, who ended up in the Petrozavodsk camp: "In general, they were beaten for the slightest disobedience. Once we, with the girls, there were probably ten people, went under the wire to beg for bread in the garden. We were caught and given thirty canes each. I was in shock for a month, lying down while these scars healed, because there were birch buds. Two men - Finns - stripped us naked, spread us on the floor and beat us like that. Yes, now about the time when there was typhus. There was such a doctor, Bogomaevsky... And this Bogomaevsky kept shouting: "We will remind you how our mothers fled in 1917." In general, imagine what kind of family he was from!"- At that time, did you compose any songs, poems about your life? - The songs were mostly about Stalin, but they were sung so that no one could hear." By the way, with the monument to Lenin, which the Finnish occupiers eventually dismantled (for a moment, the age-old dream of local anti-communists, liberals, neo-monarchists and other similar public was fulfilled!), there is another revealing and quite famous photo. Here it is: The photo shows officers from Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the USA in front of the monument to Lenin in Petrozavodsk, October 2, 1941. Yes, the American military attaché in Finland, George Hutsteiner, is indeed present in this photo in occupied Petrozavodsk. At that time, the USA was a formally neutral country, although it sympathized with the anti-Hitler coalition. Nevertheless, their attaché accepts the invitation of Hitler's allies, the Finns, visits the occupied territory of the Soviet Union and poses with Germans from the Wehrmacht, Italians and Finns. Autumn of 1941. Allies of the British... But the most remarkable thing is that here a US officer in the occupied Soviet territory is posing friendly next to a Japanese officer. The occupier looks at the coat of arms of the Karelo-Finnish SSR. However, later I read somewhere that this American attache was able to obtain a lot of interesting information about the German army through Finnish officers. As if he used one simple trick - in the conditions of the war, he had huge reserves of whiskey, so the Finnish officers valued their friendship with the American very much. I don't know this for sure - maybe it's a fable, maybe not... (c) Alexander Stepanov |
| Posted by:badanov |