As a result of the Russian October Revolution, the Grand Duchy of Finland broke away from the Russian Empire and proclaimed its independence on 6 December 1917. A socialist coup attempt on 27 January 1918 was followed by several months of civil war in Finland between ‘Reds’ and bourgeois ‘Whites’, which ended with the surrender of the last Red troops on 5 May 1918. After the election victory of republican forces in March 1919, the parliamentary Republic of Finland was proclaimed on 21 June of the same year.
Roma in Finland
The Finnish Roma, whose total number at the time is estimated at around 4,000, were granted citizenship of the new independent republic, as were the Finnish Jews. Roma were to be found throughout Finland. The regional centres were Karelia, southern Finland and the western coastal regions. They often earned their living seasonally by working in local fields and forests, which required mobility on the one hand and the ability to build and maintain networks on the other. In the season, they would move from one farm to the next, working year by year for the same employers. The work carried out by Roma included practically the entire range of employment offered by an agrarian society, from agriculture and forestry to handicraft services, from collecting and selling glass and fabrics to musical performances and storytelling. The culture of the Karelian Roma, however, showed some Russian influences, with the men working as tinkers and tinsmiths, among other things.
But the core competence of the Finnish Roma was horse dealing. Until the middle of the 20th century, horses were still valuable and sought-after commodities in Finland. Tractors and other agricultural machinery were very expensive and at that point had rarely been seen in Finnish fields. As a result, Finland’s horse population continued to grow until the 1950s. At the same time, horse ownership and knowledge of horse handling were a matter of honour and a sign of independence for Roma men and boys.
The freedom of movement of Roma was noticeably restricted by the Finnish ‘Vagabond Act’ [‘Irtolaislaki’], which was passed by the Finnish parliament on 17 January 1936 and came into force on 1 January 1937. Its purpose was to control and regulate people who were able to work but travelled around without sufficient means of subsistence or who earned their living in a way that posed a threat to public order from the perspective of Finnish legislators. The ‘Mission for Roma’ [Romano Missio], founded in 1906 and the oldest public organisation of its kind in Finland, pointed out that the new law also made the everyday lives of Finnish Roma increasingly difficult.
Evacuation from Karelia
The Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 marked the beginning of the Finnish-Soviet ‘Winter War’, which ended with the Peace of Moscow on 12 March 1940. Although Finland was able to retain its independence, it had to make territorial concessions: In the north, it lost the Fishing Peninsula [Kalajastansaarento] to the Soviet Union. The eastern part of the municipality of Salla also became Soviet. The cession of large parts of Karelia to its eastern neighbour weighed particularly heavily. Among the 450,000 Finns who were evacuated from those areas of Karelia to other parts of Finland there were an estimated roughly 1,500 Finnish Roma.
This traumatic event was deeply engraved in the memories of the Roma affected, most of whom came from the Vyborg region [Viipuri] or the city itself. The evacuation was accompanied by the loss of social and economic networks that Karelian Roma had maintained with the majority population.
The Finnish armed forces were able to recapture occupied territory in Karelia in the so-called ‘Continuation War’ [jatkosoda], a renewed series of military clashes between Finland and the Soviet Union from 25 June 1941 to 19 September 1944 which took place on the Finnish side in close cooperation with the National Socialist war of aggression against the Soviet Union. Only the evacuated Roma were forbidden to return to their old homeland. At the same time, it proved extremely difficult for the Finnish authorities to provide housing for the Roma who had been resettled in southern Finland and the eastern Finnish districts of Savo and North Karelia [Pohjois-Karelia]. Even those Karelian Roma who found work after their evacuation were often housed with their relatives in barns and sauna buildings or even had to sleep in the open air.
Even after the end of the war in September 1944, the housing situation of the evacuated Karelian Roma remained critical. Furthermore, unlike other resettled people, they received no compensation for the loss of their property. Securing a livelihood was also a major challenge because the most important source of income, the horse trade, was no longer possible: in the spring of 1940, the horses of the Karelian Roma that were not left behind on the other side of the Finnish-Soviet demarcation line had to be sold to buy food or were confiscated by the Finnish army for military use. Some Karelian Roma had no choice but to go begging, which barely provided enough to live on, especially under the wartime restrictions.
Compulsory Labour and Labour Camps
In the summer and autumn of 1942, not only various Finnish authorities but also ordinary Finnish civilians repeatedly called for measures to be taken against ‘roaming Gypsies’ and for them to be forced into permanent employment. Urho Kekkonen (1900–1986), who later became President of Finland, also took part in the discussion. From 1940 to 1943, Kekkonen was the director of an organisation tasked with providing centralised support for the evacuees from Karelia [Siirtoväen Huollon Keskus]. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Pekka Peitsi’, Kekkonen published his contribution to the discussion in the Finnish weekly Kuvalehti in autumn 1942. The article appeared under the title ‘To work, to work, said Lapatossu’ [Työhön, työhön, sanoi Lapatossu], alluding to a Finnish film character from the 1930s and 1940s who was known for his laziness. As ‘Pekka Peitsi’, Kekkonen proposed the establishment of labour camps and saw this as a first step towards settling those Roma who had not yet found regular work or a permanent home.
In Finland, the ‘Act on Compulsory Labour in Wartime’ [Työvelvollisuuslaki] had already been passed on 16 June 1939. On 13 October 1939, the general obligation to work for all 16- to 60-year-olds was promulgated. The law was modified once again in May 1942 and could also be applied to people under the age of majority (15- to 17-year-olds) and up to 69 years old. In the following months, several labour camps were set up in Finland, to which up to 2,500 Finnish citizens were sent by the end of the war.
However, three groups would be subject to even stricter labour obligations in the future: alcoholics, prostitutes and Roma. On 29 October 1943, the Finnish government introduced a law that allowed these three groups to be sent to ‘special labour camps’ [Erikoisleirit] for a period of up to twelve months. The government’s draft law justified the explicit naming of an ethnic group by stating that ‘Gypsies’ (mustalaiset; zigenare in Swedish) ‘could not be brought together with others subject to compulsory labour because of their physical condition, their way of life and their behaviour’. The law in question came into force on 1 December 1943.
Even though smaller groups of Finnish Roma were indeed sent to closed labour camps up until the end of the war, the Ministry of Transport and Labour [Kulkulaitosten ja yleisten töiden ministeriö] ultimately failed to achieve its goal of deploying them comprehensively and systematically. An initial test run had already been undertaken before the relevant law was passed, when the labour camp in Lappajärvi, east of the coastal town of Vaasa, was opened exclusively for Roma in February 1943. The camp was intended for 39 Roma between the ages of 14 and 65. With the help of Finnish police forces, 24 Roma were brought to the camp, of whom seven managed to escape immediately. The results of their deployment, mainly in forestry work and processing for paper manufacture, were considered unsatisfactory by the camp management. In order to reduce the rate of inmates reporting sick, the management decreed that only those whose work performance corresponded to the cost of meals should receive food. The close-knit families also had a disruptive effect on everyday life in the camp. The family members had followed the male inmates to Lappajärvi and camped outside the fence in protest against the removal of their relatives. The guards refused to respond to the families’ concerts and drove them off. After only five months of operation, the Lappajärvi labour camp was closed again in June 1943 and the last twelve camp inmates were released.
A test camp for Roma in Padasjoki, north-east of the town of Hämeenlinna, was also short-lived. The labour camp was opened in May 1943 and had to be closed early in September 1943 because of low occupancy (the exact numbers are not known). The Ministry of Transport and Labour urged the local authorities to move the remaining Roma to other jobs.
Demands from the population that measures be taken against Roma if they were not in permanent employment or serving at the front did not let up, however, and the pressure on political decision-makers remained high. Despite the experience already gained in 1943 that in wartime the government did not have sufficient organisational resources to ensure that enough Roma appeared and remained in the labour camps set up for them, the responsible authorities continued to pursue the scheme of setting up separate labour camps for Roma. In addition, the Ministry of Transport and Labour stipulated that the camps should now be located at a greater distance from settlements.
After the new legislation came into force in December 1943, the Finnish authorities wanted to set up a camp for Roma in Kihniö, north of the city of Tampere and connected to the ‘Special Labour Camp 6’ there. This project was also unsuccessful; it simply failed to provide the camp with the required minimum quota of 15 inmates. In addition, the already small number of Roma already in Kihnö had been further reduced by escapes from the camp. Among those who escaped from the camp was Robert Edvard Lindberg (1907–1982), the father of Väinö Valdemar Lindberg (1938–2022).
For exactly 57 days, however, there was a special camp for Roma women in Vieremä, north of Iisalmi. The camp was opened in mid-June 1944 and was intended to accommodate 30 inmates in the first month. In all, the camp was designed to hold as many as 60 female workers. Tents were used as accommodation; only the female camp personnel was housed in a wooden building. The main problem with the Vieremä special camp, too, was that it was permanently underpopulated. At the beginning of August, when there were eight Roma remaining in the camp, it was disbanded. Inmates who were still classified as fit for work were transferred to the Pajujärvi labour camp, south of Iisalmi. After the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union on 19 September 1944, the special wartime legislation was gradually abolished, and this also meant the end of the Finnish labour camps.
Roma in the Finnish Army
In the early 2000s, the Roma War Veterans’ Memorial Committee determined that at least 300 Roma had served in the Finnish military during the war. There are no exact figures, as the Finnish army did not record the ethnic origin of its soldiers. Finnish Roma not only served in supply units, but also fought on the front line. Around 60 Finnish Roma died as soldiers the war effort
The participation of Finnish Roma in the war occupies an important place in the collective memory of the communities. The narrative of participation in the war can even be found in children’s literature by and for Roma. The mostly dark-coloured clothing style of Finnish Roma, which is still uniformly worn today, is also reminiscent of war service in the Finnish army. According to a legend that is still widespread among Finnish Roma, there were plans to deport Finnish Roma to German concentration camps, but Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867–1951), then commander-in-chief of the Finnish army, prevented this. However, there is no evidence of such a deportation plan. The legend is presumably based on Mannerheim’s decision not to hand over the Jewish citizens of Finland to the Nazi regime in the event of a request from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945)—a request which was actually made in the summer of 1942.
Culture of Remembrance
To this day, it is very important for both Finnish Roma and Finnish politics to convey the idea of a brotherhood in arms between the minority and the majority society to the public. On 17 October 2003, a memorial was erected at the Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki, not far from Marshal Mannerheim’s grave, in honour of the Finnish Roma who lost their lives in World War II. It was created by the Finnish sculptor Heikki Häiväoja (1929–2019) and depicts a wagon axle with a damaged wheel, symbolising the culture of the Finnish Roma and the attachment to their homeland. Maintaining this positive war narrative—on the part both of the Roma and of representatives of the majority society—depended on the silencing of experiences of injustice for many decades. This did not change until the 2000s, when activists such as Väinö Lindberg began to address publicly the internment of Finnish Roma in labour camps, provoking discussions in the media and among researchers.
