Ei enää kirjeitä Puolasta (No more letters from Poland)
| Date | 1st August 2016 |
|---|---|
| URL | http://www.bonnierrights.fi/books/no-more-letters-from-poland-fatal-years-for-a-jewish-family/ |
| Format | Printed book |
Ei enää kirjeitä Puolasta. Erään juutalaissuvun kohtalonvuodet (No More Letters from Poland. Fatal Years for a Jewish Family), by Simo Muir
The story of the Blaugrund family amid the horrors of World War II opens a unique perspective on the holocaust and its effects in Finland.
During World War II, Bernhard Blaugrund received letters from relatives in the Polish ghettos at his offices in downtown Helsinki. The last of the letters arrived in January 1943. The letters and their gradual trickle to a stop tell a unique story about the annihilation of Poland’s Jews.
While the Finnish members of the Blaugrund family were living life as equals with their fellow citizens, their relatives in Germany-occupied Poland were stripped of their human rights. They ended up in concentration and death camps; only a handful survived. Based on original interviews and never-before-published archival sources, No More Letters from Poland draws a comprehensive picture of the holocaust and, above all, how precarious life felt for Finnish Jews in a country that fought alongside Nazi Germany.
Topics seen and experienced by members of the Blaugrund family
- Life and origin of Finnish Jews
- Jewish life in prewar Poland, customs, antisemitism
- Jewish refugees in Finland and their relief
- Occupation and gettoization in Poland
- Finnish Jews in the Finnish army during winter war (1939-1940)
- Correspondence between ghettos in Poland and Helsinki
- Life in Lodz Ghetto, ghetto elite and forced labour in factories
- Finnish Jews during Continuation war (1941-44) and as brothers-in-arms with Nazi Germany
- Siege of Leningrad
- Finnish POW camps and labour camps
- Liquidation of ghettos, Chelmno, Treblinka and Auschwitz
- Murder of Jewish POWs in Lapland by Einsatzkommando Finnland
- Deportation of Jewish refugees from Finland to Auschwitz
- German labour camps
- Hiding in Warsaw under false papers
- Transfer of Jewish refugees in Finland to Sweden
- Rescue plan of Finnish Jews to Sweden 1944
- Liquidation of Lodz ghetto
- Moscow Armistice between Finland and USSR
- Death marches, escape
- Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Swedish DP camps
- Reunion of surviving family members
- Finnish Adoption schemes of surviving Jewish children
- Kielce pogrom (murder of Blaugrund family member)
- Finnish Jews assisting Polish Jews’ legal emigration
- Starting new life after the Holocaust in Finland
- Court case against chief of Finnish Security Police Court of honour against a Lodz Ghetto leader in Helsinki
