Link to the info the PhD student found please?

I hope one of our trusted contributors on Finland will show up and go into further detail, especially concerning the debates in Finland this discovery caused but as far as the history of the EK Finland goes, here's what Oula Silvennoinen, the PhD student, discovered:

Silvennoinen shows that the Finnish secret police Valtiollinen Poliisi (Valpo) worked in close cooperation with the German Reich Security Main Office and its predecessor organizations. While he describes several phases of cooperation, in general, the two organizations worked closely together. This was due not only through personal connections such as those of Wenrer Best and Heinrich Müller of Gestapo fame and the second in command of Valpo, Bruno Aaltonen, but also due to ideological affinities. What unite Valpo and the Nazis was anti-Communism.

The anti-communist bend of Valpo contributed according to Silvennoinen majorly to the close cooperation of Valpo and the RSHA, especially in the interrogation, selection, and execution of Soviet POWs in Finnish POW camps. Silvennoinen explains that Finland and with it, Valpo, had due to their own experience first with attempted communist revolution after WWI and after that with Soviet designs on expansion and the declaration of the Winter War, slid more and more towards, what he terms "anti-Communist democracy". Valpo was especially affected due to its institutional nature as a secret police engaged in fighting communist and agitators. Due to this ideological affinity Valpo also started more and more to warm towards Nazi anti-Semitism, which saw Jews as responsible for Bolshevism and thus participate in anti-Semitic campaigns of the Nazis.

Silvennoinen's main point concerning Valpo is that at some point the institution started to operate, especially in its collaboration with the RSHA, with only minimal or no knowledge of the democratic government as far as can be told, though he makes the point that further studies would be necessary to illuminate this particular point. Over all however, he draws a picture of a democratic state collborating with the Nazis not because of occupation but because of geopolitical and security political considerations.

Concerning the EK Finland, he shows that the unit, founded in Summer 1941 and dissolved in autumn 1942, did indeed participate in Nazi crimes by selecting up to 3000 people who had been captured by Finnish forces during the continuation war and kept in Finnish POW camps top be shot by the Nazis. He not only shows that "Jew" was a specific category for selection but also that the EK Finland did in fact participate in anti-Partisan operations of the Germans, meaning that they were involved in the killing of civilians and Jews, in the Northern Soviet Union.

The project during the course of which Silvennoinen researched his dissertation shows that although Finnish courts did indeed sentence people responsible for the unlawful killing of Soviet POWs, EK Finland did not play a role during these proceedings, which deaths with only 56 cases of unlawful deaths of POWs – a number he terms to be too small.

Silvennoinen's contribution to this volume is especially fascinating since it deals with another of Valpo's tasks: Handing over civilians to the German authorities for either deportation or killing, including political adversaries of Nazi Germany who had fled to Finland. Though this concerned "only" 135 cases it still is a chapter in Finish history that has been neglected so far and where one of the most important factors was that this happened in accordance with existing legislation.

Basically, this gives a quick summary of Silvennoinen's points as far as I am familiar with them. His thesis has been published in German but not in English as far as I am aware. I really hope someone might illuminate further on the discussions that arose from his findings within Finnish public discourse.

Edit: I also highly recommend this article going into further detail. It' title is Antero Holmila: Finland and the Holocaust: A Reassessment. from: Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The Einsatzkommando that operated in Finland during the "Continuation War", as the Finnish component of their involvement is known, was was created as part of the German POW administration. The sources that survive detailing their activities are, unfortunately, scant, which helps explain why their role was so forgotten, but Oula Silvennoinen's work is well regarded, as far as I have read.

A major underpinning of the work, and more importantly, the cooperation of Finnish authorities, came from an agreement made in the fall of 1941 wherein the Finns would turn over ethnic German POWs captured fighting with the Soviets, and in turn the Germans would turn over ethnic Finns. Once turned over to German custody, the Einsatzkommando would interrogate them, and separate them out based on racial and political criteria. Those deemed trustworthy and racially acceptable were sent on their way, while those with some "defect" or other were held further. In total, 521 prisoners were handed over categorized as political officers or Communists, of which 47 were Jewish. Unfortunately records do not exist for just how many of them were eventually killed by the Einsatzkommando, but eyewitness testimony puts the numbers in the hundreds.

Now, to be sure, the Finns were not in the dark about the possible fate of those prisoners being turned over to German custody. Again there is a paucity of evidence as the Finns certainly tried to keep such matters quiet both during and after the war, but it is not completely gone. In one particularly damning statement, Colonel Sulo Malm, who was in charge of Finnish POW arrangements, had mentioned to the military attaché in Stockholm of “the handing over of Russian politruks and [political] commissars to the Germans in Salla, where they were killed by the Germans."

Now, as for how these revelations played out once published in 2008, well... it had little impact in Finland, where it seems most people preferred to ignore it and not let the new evidence cloud the general view of Finnish participation in the war - "co-belligerents, not allies!" as I many a Finn would likely make sure to stress. Although it predates the revelations, this excerpt from President Tarja Halonen's 2005 address is a fair illustration of the view that I reference:

In late summer 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union agreed on a division of Europe into spheres of influence. The following winter Finland had to fight off an attack by the Red Army in order to preserve her independence and avoid being occupied by the Soviet Union. We had to do this alone, without significant outside help. Five years later, in the summer of 1944, we again managed to stop the Red Army’s attempts to conquer Finland. Our country was not occupied at any stage, during or a er the war. We lost part of our territory, but we achieved a defensive victory.

With the Finnish academic community, certainly, it had some impact, and helped to solidify the view that most Finnish historians hold which runs counter to the "neo-patriotic master narrative of war" seen above, but calls outside the academy for reevaluation of the public consciousness of the war are few, and fall on deaf ears. But even what impact there has been hasn't always been as full-throated as one might hope. While, as noted, the publication did have influence with war historians, while other countries - at least those that even took notice - focused on the revelations of complicity in genocide - the headline in Sweden's Dagens Nyheter was simply “Finland participated in the Holocaust", that aspect seems to have had little play even within the academy, and instead Finnish historians prefered to concentrate on it as strong evidence against the 'separate war thesis.'

Kinnunen, Tiina, and Ville Kivimäki. Finland in World War II: history, memory, interpretations. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Specifically relied on three essays:

• Limits of Intentionality: Soviet Prisoners-of-War and Civilian Internees in Finnish Custody by Oula Silvennoinen, who is the historian that originally published on the topic.

• Shifting Images of “Our Wars”: Finnish Memory Culture of World War II by Tiina Kinnunen & Markku Jokisipilä

• Varieties of Silence: Collective Memory of the Holocaust in Finland by Antero Holmila

The new research is part of the ongoing project by the Finnish government to unearth more information about prisoner transfers between the two nations.

To our current knowledge, between October 1941 and September 1942 Finland sent a total of 520 Soviet prisoners to German POW camps through Einsatzkommando Finnland. Amongst them were some Jews, but their exact number is not known. After Finns gave their prisoners to the Germans, it is presumed that they were all promptly executed.

Besides Einsatzkommando Finnland there were roughly a dozen Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary in Finland who were turned over to Germans.

Right now, it is speculated that the reason for transferring prisoners to Germans was most likely political pressure from Nazi command. There were Jewish soldiers, even officers, serving in the Finnish armed forces during their co-operation with Nazi Germany. Some were even awarded the Iron Cross, but all recipients refused them.

Such a sore spot demanded some compensation and, having no other choice, Finland handed over prisoners and refugees instead of their serving citizens. Some researches have stated that had they not, shipments of grain would've stopped coming from Germany, resulting in starvation in many parts of the country.

It is a shameful part of Finnish history and because of that, it has only recently resurfaced. New data from archives has shed some new light on the matter.

Sources are in Finnish, sorry about that.

• Sana, Elina: Luovutetut: Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle. Helsinki: WSOY, 2003. ISBN 951-0-27975-7.
• Heikki Ylikangas: Heikki Ylikankaan selvitys valtioneuvoston kanslialle. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslian julkaisusarja, 2004. ISBN 952-5354-47-4.

If this is true why do so few people know about it? It seems that post war we in the west devoted a great deal of resources to trying people for crimes related to the holocaust. Did we just forget about Finland?

How is that possible? Not a single member of this group survived to tell the story? Nor did any of the government officials in control of them? No Holocaust survivors ever reported their existence? Nobody was responsible for designing their uniforms, building and maintaining their POW camps, etc? No records were kept? Not a single witness?

Einsatzkommando Finnland was a German paramilitary unit that had links to Finnish secret police and followed the Finnish army during the Continuation War,

Slight clarification may be in order here: the EK Finnland operated in Finnish Lapland, which was under German command during the Continuation War (1941-44), and "followed" German troops (in quotation marks, because the German army wasn't able to make much headway in the northern wilderness).

Finnish army in the Continuation War fought in Finland proper during the war.

What happened after the war to the Einsatzkommando Finland? Did they just disperse with the information disappearing?

Is there any knowledge on how many people Einsatzkommando Finnland actually killed?

So, this doesn't really cover the actual topic of the dissertation, but is there a reason why this only came to light in 2008? I was under the impression something like this would have been well studied