Finnish Civil War prison camps

Prisoners of the Suomenlinna fortress in Helsinki

Finnish Civil War prison camps were operated by the White Finns to hold prisoners of war during and after the Finnish Civil War in 1918.

Around 80,000 captured Red Guards and their families, including 4,700 women and 1,500 children, were held in prisoner of war camps across Finland.[1][2][3] They were composed of 13 main camps and more than 60 smaller sub-camps operated by the White Army during the summer of 1918. Conditions were very poor and camps suffered from high mortality rates – a total of 12,000 to 14,000 prisoners died in captivity due to malnutrition, disease and execution. The Finnish government took control of the camps in September with most prisoners being released by late 1918 and the camps were officially closed in 1921. The camps affected the minds of many Finnish people much more deeply than the war itself and influenced post-war politics in Finland.[1] Conditions at the camps were totally ignored for decades by the White interpretation of the history of the Civil War, with the Finnish government paying reparations to former prisoners in 1973.[4]

  1. ^ a b Red Prisoners MANNERHEIM – War of Independence. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  2. ^ The Victims of the Finnish Civil War Archived 2015-02-14 at the Wayback Machine University of Tampere. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  3. ^ "Story of children lost in Finland's civil war". Finland Times. 29 March 2014. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  4. ^ Tepora & Roselius, pp. 116–117.