KARELIAN EVACUEES FEATURED IN BERLIN EXHIBITION

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland
Aug. 23, 2006

Karelians shown alongside Armenians and Jews

The 20th Century was a time when millions of people were forced
to leave their homes in mass deportations and other transfers of
population linked with wars and major conflicts.

Examples include the mass deportation and genocide of Armenians by
Turkey in 1915-1916, leading to the death of an estimated 1.5 million
people. In the 1920s Greece and Turkey "exchanged" population: a total
of 2.6 million had to leave their homes, and as many as 700,000 are
believed to have lost their lives.

The most extreme example was naturally the industrial-scale genocide
of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany.

The horrors of displacement are on display at an exhibition that opened
in Berlin recently, called Erzwungene Wege – Flucht und Vertreibung
in Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts ("Coerced Paths – Escape and Expulsion
in Europe in the 20th Century").

One of the stories detailed in the exhibition is exceptional.

The fate of Finland’s Karelians in the Second World War was more
humane, and their escape route was no death-march. Nevertheless, more
than 400,000 Karelians had to leave their homes during the war years,
and in 1944 the displacement became permanent, when the territories
were annexed to the Soviet Union. The tragedy directly affected more
than ten per cent of the Finnish population.

"The fate of the Karelians is interesting in many respects", says Dr.
Doris Muller-Toovey, who is responsible for the Karelian section in
the exhibition.

"The people left of their own free will. What is also exceptional is
that it all happened not once but twice."

When studying the events, which were quite new to her,
Dr. Muller-Toovey was also impressed at how successful Finland was
at settling the Karelian population in other parts of Finland.

The exhibition places the Karelian displacement story within a European
framework in a completely new way. It is also exceptional that any
interest is shown in the Karelian issue in Central Europe.

"It is not known that anything like this would have happened previously
in exhibition activities", says Mervi Piipponen, cultural secretary
of the Karelian Association.

Similar thoughts were expressed at the South Karelia Museum, the
Carelicum Travel and Cultural Centre in Joensuu, and the Äijala
Cultural Centre in Kangasala, all of which lent objects for the
exhibition.

The exhibition has sparked heavy controversy in Germany. The reason
for the political dispute is that the exhibition highlights the
expulsions of more than 14 million Germans from territory that is now
part of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which took place
in the late stages of the Second World War and immediately after the
fighting ended.

evacuees+featured+in+Berlin+exhibition+/1135221168 840

–Boundary_(ID_QeFrUCXAfwQB5DUDEfgPpw)–