The camps were intended to hold Russian detainees for future exchange with the Finnic population from the rest of Russia.
These were primarily Russian children and elderly, as almost all of the working age male and female population were either drafted or evacuated by the Soviet government.
About 30 percent (24,000) of the remaining Russian population were confined in camps; six-thousand of them were Soviet refugees captured while they awaited transportation over Lake Onega, and 3,000 were from the southern side of the River Svir.
[2] During the following years, the Finnish authorities detained several thousand more civilians from areas with reported partisan activity, but as the releases continued the total number of detainees remained at 13,000–14,000.
According to the records the total number of deaths among the interned civilians and POWs was 4,361[3] (earlier estimates varied between 4,000 and 7,000), mostly from hunger during the spring and summer of 1942.