Finnish Civil War prison camps

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.

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.

[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.

[2][7] Before the battle, captured Reds had mostly been shot by the Whites, but after the collapse of Tampere the number of prisoners became too large to continue the executions.

[8] In late April, as White victory was imminent, thousands of Red refugees (including fighters, officials, sympathizers and their families) headed east towards the border with Soviet Russia.

[9] Women and children were mainly released, but 10,900 male refugees and Red Guard members were moved to the Hennala prison camp.

[5] Mass executions finally ceased by Mannerheim's order and the Political Offence Court was established in late May to process the Red prisoners.

The most infamous camp was Tammisaari in Ekenäs which, during the summer, an average of 30 prisoners died every day, making the total number of deceased up to 3,000 with a mortality rate of 34%.

These shortages were particularly bad in the camps since there was no central administration for delivering supplies and prisoners were not allowed to receive deliveries from their families before the end of August.

Viljo Sohkanen, who was held at the Suomenlinna prison camp, described the conditions:[2] ″Prisoners got a half a plate of soup, muddy water with a shred of cabbage, and some fat during the days and a small piece of bread with a stinky brown herring during the evenings.

Others immediately started eating the thrown-up sausage.″General hygiene was abysmal and there were frequent outbreaks of various fatal diseases such as relapsing fever, pneumonia, dysentery and smallpox.

Linder wrote a letter to the Swedish language newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet saying ″the Red Madness has turned into a White Terror as people are dropping dead like flies″.

[14] Conditions at the camps were becoming increasingly common knowledge and difficult to justify as time passed after the end of the Civil War.

The Finnish government, who were struggling to process the large number of cases against prisoners, were under pressure to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.