A tale from times to never revisit again - my mother making it at no odds

This book is about the times at the Second World War end and what happened just before the ending and up to later years with respect to the relation between Finland and the Soviet Union. There was a treaty made up, the YYA-treaty (Friendship, Cooperation and mutual Assistance) that would become a heavy burden for Finland all up to 1992. The book takes up a couple of extradition errands among them my own mother that was jailed 14 months in Finland risking being handed over to the Soviet as a traitor and executed. Unfortunately the book has not so far been translated from Finnish.

Down below follows the English translation of my mother’s records taken from pages 131-136 of the book.

In March 1948 the Finnish secret police (VALPO) is receiving information about a dental technician student seeking authorization to travel to Sweden to continue her studies. The secret police is on alert as they are aware about a coming defense agreement between Finland and the Soviet Union (the YYA) that will regulate the exchange of POWs amongst other matters.

The secret police had incriminating information on Helena Gummerus past. According to them, during the war she had first served with the Soviet intelligence forces, and then the German army employed in partisans exploration missions. It seemed, therefore, to be the worst kind of traitor, possibly even a peace treaty article 9, paragraph 1a - referring to a war criminals. Gummerus was arrested on her way to work Wednesday 03/17/1948.

Helena Koivistoinen was born on 1921/08/08 in Leningrad. She had done her 3 years of Finnish primary school and then being moved to a Russian school. In 1936, she started to study to become primary school teacher. After graduating in 1939, she had earned the degree of a Russian elementary school teacher in Leningrad. In 1940, Helena had moved to the city itself, and completed her matriculation, after which she began studying to become a dentist. War broke out and Helena Koivistoinen was enrolled in the service of the Red Cross. The Germans arrived to the gates of Leningrad and besieged the city – Helena was then working as a Red Cross nurse at the front-lines caring for wounded soldiers.

In March 1942 she had been asked to move the Soviet military intelligence service, which Helena Koivistoinen did agree to. She was taken to a Leningrad suburb house where there were other reconnaissance mission recruits. There Helena Koivistoinen was given decent food, so that she would be able to “eat herself up” before getting into real action. When the Finnish secret police questioned Helena Koivistoinen she assured them that she had taken the job only to get the special food rations to survive, she only weighted 45 kilos and to get out of the besieged city, where there was nothing but starvation and death.

Helena Koivistoinen had been told that she trained for reconnaissance mission behind the German's lines. When she was physically fit enough and trained she was transported to the airport and dropped at night by parachute behind the lines. After walking in the woods the whole night and the following day Helena Koivistoinen fell asleep at the foot of a tree. Upon waking in the morning 7 April 1942 she noticed that her feet were frost-bitten. She had difficulty walking but she managed to reach a village. There Helena Koivistoinen had gone to the first house asking for something to drink. Servants of the house said that they were prohibited helping unknown people. Just minutes later a German military patrol arrived taking custody of Helena Koivistoinen.

She had been locked up in a room, and just after the patrol leader had left, the soldier left on guard outside threatened to shoot the partisan girl he thought she was. The next day Helena Koivistoinen had been taken in for questioning at the nearby German headquarters. She had told the interrogators truthfully about her parachute mission and about her orders, the task to obtain information on the German positions and troops, after which she was to return back on foot to report. Helena Koivistoinen told during questioning that she never had any intention of completing the mission that she only wanted to have food to survive and to get away from Leningrad. Helena Koivistoinen had been detained for about a month, after which she enrolled in the German army. Her duties were to serve as a maid and to do laundry at the German headquarters, but also occasionally serve as an interpreter when the Germans interrogated Russian prisoners of war. A few times she had been involved in partisan scouting expeditions, meaning when the Germans were hunting for partisans in neighboring villages. Helena Koivistoinen was sent to villages to gather intelligence on whether the partisans were present or had been visiting. Locals were generally very careful about talking about partisans, but if she did observe that something was going on, she reported back to the Germans, who "would take appropriate measures, and when detained persons being interrogated keeping her outside not to compromise her."

In the spring of 1943 when the Germans were losing out to the Soviet army and started pulling back Helena Koivistoinen was given the opportunity to move to Finland, a gesture that she had been serving well and that the Germans wanted to save her life. A self-written biography, a recommendation letter and a formal application for immigration made up with the help from the German headquarters was sent to Finland and the State police, who replied approving Helena’s move. On September 25, 1943 Helena Koivistoinen entered the ship bringing her to Hanko. From there

Helena Koivistoinen had to go to Helsinki for an interview with the Finnish secret police - VALPO. At her interview she was told that the Germans had granted her the Iron cross medal, second order for bravery. On October 2, the day she was released she was sent to the Lohja refugee camp, through which she later acquired her first Finnish employment as a dental technician by a local dentist.

Helena Koivistoinen transferred from Lohja to work in Helsinki. She had received a dental technician student's place at Dental Laboratory Oy. In 1946 Helena Koivistoinen and Bengt Georg Gummerus got married. The family’s daughter Margaret Daisy Peggy was born 1947/04/07. Finland’s secret polices view of Helena Gummerus was that she had to be returned to the Soviet Union, according to the Paris Peace Treaty article 9.

Bengt Gummerus wrote to the Foreign Ministry and to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. He felt it was inconceivable that the secret police could hold a Finnish citizen in custody, who his wife unquestionably was. Gummerus argued that the ban on Soviet citizens of the country to get married with a foreigner had come into force on 02.15.1947, and that they had already been married at the time, so the invocation of Soviet law was illegal. Gummerus wondered why the government's Committee on Foreign Affairs only postponed and postponed decision-making. In his opinion, the arrest and keeping in prison of a Finnish citizen was an insult to all the western nation’s legal systems, and in addition the human factor: "Separating the mother and her new-born child for a year, keeping a mother in detention for months without any reason is making war against all humanity". This is what my brave father wrote.

The Foreign ministry did not dare to make a decision one way or the other. Helena Gummerus was the issue of the Government's Committee on Foreign Affairs meeting on 1948/10/16. All the other prisoners of war at the time were detained but as far as "traitors" like Helena Gummerus, it was already decided to dispose of. In her “case”, the matter was left open. The Soviet embassy was informed of the decision. It was reported that "the USSR, the 'Alliance Surrender Requirement also applies to Helena Gummerus-Koivistoista, which in 1946 did receive Finnish citizenship rights by marriage to a Finnish citizen. In this relation, her isolation from her husband and small child will without doubt upset the public opinion; the government hopes that she will be allowed to stay in Finland. The Soviet Union did not react. Foreign Minister Enckell still sent a personal letter to the Soviet ambassador, but got no reply.

In February 1949 Helena Gummerus turned to the Ministry of the Interior making a request that the police would interrogate her again, because in the secret police interrogation protocol there were had been mistakes. She claimed that while being interrogated she had been experiencing high fever and had not been able to follow closely the course of the interrogation, still conceding that her signing of the protocol was correct.

A new round of secret police hearings were granted and when it came to the question how she was approached by the Soviet military intelligence service she stated that it was not never clear what was asked from her to change from working for the Red Cross, just to something else granted better food rations. She also denied that she had ever was given the knowledge about to engage in a military intelligence mission, she said she was only given food and a parachute and dropped from a plane. She also denied that after being detained by the Germans that her arrest lasted for several weeks, she claimed that she was released after 2 days in custody being on her own to do laundry and cleaning. She adamantly denied that she had been an interpreter involved in prisoner of war interrogations and that she taken part in partisan hunting. But at the end all that Helena Gummerus is saying at these new hearings does contradict the biography and recommendations by the German military at her application to immigrate to Finland.

In April 1949, Bengt Gummerus wrote again for the MFA. His wife had now been thirteen months behind bars, but there is still no solution to the family’s problem in sight. The Soviet Union had not responded to any government proposal, from which it was hoped that Helena Gummerus would receive a permanent stay in Finland although that a settlement of the situation of a Soviet traitor would be of interest for Finland’s eastern neighbor. However, Gummerus did not understand why the opinion of the Soviet Union was ever asked, after all, his wife was a Finnish national. According to Bengt, Helena’s health had dramatically deteriorated. He could no longer help but cry, he thought that the end was near for his wife. So he asked the Ministry to finally do something.

The Foreign Ministry dispatched another prison doctor for an opinion, which supported Bengt’s information presented in the “Gummerus letter”. On May 10, 1949, the State Council's Foreign Affairs Committee decided to release Helena Gummerus after nearly fourteen months of detention. Her condition was the only fact making it improbable for her to leave the country.

Epilogue

Shortly after my mother was released from prison the whole salvage operation planned since long was put into operation. As my father had influential connections with the government he had got information that his wife was going to be arrested again as soon as the whole situation had calmed down. There was a lot going on abroad concerning my mother’s case, she was written about in Europe and the USA as one of those early “human rights” cases, long before Amnesty International. We all know what happens when then “chatter” lowers or ends; the sinister forces never drop a matter of interest. My father wondered why Finland would bother to inform the Soviet about my mother, keepsakes of course, exchange of commodities, in this case high valued prisoners of war or other political values. This is the “modus operandi” of any nation even the USA, no matter how pure it is.

As soon as my mother was free, a van carried them northwards towards to the northern border between Sweden and Finland with stops at various friendly cottages of my father’s family; they crossed the frozen river between Finnish Tornio and Swedish Haparanda by foot one cold winter night with only the clothes they were wearing while carrying their daughter.

Was my mother a traitor? Definitely not from a Finnish viewpoint, a tiny country allied with Germany against a salvage enemy, the Soviet Union.  I see her as a survivor, a hero, one of the younger ones finding a way towards life and the living. The tales I heard her telling me especially of her encounter with the Germans is of a highly sophisticated culture and nation something so far from what she had been used to growing up in the Soviet Union, with big parts of her family deported and executed from being ethnically incompatible with a bolshevist philosophy. Just before accepting the offer to get food and a possibility to save her getting out of Leningrad, a killing field, she had found her pregnant sister dying on the streets, managing to save her and her baby by getting “them” to a hospital. Her sister’s husband had died from starvation just a few days before.

Was my mother a traitor from a Soviet’s point of view, hardly, as she as a mere skeleton was taken advantage of to perform a deadly mission for a few slices of bread?

I have a mother to be proud of and she is still alive. I am doing my best to care for her as she did for me many years ago. She is my greatest hero.

What you have been reading here is based on to almost 100% Finnish secret police protocols and government memorandums and I can assure you that they correspond well with the my personal interviews with my mother, but, in between these lines there is much more, so much more.