The History of the Jewish Community of Viipuri by Jukka Hartikainen

Translated from Finnish by Coxspeak

N.B. This is a rough translation, not originally intended for publication. A published translation would be more polished.

The History of the Jewish Community of Viipuri

I Introduction pp. 51-53.


In the Holocaust of the Second World War a great many large and small Jewish communities were destroyed around Europe. Especially in Eastern Europe the extent of the destruction was enormous: the vital shtetl culture, and its language, Yiddish, almost completely disappeared. As is well known, an estimated 6 million European Jews lost their lives. Alongside such a catastrophe, merely losing one's home district may seem a problem of slightly second-rate importance, at least if you look at it from outside.
Two minor episodes during the Second World War, the Winter and Continuation Wars, may be incidents forgotten by the outside world, but for the Finns who lost their homes and property it is something that they still painfully remember. As much as 12% of the total population of Finland was evacuated. Of this number the 250 people of the Jewish community of Viipuri was a small group, nevertheless they formed almost 30% of the entire Jewish population of Finland. The Jewish community of Viipuri was one of the Jewish communities destroyed during the Second World War and because of it.
As was the case with most Finns who were forced to leave Viipuri, the
Jews of Viipuri saw the city and its atmosphere as something unique in
Finnish terms. Similarly, when we get to know the life of the Jewish
community of Viipuri, we find certain special characteristics that are
different from the other Jewish communities of Finland. The community that was evacuated disintegrated and its members settled mainly in Helsinki and Turku, but a few founded a congregation in Tampere, where there had never been a Jewish congregation before.
This article concerns the story of the small but lively Jewish community
of Viipuri. Those who are interested in the Jewish communities of Finland, that is, the congregations of Helsinki, Turku and Tampere, can always turn to the archives of the respective congregations. This option is not open to those interested in the Jews of Viipuri, because the destruction caused by the Winter and Continuation Wars includes not only the disintegration of the Jewish community of Viipuri but also the disappearance of the entire archives of the congregation. Those who evacuated Viipuri just before the Winter War were not allowed to take with them, nor could they have taken with them, more than the bare essentials, such as clothes and food. They just had to leave their homes and property. Under these circumstances it is obvious that the archives of one of the smallest congregations in Viipuri did not fare any better. The last president of the Jewish congregation of Viipuri, Samuel Maslovat, visited Viipuri in September 1941 on official business, after the reconquest of the city by the Finnish army at the end of August, and tried to find out the fate of the archives of the congregation.
The provincial administrative board had already had time to collect together the collections of all the libraries in Viipuri, and there Maslovat found the library of the the Jewish community. He took all the Yiddish letters in the collection into safekeeping and brought them to Helsinki. Next Maslovat tried to gain entrance to the Jewish congregational centre on Linnankatu (Castle Street) 23, the so-called Ahdus house, in order to see the office, but the apartment was locked. He went to every possible office, but he was not allowed into the building. He tried for 2 days but in vain. Maslovat suspects that he went to Viipuri a little too soon, perhaps 2 months later conditions would have stabilized sufficiently for the enterprise to have succeeded.
All the archives from the areas ceded to Russia that survived the war and have been discovered are recorded in the provincial archives of Mikkeli, but the archives of the Jewish congregation of Viipuri are not there either. Thus anyone who wants to find out about the life and activities of the Jews of Viipuri from the times of the formation of the community. sometime after the mid-19th century, up till the outbreak of the Winter War at the end of November 1939, must gather sparse crumbs of information dispersed in the preserved documents, literature, old newpaper articles and even telephone directories, mainly in the National Archives of Finland. For example, books on the history of the city of Viipuri contain almost nothing of substance about the Jewish community. Different books repeat the year the congregation
was founded, and especially the location of the synagogue, the latter partly incorrectly.
Apart from relying on written sources I have interviewed former members of the congregation. Collecting information by means of interviews is now a matter of urgency, since the average age of the Jews of Viipuri who were adults when the Winter War broke out and who still have their own memories and impressions from the 1920s and '30s is very high. Of the interviewees, the key position is occupied by Samuel Maslovat (born in Viipuri 1904, died 1998), the last president of the congregation, son of the longest-serving rabbi of Viipuri. He also gave me access to an indispensable source of information, the only known surviving trial issue of the Yiddish newspaper Ahdus, which was intended to appear regularly. Samuel Maslovat was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper.
The formation of the Jewish community of Viipuri began, if not earlier,
when a Jewish tinsmith called Jacob Weikam (died 5.2.1848), who had lived in Hamina in 1799 but had moved to Viipuri from Dünaberg, settled in the city together with his family in 1815, being granted a permanent residence permit in 1832. In the following decades many soldiers who had served in the Russian army in Finland remained permanently in the country as soon as they had the opportunity. Especially the desire of Jewish soldiers or "cantonists" to remain in the country was understandable, since many of them had begun their 25-year-long military service as children, having been abducted from their parents at the age of ten or even younger. Naturally for many their bonds to their home district and relatives had been completely severed, and so many felt that Finland was their homeland. The Jewish population of Finland is principally comprised of descendants of these retired cantonists.
The Jewish population of Viipuri, however, more so than in the other Jewish communities of Finland, included families from a civilian background.