The Tammisaari camp was a

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

and

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...

Dragsvik ''Note: This article is about Dragsvik in Finland, not Dragsvik in Norway.'' Dragsvik is a village in Uusimaa, Finland. It is located to the northeast of Raseborg. Dragsvik railway station and a manor house called Dragsvik gård are located there ...

, Ekenäs in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It was set for the

Reds Reds may refer to: General * Red (political adjective), supporters of Communism or socialism * Reds (January Uprising), a faction of the Polish insurrectionists during the January Uprising in 1863 * USSR (or, to a lesser extent, China) during th ...

captured by the

Whites White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as " ...

in the 1918

Finnish Civil War The Finnish Civil War; . Other designations: Brethren War, Citizen War, Class War, Freedom War, Red Rebellion and Revolution, . According to 1,005 interviews done by the newspaper ''Aamulehti'', the most popular names were as follows: Civil W ...

. The concentration camp operated from May 1918 to 15 September 1918 when the majority of the captured Reds were released on parole. Tammisaari camp was then turned into a forced labour camp for convicted Reds and later in the early 1920s into a facility for political prisoners. Tammisaari camp was known as the most notorious of all

Finnish Civil War prison camps Finnish Civil War prison camps were operated by the White side of the 1918 Finnish Civil War. They were composed of 13 main camps, mostly active from April to May 1918, and more than 60 smaller POW camps during the final period of the war. The numb ...

. Between May and September 1918 nearly 3,000 of the 8,700 prisoners died of executions, disease or malnutrition.Tepora, Tuomas & Roselius, Aapo: ''The Finnish Civil War 1918: History, Memory, Legacy'', p. 116. Brill Academic Publishers 2014.
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Finnish Civil War

The first captured Reds were transferred to the former barracks of the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army (russian: Ру́сская импера́торская а́рмия, tr. ) was the armed land force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian Ar ...

in Dragsvik in early May 1918. During the next six months, 8,597 prisoners were held in Tammisaari, it was about 11% of all the captured Reds. Conditions in the camp were horrible, general hygiene was bad and there was a lack of food supplies. Inmates died of malnutrition and various disease, including the

Spanish influenza The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

that caught Finland in July.Tepora & Roselius, p. 113–114. According to the

War Victims of Finland 1914–1922 War Victims of Finland 1914–1922 ( fi, Suomen sotasurmat 1914–1922 sv, Krigsdöda i Finland 1914–1922) is a database that contains the names and information of more than 35,000 Finland, Finnish war dead between 1914 and 1922. The database was ...

internet database, a total number of 2,997 prisoners died in Tammisaari between May and December 1918. The mortality rate was 34%, which was the highest among the Finnish Civil War prison camps. The deceased were buried in a mass grave outside the prison. A memorial was erected in 1951 and a permanent exhibition opened in 2008.

Political prisoners

After the mass amnesties of the Civil War prisoners Tammisaari penitentiary was turned into a labor camp for political prisoners, meaning the activists of the banned

Communist Party of Finland The Communist Party of Finland ( fi, Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, SKP; sv, Finlands Kommunistiska Parti) was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944. The SKP was banned by ...

and

Socialist Workers' Party of Finland Socialist Workers' Party of Finland ( fi, Suomen Sosialistinen Työväenpuolue, SSTP) was a Finnish political party in the early 1920s. The SSTP consisted of radical leftists who split from the Social Democratic Party of Finland after the Finnish ...

. Female prisoners, like

Hertta Kuusinen Hertta Elina Kuusinen (14 February 1904 – 18 March 1974) was a Finnish Communist politician. She was a member of the central committee (1944–1971) and the political bureau of the Communist Party of Finland; member of Finland's parliament, t ...

, were held at the

Häme Castle Tavastia Castle or Häme Castle ( fi, Hämeen linna, sv, Tavastehus slott) is a medieval castle in Tavastia Proper, Finland. It is located in Hämeenlinna, the city between Helsinki and Tampere. Originally located on an island, the castle now sit ...

Hämeenlinna Hämeenlinna (; sv, Tavastehus; krl, Hämienlinna; la, Tavastum or ''Croneburgum'') is a city and municipality of about inhabitants in the heart of the historical province of Tavastia and the modern province of Kanta-Häme in the south of F ...

. The political prisoners had some privileges, they had less work and were allowed to order newspapers. As the communists spent a lot of time in reading and studying smuggled Marxist literature, the camp was nicknamed the "University of Tammisaari". During the 1920s and 1930s the number of captured communists varied between 100 and 600. The highest number was after the declaration of the 1930 Communist Laws. In July 1933 more than 370 prisoners went on a hunger strike and finally after 11 days, five died of force-feeding.Rislakki, Jukka: ''Maan alla'', p. 167. Love Kirjat 1985. , The penitentiary was active until 1940. During World War II the prisoners were transferred to newly established prison camps around Finland and Tammisaari was used as a garrison by the Finnish Army.

Notable inmates

Aimo Aaltonen Aimo Anshelm Aaltonen (10 December 1906 – 21 September 1987) was a Finnish construction worker and politician. Aaltonen was born in Pargas. He became a communist as a young man and went to the Soviet Union in 1930, where he studied from 1930 t ...

(1934–1940) *

Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo (27 January 1900, in Impilahti, Karelia – 15 September 1997, Simrishamn, Sweden) was a Finnish artist, architect and thinker. Inventor of "AE-evohomology" life philosophy. He was a witness to the Russian Revolution. "Ah ...

(1939–1940) *

Aarne Arvonen This is a list of Finnish supercentenarians (people from Finland who have attained the age of at least 110 years). The oldest person ever from Finland was Maria Rothovius, who died in 2000, aged 112 years 259 days. All Finnish supercentenarians wer ...

(1918) *

Ivar Lassy Ivar Fredrik Lassy (18 November 1889 – 4 June 1938) was a Finnish writer and anthropologist who was active in the Socialist and Communist parties. Lassy moved to the Soviet Union in 1923 and was killed during the Great Purge. Lassy was first a ...

(1920–1921) *

Yrjö Leino Yrjö Kaarlo Leino (28 January 1897 – 28 June 1961) was a Finnish communist politician. Imprisoned twice for his communist activities, and spending much of the Second World War as an underground communist activist, he served as a minister in th ...

(1935–1938) *

Toivo Hjalmar Långström Toivo Hjalmar Långström (1889, Helsinki - 1983) was a Finnish politician and trade union activist. He was the last leader of Socialist Workers' Party of Finland from May to August 1923 before the party was banned and its leadership imprisoned. ...

(1923–1926, 1930–1934) *

Julius Nurminen Julius Ivar Nurminen (9 June 1887 - 24 July 1918) was a Finnish journalist and politician, born in Sääksmäki. He was a member of the Parliament of Finland from 1916 to 1918, representing the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP). He was impri ...

(1918) † *

Robert Oksa Robert Aleksander Oksa (13 February 1893 – 30 May 1967) was a Finnish-born wrestler and wrestling coach. He was the head coach of the Estonian and Swedish national teams in the 1920s–1950s. Life Oksa was a railroad worker who won three Finni ...

(1918) *

Ville Pessi Ville Pessi (24 March 1902, Kaukola – 6 November 1983, Vantaa) was a Finnish politician. Pessi hailed from a proletarian family. He became involved in leftist politics in 1919. He joined the Communist Party of Finland (SKP) in 1924, when it wa ...

(1935–1940) *

Arvo Tuominen Arvo “Poika” Tuominen (5 September 1894 – 27 May 1981) was a Finnish communist revolutionary and later a social democratic journalist, politician and author. Tuominen was given his nickname, "Poika", in 1920 because of his boyish look; ''po ...

(1922–1926, 1928–1933) *

Kaarlo Uskela Kaarlo Uskela (4 March 1878 – 19 April 1922) was a Finnish satiric author, poet and anarchist. Uskela is best known of his 1921 anthology ''Pillastunut runohepo'' which was banned in 1933, eleven years after Uskela's death. Uskela was born ...

(1918–1919) *

Niilo Wälläri Niilo Frans Wälläri (6 July 1897 – 25 August 1967) was a Finnish socialist, syndicalist politician. Wälläri led the Finnish Seamen's Union from 1938 until his death. In 1913 Wälläri left Finland to become seaman. In 1916, he settled in t ...

(1923–1928) *

Armas Äikiä Armas Äikiä (1904–1965) was a Finnish communist writer and journalist. He wrote the Anthem of Karelo-Finnish SSR. In Finland, when the Communist Party was banned, he spent the years 1927–1928 and 1930–1935 in prison, where he wrote defi ...

(1927–1928, 1930–1935)

References

External links

Image of the Tammisaari prison camp memorial
Panoramio.com {{Raseborg Cityscape Finnish Civil War Prisoner-of-war camps Internment camps Prisons in Finland Mass graves Communism in Finland Raseborg