Janka Kollmann

Janka HOLCZER, born on September 10th, 1910 in Nyiregyháza/Hungary lived in Wien 9, Porzellangasse 54/11, was enrolled in the fall term 1937/38 at the Medical School in the 4th year of her studies (fall term 1937/38 was validated on February 1st, 1938). This is where she must of met her husband Dr. Georg Kollman. Both of them fled to Helsinki but were among 8 Jewish refugees that included their infant son, Frans Olof, who were expelled to Tallinn, Estonia where they were turned over to the Gestapo. On December 10, 1942 at the age of 32 Janka received the death sentence and was deported to Auschwitz.

November 6th, 1942

FINLAND expels eight Jewish refugees to Tallinn, where they are handed over to Gestapo. Ultimately they all end in concentration camps, and only one survives the war.

To this day it is not known why these particular Jews were chosen, and whether the Chief of the State Police acted on his own initiative or did the Minister of Interior sanction the act (these men naturally had all the reasons to obfuscate their part after the war). The Jews were officially suspected of crimes, but apparently on very weak grounds.

However, this act causes an uproar in Finland, and the government steps in to prevent any further expellations. It is thought that Finland's reputation as a civilized country is on stake, and these unfortunate eight are the only Jews Finland handed to the Germans.

In Helsinki, Finland, 27 political prisoners, mostly Estonians and Russians, are delivered by the Finnish Security Police Valtiollinen poliisi to German freighter S/S Hohenhörn. Among them are eight Jewish refugees who had arrived to Finland between 1938 and 1940. They were:

Elias Kopelowsky, born 1882, former Latvian citizen

Hans Eduard Szübilski, born 1907, former German citizen Heinrich Huppert, born 1896, former Austrian citizen Kurt Huppert, born 1931, Heinrich's child Georg Kollmann, born 1912, former Austrian citizen Janko Kollmann, born 1910, Georg's wife Frans Olof Kollmann, born 1942, Georg's and Janko's child Hans Robert Martin Korn, born 1919, former Austrian citizen

The ship departs later that day. In Tallinn they are handed to Gestapo and ultimately all the Jews end in Auschwitz. Only Georg Kollmann survived the war. They are the only Jewish civilians from Finland who were destroyed in the Holocaust.

How this came to be is linked to the person of Arno Anthoni, the director of Finnish Security Police. Anthoni was a career police official, who had been the head of the Security Police since February 1941. During the Continuation War it was only natural for the Finnish Security Police to cooperate with its German counterpart, Gestapo, and exchange of information on communists and other elements deemed suspicious was daily routine. But Anthoni took the cooperation farther than was necessary. While he was no Nazi, Anthoni seems to have been an opportunist who wanted to ingratiate himself with the Germans -- even to the extent of handing Jews to Gestapo while fully aware of their probable fate. In April 1942 Anthoni visited his German counterpart SS-Gruppenführer Henrich Müller in Berlin. In this meeting Anthoni agreed to assist in delivering all the Finland's Jews to Gestapo, and also handed over a list of all Jews then resident in Finland.

Jews residing in Finland during the Continuation War fell in three categories: Finnish Jews, Jewish refugees and Soviet POWs of Jewish faith. Finnish Jews were fully integrated citizens, and the men fought in the front like everybody else (15 were killed in the Winter War, 8 in the Continuation War). Soviet POWs were under military authorities' control (more on them below), but it was the Jewish refugees who were Security Police's domain.

Anthoni and his assistants in Valpo started with the refugees. In October 1942 a number of Jewish refugees (along with Estonian and Russian political prisoners) were about to be deported to German hands. Anthoni and Minister of Interior Toivo Horelli had agreed that the affair would be handled as a normal police matter without involving the cabinet - officially the deportees were accused of crimes or suspected of spying. Rumors of the deportations leaked out, and concerned citizens started a campaign to prevent them. The influential Minister of State Finances Väinö Tanner called Anthoni and asked him about the rumours. Anthoni lied to him that no such thing was about to happen. Later Tanner found out how the matters really were, and used his authority to postpone the deportations until the cabinet had decided on the matter.

On 3 November 1942 the cabinet convened. When Minister of Interior Horelli heard of Tanner's intervention, he was enraged. Insisting that the deportations were purely a police matter, and that the deportees were ordinary criminals, Horelli threatened to resign if the cabinet interfered. This would have caused a major political crisis, and after a vote, cabinet decided to let the deportations proceed. Three days later the eight Jews and 19 others were sent by ship to Estonia. But this incident caused an outcry. The press and public opinion protested vocally, and no further deportations took place. Anthoni, who also began to sense that war was not going to end in German victory, became more careful. He had to resign in early 1944.

In 1945 Anthoni was arrested for his part in the deportations. He was finally tried in 1948, but the trial turned out to be a rather curious affair. Anthoni was accused of misconduct in office because he hadn't given the deported Jews change to leave the country to a destination of their choice - a very trivial offense. Anthoni claimed that he didn't know of the fate of Jews in Germany, and feigned amnesia.

The most curious event of the trial was the statement of the sole survivor, Georg Kollmann. Kollmann claimed he was treated very well by the Security Police, when all the evidence now available points to the opposite. Kollmann asked that Anthoni was to be found not guilty. This caused scandal, and afterwards many Finnish Jews regarded Kollmann a traitor. In an interview 31 years later Kollmann claimed he hadn't said anything like that, and surmised that the interpreter had misrepresented his words (this is quite impossibe - even if the persons involved would have been ready to commit such an outrage, there were in the audience, among others, Finnish Jews who were fluent in German, the language Kollmann spoke, and they would have been certain to act if the interpreter would have tried to misrepresent Kollmann's testimony). Kollmann's attitude at the time and later indicates that he perhaps wanted to forget all about his sufferings, and let bygones to be bygones, no matter what.

Anthoni was released of all charges, although the Supreme Court repealed this decision in the next year. But even the Supreme Court only gave him a written reprimand. Anthoni also won substantial damages from the state for the three years he had been arrested before the trial. Afterwards he was given employment by certain industrialist who during the war had been well-known for his extremely pro-German sympathies. Anthoni died in 1961.

Minister of Interior Toivo Horelli's motives in the case remain a mystery. How much Horelli at the time actually knew of the fate of Jews in Germany, and whether he truly believed the deported Jews were criminals, is not known. After the war Horelli refused to answer questions pertaining this incident, stating that he will only speak if sued. He never was. Horelli was dropped from the new cabinet formed in February 1943, and was the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament until 1944. He died in 1975.

Georg Kollmann was liberated in 1945 and until 1950 worked as a doctor in a US military hospital in Austria. He then emigrated to Israel, continued to practice medicine and founded a new family. He refused to discuss his experiences, except for a short interview he gave to a Finnish researcher in 1979. His general attitude in the interview can be summarized as 'what use it is to dig up such old matters, it's better to forget'. Kollmann occasionally visited Finland, and stated he bore no grudge to Finns. He died in 1992.

Alas, the eight civilians deported in November 1942 were no the only Jews delivered to German hands by Finns. During the early Continuation War the Finnish military authorities began an exchange program with Germans. Certain groups of Soviet POWs, namely officers and politruks, were exchanged for Finnish-related people living in the German occupied lands. Finns were ready and willing to receive especially Ingrians who speak a language closely related to Finnish (some classify the Ingrian as a dialect of Finnish), and could also offer them a significantly better conditions than the German-run refugee camps. More than 3000 Ingrians were taken to Finland, and in exchange a similar number of Soviet POWs were handed to Germans. A number of these POWs were of Jewish faith. How much, is not known for certain, but the number is more than 50 and less than 100. But in their case it's significant that they were not handed to Germans because they were Jews, but because they were officers and politruks Finns had agreed to exchange for Ingrians.

(Mikko Härmeinen)