Page 413 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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had an eye on them. If a widow made a mistake, the whispering begun: “You know, she is a
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war widow” .
The war widows had lots of prospective husbands and the women later told that the most
eager suitors were those who tried to put their hands on the so called “myyniraha” a three
year pension, paid by the state to the widow if she was married. In some cases, the man drank
the money and vanished. The remarriage process was slow. One of the widows explained her
point of view: “For sure, I would have got a husband, but the children would not have got
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a father” .
Some of the war orphans did not know their father very well. Sometimes they could not
ask their mother, because she would burst into tears. The memories of the children could be
dim, but the feelings and impressions were strong. The traumas have become strongly visible
in inquiries.
During the wars, the Mannerheim League for Children Welfare tried to find godparents to
the children who had lost either their father or mother in the war. It succeeded, the contribu-
tion of the Swedes being the biggest, but there were also godparents from many other nations.
The amount of godparents was growing till 1945, but after 1950 it was rapidly decreasing.
At the beginning of the Winter War the Swedes offered an interim stay in Sweden to
Finnish children. From December 1939 till January 1940 children, some with their mothers
were sent to Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Some 1000 of the 10 000 children stayed in
Sweden.
When the Continuation War begun the Minister of Social Affairs, K. A. Fagerholm,
founded a committee for moving children abroad. His measure raised hard criticism. One of
the loudest was the press of the Agrarian Party, telling that it was wrong to split the family
and take the children to unknown circumstances. When the matter was taken up in Parlia-
ment, the censorship forbade criticism in the parliamentary speeches to be published in the
press.
The decision was of great importance. Under the supervision of the Ministry of Social
Affairs over 54 000 children were moved to Sweden, some of them two or three times.
Additionally, there were about 20 000 children travelling privately to Sweden and the Man-
nerheim League for Children’s Welfare took about 4000 children to Denmark. It was easier
for townspeople to send their children abroad than for those living in the countryside.
For most of the children everything seems to have gone well. But there were also non pre-
dicted impacts. Some of the children just dropped in, but a lot spent a considerable time of their
childhood as members of Swedish families. Only a few of the children could speak Swedish.
They could not understand what their foster parents said, but after a while most of them learned
to speak Swedish. Many of these children became estranged from their parents, because they
were under the school age and were not encouraged to be in contact with their parents.
Some of the children felt that they had been deserted for a second time when they were
sent back to Finland. Many of them had forgotten their Finnish and could not understand
their parents. They wanted to go back. They had lost their contact with their Finnish homes,

9 Maisonlahti manuscript and interview on 7.6.2008; Salmi 1992, p. 30, 45–59 and Stenberg 1992, p. 25, 34.
10 Stenberg 1992, p. 36.