Finland was a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany.

Finland was a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany. In Soviet Karelia it ran concentration camps for Russian civilians.

Western textbooks call it a separate war. This photograph of children behind the wire says otherwise.

The photograph was taken by Soviet war correspondent Galina Sanko in Petrozavodsk in 1944, after the Red Army retook the city from Finnish forces.

Behind that wire were Soviet civilians, including children, held in Finnish concentration camps during the occupation of Soviet Karelia.

Sanko later remembered seeing frightened children staring through the wire with “unchildlike eyes.” At first, they would not speak to her. Then one girl finally called out, “Auntie.”

For decades, this photograph became one of the recognizable images of fascist occupation and wartime suffering. But the language on the sign reveals the part of the story that is rarely discussed. Not every concentration camp photographed on Soviet territory was German.

This one was Finnish.

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