Not on the Jewish migration route: Finland and Polish Holocaust survivors, 1945-1948

On August 30, 1945 Natalia Szlezynger had been sent from the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons' camp to the Hoganas refugee camp in southern Sweden. From there she contacted her uncle in Helsinki and was the first Holocaust survivor to arrive and settle in Finland. The Jewish community in Finland with fewer than 2,000 members had largely escaped the Holocaust; however it initiated and lobbied for two relief schemes for Jewish survivors from Poland. These relief schemes represented a significant reversal of the former policy toward Jewish refugees. The majority of transit refugees opted to remain in Sweden. They decided not to come to Finland because of the unpredictable political situation in which Finland found itself with regard to the Soviet Union