Helsinki Jewish Community: from abroad +358-9-586 0310 (358) and from Finland 09-586 0310
Turku Jewish Community: from abroad +358-2-231 2557, from Finland 02-231 2557
"Chevra Kadisha - Founded in 1864, the Chevra Kadisha is the Community's
oldest organisation. The society deals with all work connected with deaths in
the community and takes care of the two Jewish cemeteries in Helsinki."
Source: http://www.jchelsinki.fi/
Tapani Harviainen at http://www.finemb.org.il/Historia.htm writes about the origin
of the Jews of Finland: "From which parts of Russia were the Jewish soldiers
sent to Helsinki? [most Jewish families in Finland have their origin in
Russian Jewish soldiers granted permission to settle in the country after
completing their military service in the Russian army bases in Finland.
Finland was a semi-autonomous part of the Russian empire in the years
1809-1917. / J.B.] The Helsinki police archives offer a clear answer to this
question. All Jews resident in Helsinki in 1898 had come from Russia which at
that time included the greater part of Poland . According to the archives
the most important "home towns" or the localities and districts where the
heads of the families had been registered before their arrival in Finland,
were (1) Schlüsselburg (now Petrokrepost) east of St. Petersburg, above the
River Neva, (2) the governments of Novgorod and Tver, and (3) Lithuania and
the north-eastern parts of Poland. A surprising element in this information
is that Schlüsselburg, Novgorod and Tver were all outside the Pale of
Settlement where Jews were allowed to reside. Equally surprising is the
almost total absence of Estonia and Latvia in the domicile registers."
THE CEMETERIES
AHVENANMAA (ĊLEND) ISLANDS:
"The Ahvenanmaa Islands in the Gulf of Bothnia contain the ruins of Bomarsund, a Russian fortress built partly by Jewish military conscripts and destroyed by British and French naval forces during the Crimean War in 1854. Nearby are the graves of a number of Russian-Jewish soldiers (conscripts)." Source: Freedman, Warren. World Guide for the Jewish Traveler. NY: E.P. Dutton Inc, 1984, p. 100. [1994].
HELSINKI:
Synagogue: Malminkatu 26, Tel. 60-03-86 or 69-41-302. [October 2000] http://www.jchelsinki.fi/orgs.htm: "Chevra Kadisha - Founded in 1864, the Chevra Kadisha is the Community's oldest organisation. The society deals with all work connected with deaths in the community and takes care of the two Jewish cemeteries in Helsinki." [October 2000]
BOOK: Title: Helsinki photographs, 1944-1961, 1944 (bulk). Description: 7 items. Notes: ... Photographs of graves at Jewish cemetery in Helsinki, 1944. Photographs are identified. Location: Ferkauf Museum, Jamaica, NY. Control No.: NYHV86-A100. [December 2000] http://www.geocities.com/eladler/helsinki.htm: "I transcribed this information (1,282 names) directly from the headstones in the Helsinki Jewish Cemetery in September 2000. I have submitted the information to Online World Burial Registry (OWBR) . It does not include burials in Helsinki's old Jewish cemetery. For more information about Helsinki, contact Eric Adler, Annapolis, Maryland, USA at
eladler@yahoo.com. [January 2002]
HAMEENLINNA:
Jewish Cemetery: "In Hameenlinna, the Old Cemetery has graves of the Russian-Jewish soldiers, the earliest tombstones dating from 1835." Source: Freedman, Warren. World Guide for the Jewish Traveler. NY: E.P. Dutton Inc, 1984. [1994].
TURKU:
Turku Synagogue: Brahenkatu 17, tel. 12557. [October 2000]
Jewish Cemetery: A moribund Orthodox Jewish community hit its peak in 1940-41. Rosanne Leeson has a picture of the gates to the small Jewish cemetery and relates that it may soon be all that remains of this "shtetl", whose roots are Vilna, Poland. The cemetery is hidden behind a high stone wall and iron gates in the midst of hundreds of Lutheran plots. Source: uncited newspaper article submitted by Rosanne Leeson: leeson1@attglobal.net [1998] http://www.geocities.com/eladler/turku.htm has burials for Turku
Jewish cemetery. Source: Eric Adler eladler@yahoo.com [January 2002]
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