"Who Will Laugh the Last?": Jac Weinstein's Sketches, Poetry, and Songs during Finnish-German Co-Belligerency, 1941–44

Abstract

Abstract:This article analyzes Jac Weinstein's (1883–1976) sketches, poems, and songs written in Yiddish and Swedish during 1941–44, when Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany. While satirizing daily life and changing social norms among Finnish Jews, Weinstein's work dealt with the genocide of European Jewry—waged by Finland's de facto ally—and the horror of the war. Weinstein's work challenges postwar narratives that depicted Finnish Jews fighting a "separate war" and remaining largely unaware of and untouched by the Holocaust. This article draws on the wartime press and recent research on Jews in Finland to investigate how Weinstein negotiated the status of Finnish Jews as aligned with the Nazis on the one hand and aware of the Holocaust unfolding in Nazi occupied territories on the other. In addition to offering new perspectives on the experiences of Finnish Jews during the war, Weinstein's hitherto unknown sketches, poems, and songs, alongside photographs of his theater performances, display how belletristic sources and ephemera can contest the dominant postwar narrative that Finnish Jews did not know about the Holocaust.