Over 600 Canadians fell victim to mass murder

TORONTO, November 16, 2004 -- York University and the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies will host a special screening of the National Film Board documentary film Letters From Karelia on Monday, November 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the McEwen Auditorium at the Schulich School of Business. The film is based on the true untold story of nearly 1,000 idealistic young Canadians who disappeared in the Stalinist Soviet Union of the 1930s; at least 600 of whom ended up in a mass grave. The film will be simultaneously shown at the University of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region of Russia – which is where much of the story unfolds.

“There are all sorts of mass graves in the world, but nowhere are there as many Canadians buried in one place as the result of mass murder,” says Atkinson faculty member Varpu Lindström, who served as the historical consultant on the film. Lindström adds that the genocide was virtually unknown until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that now both Canadians and Russians want to know the truth about this episode in history.

The film, which contains actual interviews and historical dramatizations, centres around the fate of Aate (pronounced  AH-tay) Pitkänen, a young Canadian of Finnish heritage who was born in a small village north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. He and 2,800 Canadians of Finnish heritage were recruited by Stalin in 1931 and left Depression-era Canada for what they envisaged was a socialist workers’ paradise in Soviet Karelia, a region in northern Russia with historical connections to Finland. But only five years later their utopian dreams were rudely shattered by Stalin’s brutal purges, and the tragic drama remained virtually unknown until Thunder Bay native Kelly Saxberg brought it to life on film. 

Lindström believes that Pitkänen was probably kept alive by the Russians because he was one of  the Soviet Union’s top skiers. At the start of World War II, Pitkänen and some other Karelia survivors were drafted by the Soviets to spy on the Finns (who by 1941 had occupied much of Soviet Karelia as co-belligerents with Germany). Pitkänen was caught by the Finns in 1942 and executed for spying. Before he died, he wrote farewell letters to his relatives in Canada and gave them to the prison warden.  Because Canada was at war with Finland, the letters were never sent, but they were found in 1999 by the warden’s son, Jukka Lehesvirta, a journalist in Helsinki.

Photo:Varpu Lindström

Lehesvirta sent the letters to Canada, where Aate Pitkänen’s relatives, including his 90-year-old sister Taimi Davies in Toronto, were astonished to learn the details of Aate’s death, and also that he had a son. Alfred Pitkänen, 61, a distinguished DNA scientist living in Moscow, is the central character in the film. The film follows him as he meets his long-lost relatives in Toronto and Thunder Bay and visits people and places that help him understand more about the father he never knew.  The film follows him north to Petrozavodsk where he meets Karelia survivors and learns about their experiences.  Alfred then searches the area to find his father’s grave.

”There is a strong York connection in the film,” says Lindström, “We have an exchange program with the University of Petrozavodsk in Karelia. Victor Vasiliev, the current president, is the son of a victim of the Stalinist purges. His son Igor, who lives in Toronto, is the voice of the KGB agent in the film. And Igor’s daughter, Lisa, is a student at York.”  A third York connection, Gustava Zhuravskaya, a graduate student in the School of Women's Studies, served as a translator.

York University is the leading interdisciplinary teaching and research university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city.  The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 180,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 10 faculties and 21 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries.  This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges.

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For further information, please contact:

Melissa Hughes, Media Relations Officer, York University, 416-736-2100 x22097/ mehughes@yorku.ca