Himmler and Mannerheim in the fall of 1942, a cordial gaze, drinking schnapps

This picture below really bothers me at the wall of the Mikkelin Klubi. located 230km north of the capital Helsinki. Considering what Nazi Germany called the “Final Solution,” the genocide committed against the Jews, Roma and other enemies of the Nazi regime, you may rightly ask what this picture is doing on the wall. 

Finland has tactful explanations for a lot of thing, even for a mass murderer like Heinrich Himmler drinking with Carl Mannerheim. Some, familiar with the picture below, will brush the episode aside and claim that it is history, nothing more, nothing less.

They may add that Mannerheim didn’t want to drink a schnapps with Himmler. They may even point to General Waldemar Erfruth’s “stunned” expression in the picture as a sign of rejection.

While the picture may portray “history” it does so without context and without reminding us of the crimes against humanity carried out by Himmler and the Nazi regime. Himmler, a chicken farmer before becoming a faithful servant of the Nazi regime, is the very person that set up the death camps for the total annihilation of the Jews of Europe.

Some six million Jews perished as a result.

The picture below, in my opinion, encourages denial and clouds his abhorrent crimes.

Is it only history or is it a grotesque example of history and our complicity in it?

The text below reads: “Heinrichs, Airo, Himmler, Marshall, Ehrfurt (sic), Nenonen, Lundqvist and a German visitor at the Mikkeli Club in fall 1942.” In 1942, Operation Reinhard, which aimed to liquidate Polish Jewry, was in full swing.

Some of the most notorious death camps to emerge in 1942 were Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Source: Wikipedia