Finnish Archives information found

Thanks a  lot to Liisa Vuonokari-Bomström from University of Turku , faculty of Finnish history for some information she found in Finnish archives about my Grandfather Grigory Grigorov.

Read below her email

The little I know about doctor Gregory Grigorov is that she was taken as a POW during the WWII in the by finns occupied Carelia. After having been in different camps for POW:s and civil prisoners he was taken to work in so called war booty archives 7.9.1942. In that occasion he was liberated from the concentration camp 3, and could live in the city of Petrozavodsk quite freely.

The war booty archives was a organisation that intended to collect all archival material and books that was left to the occupied region by soviet institutions but also private persons. The aim was to create provicial archives of Äänislinna (as the Finns called Petrozavodsk) as the idea was to annex East Karelia to Finland. That plan failed and Finns left Petrozavods june 1944.

As your grandfather had said to the Finns to be a doctor of geology his task in the war booty archives was to sort books concerning geology,   physics, chemistry and so on. He was some period  also a foreman for the local workers of archives.

Sadly, the archives I have used include very little information about the local workers and prisoners used in the War booty Archives. They were referred as "prisoners" or "russians" not as individuals. The little I know about him bases on two interrogation protocols. The first one was made after that the University building that housed archives was partly burned-out. All the personnel and prisoners used in the work were interrogated in that occasion.

 That's why I was so happy to find out that your grandfather have wrote his memoirs. It gives me the possibility to give a voice to at least one soviet worker of the archives though your grand father seems to have been far from a "typical" example of  the workforce used.

The second protocol was made by soviet officials after the Red army had arrived in the Petrozavodsk. Soviet officials interrogated individuals who had worked to the Finns partly to collect information about possible war crimes of Finns, partly to punish "collaborators". I think the history of your grandfather as a former prisoner of Gulag gave him a little chance to avoid the new imprisonment that followed.

I have to say I was really glad to find out that he survived the Gulag and lived  such a long life. I hope he had some really good years after all the atrocities he had gone through.