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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cecropia (talk | contribs) at 03:50, 10 July 2007 (moved User:Pan Gerwazy/finland to User:Paul Pieniezny/finland: Automatically moved page while renaming the user "Pan Gerwazy" to "Paul Pieniezny"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Someone put in the following phrase: "A few volunteers from Belgium, France, and Switzerland who had participated in the Winter War were turned over to the Gestapo." This is marked in invisible text. There are reasons to doubt this story, or at least a part of it:

1) There is no way Germany and Finland would have got away with turning Swiss volunteers over to the tender mercies of the Gestapo. Switzerland was a neutral country, even in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. This makes the whole allegation dubious already, of course 2) As for the Belgians - they were only at war with Germany from May 1940. I have found at least one name of one Belgian guy who fought as a volunteer in the Winter War and got back alive to Belgium in 1940. His name was Stefaan Laureys (unfortunately, my only source is in the Dutch language, and comes from an extreme-right winger, but there is no other reason why that should be a lie: ). That did not stop the man from joining a Flemish SS brigade to fight on the Eastern Front a few years later (he was executed for treason after the war)

So, on average I think there may not be much truth in this. Although I agree, some of the French volunteers may have got stuck in Finland (after all, France was already at war with Germany when the Winter Wat broke out) and been unable to return.

Could the person who put this in, please tell what his/her sources were? Or does anyone have access to the sources quoted here?