Niuppieva was addressing an audience in Helsinki today during public introduction of Marja-Leena Mikkola's book, "A Lost Childhood: In Finnish Occupiers' Captivity. 1941-44".
"We want former Finnish death camp inmates to have compensations for their plight," Niuppieva said emphatically.
Approximately eight thousand survivors have lived to see this day, as far as she knows. They went through hard labour, starvation, cold and floggings in the camps. The years of privation badly tell on them now, said the community activist.
There were close on 25,000 Russian inmates in Finnish concentration camps, 1941 into 1944. These were, for the most part, women, children and seniors, she added.
It took Marja-Leena Mikkola four years to collect survivors' anguished childhood reminiscences, which her book comprises.
