Hans Kalm

Hans Kalm

Hans Kalm (born April 9th ^July / April 21st  1889 ^{greg. In} the village of Kotsama, today rural municipality Kõo , Viljandi County , Estonia ; †  February 1, 1981 in Jyväskylä , Finland ) was an Estonian - Finnish military.

Early years

Hans Kalm was born on the Taarasaare farm near Kõo. He attended the municipal school in Paide until 1909 . Kalm graduated from Päivölä Agricultural School in Finland in 1912 . Until 1914 he attended the agricultural school in the Finnish Mustiala before the First World War the tsarist army went. He fought on the front near Riga and the Daugava as well as in Galicia . In 1915 he graduated from the ensign school in Gatchina, Russia, and received officer training. By 1917, he served in the infantry regiment of Valdai before in the wake of the Russian October Revolution secretly returned to Finland.

In February 1918, he co-founded the group consisting of war volunteer battalion of North Häme , with whom he at Finnish Civil War on the side of middle-class " whites took part."

Finnish Civil War (1918)

Hans Kalm is charged with numerous war crimes , terrorist measures and atrocities against alleged communists and Bolsheviks during the Finnish civil war .

In Vehkajärvi Kalm had fifty prisoners of the opposing side executed . In Harmoinen, Kalm's regiment killed eleven hospital patients and two nurses on March 10, 1918, although these were (presumably) under the protection of the Red Cross .

In the prisoner of war camp in the Lahtier district of Hennala, around 170 girls and young women who were on the side of the “Reds” were executed at the age of 14 on Kalm's orders . During the weeks that the camp was under Kalm's guard, around 500 women were killed. In the same camp, the captured leader of the Red Guard, Ali Aaltonen , was personally shot by Kalm in May 1918 .

However, Kalm was never held responsible for his actions and invoked the amnesty announced by the Finnish head of state Pehr Evind Svinhufvud after the end of the Finnish civil war.

Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920)

In 1918, Kalm formed a 2,200-strong Finnish volunteer regiment ( Pohjan Pojat ) that took part in the Estonian War of Independence against Soviet Russia in southern Estonia . Among other things, Kalm led the Finnish troops in the battle of Paju (January 1919), which initiated the reconquest of all of southern Estonia and northern Latvia by Estonian-Finnish troops.

Kalm published two books about his experiences during the Finnish Civil War and the Estonian War of Freedom: Kalmin pataljoona Suomen vapaussodassa (1919) and Pohjan poikain rekti (Porvoo 1921/22). Kalm was awarded high estonian and Finnish medals for his actions.

Finnish Continuation War (1941–1944)

Kalm lived in England in 1920/21 . In the same year he married the dentist Olga Matilda Valmari (1892–1975) in Finland. Kalm went to the United States in 1922 and became an American citizen in 1930 . There he studied in Philadelphia , Oklahoma and New York Medical . In 1932 he received his doctorate as Dr. med. Kalm returned to Finland in 1934 and received Finnish citizenship a year later . In the vicinity of Turku he founded a homeopathic sanatorium for patients with nutritional and metabolic disorders.

In the Finnish Continuation War , Kalm returned to military service - presumably as a volunteer . He became camp commandant of the Finnish POW camp Naarajärvi 2 ( Sotavankijärjestelyleiri 2 ), which had one of the highest death rates during the war. In 1942 he was released from his duties and sent to Germany for further military training. In 1943 he quit military service and ran a sanatorium in Sippola .

post war period

In 1944 Kalm emigrated to Sweden because he feared prosecution for war crimes in the Naarajärvi prison camp. In 1946 he left Sweden for the USA. In 1957 he returned to Finland again. He practiced as a doctor in Pyhäjoki and Rauma . In 1969 he lost his license to practice medicine after two deaths in his practice. The Finnish Administrative Court upheld the withdrawal in 1974. Kalm lived with his son in Jyväskylä until his death at the age of 92.

Web links

• CV (Finnish)
• Biography (finnish)

literature

• Jaakko Heinämäki: Hans Kalm. Vapaussoturi ja vaihtoehtolääkäri. Helsinki, Jyväskylä 2007 ( ISBN 978-952-492-003-2 )
• Heikki Ylikangas : Tie Tampereelle. Documentoitu kuvaus Tampereen antautumiseen johtaneista sotatapahtumista Suomen sisällissodassa. Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva 1993 ( ISBN 951-0-18897-2 )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eesti elulood. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus 2000 (= Eesti entsüklopeedia 14) ISBN 9985-70-064-3 , p. 133
2. ^ Heikki Ylikangas: Tie Tampereelle. Documentoitu kuvaus Tampereen antautumiseen johtaneista sotatapahtumista Suomen sisällissodassa. Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva 1993, ISBN 951-0-18897-2 , pp. 56-62.
3. ↑ Tauno Tukkinen: Naiskapinallisten teloitukset Lahdessa 1918
4. ↑ http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/artikkeli/Kev%C3%A4%C3%A4ll%C3%A4+1918+Lahdessa+ammuttiin+jopa+nuoria+tytt%C3%B6j%C3%A4/1135227381205
5. ↑ http://www.skepsis.fi/lehti/2008/2008-3-jarvinen.html
6. ↑ http://www.skeptik.ee/index.php/2008/08/18/hans-kalm-sojategelasest-homoopaat/
7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.