The Sirkkala barracks area
in Turku is a nationally recognized heritage site with a fascinating, but dark
history. Today, the former barracks area is one of the campus areas of the
University of Turku. The oldest building in the area, built in 1834, was
originally a poor house, but was already in the next decade handed over first
to the Finnish grenadiers and then the Russian military, and was known until
the independence of Finland in 1917as the Russian barracks. After the 1918
Finnish Civil War the winners of the war, the Whites, used the barracks first
as a prisoner-of-war camp from April to September
1918 and then as a forced labor camp until 1923. During these years thousands
of men, women and even minors belonging to the defeated side, the Reds, were
condemned to the prisoner-of-war camp. However, compared to several other camps
of the time, the conditions at the Turku prisoner-of-war camp were relatively
good. It is estimated that some 120 to 178 prisoners died at the prison camp.
Only one to three of the prisoners were shot, the rest died of different
illnesses. In 1994 the memorial "535" designed by Ismo Kajander was
erected to commemorate the victims of the prisoner-of-war camp, but to this day
the history of the area is mostly unknown to the general public.

In the article, we examine Turku prisoner-of-war
camp as difficult heritage and the different challenges included in making this
site known to the general public. For our case we have chosen the “Behind the
barb-wire fence – Turku prisoner-of-war camp and forced labor camp 1918-1923”
exhibition and dramatized guided tour planned and organized by the students of
Museum Studies at the University of Turku in spring 2018. In our article we
analyze the different choices made during the planning process in order to
represent the history of the prison camp and the experiences of the prisoners
in a sustainable and responsible way.

The article is related to the project Sirkkala 1918–
2018: Former prisoner-of-war camp as a site of memory and heritage site.