Between Closure and Redemption : Internment Memory and the Reception of the Compensation Law

By analyzing oral history interviews of former child and youth internees, the chapter explores the reception of the compensation law (2014) for the internment of German and Hungarian citizens in Finland (1944–1946). These interviews are analyzed 1) in relation to and as reflecting the paradigm of “redemptive remembering,” and 2) as interactional events characterized by negotiations between the interviewer and interviewee. The chapter suggests that negative representations of the compensation reflect the tensions between the goals of compensations as instruments of retrospective justice, prevailing cultural conceptions of memory, and ideals for dealing with difficult pasts. Moreover, such frictional engagement between different aspects of compensations is also argued as generating meaningful reflection on applications and implications of memory in general.Peer reviewe