Arno Anthoni

Arno Kalervo Anthoni (11 August 1900 – 9 August 1961) was a Finnish lawyer who was director of the Finnish State Police (Valpo) in 1941–1944. He was openly antisemitic and pro-Nazi, having close relations to the German Sicherheitspolizei. Anthoni and the Minister of Interior Toivo Horelli were responsible for the deportation of 135 German refugees, including 12 Jews, from Finland to Nazi Germany in 1941–1943.

Career Early years Anthoni was born in Karjalohja to the family of the lawyer Väinö Ossian Anthoni (1868–1933). After graduating with a Master of Laws degree from the University of Helsinki in 1927, Anthoni worked as a lensmann (Finnish: nimismies) in the Kymenlaakso region. In 1933, he was appointed police director of Uusimaa Province.

Wartime In February 1941, Anthoni became the director of the State Police. As Finland joined World War II on the side of Germany with the outbreak of the Continuation War in June 1941, Germany started pressing the Finnish government to deport German refugees who had fled to Finland after 1938.

In April 1942, Anthoni visited Berlin where he met Heinrich Müller, Friedrich Panzinger and Adolf Eichmann to discuss the "Final Solution" concerning the Jews of Finland. The Gestapo asked them to be handed over to the German authorities, to which Anthoni reacted positively. He made a verbal agreement to expel all German refugees Finland saw as an "unwanted element". The agreement also included Soviet POWs of Jewish origin.

Although the Finnish government refused transferring its own Jewish citizens, Anthoni's trip caused a mass deportation of "disagreeable aliens" in June 1942. Among the deported were two German-born Jews.

In late 1942, Anthoni asked Horelli to make a requisition for awarding the SS commander Martin Sandberger with the Order of the White Rose of Finland. Sandberger was the commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst in Estonia.

After the war As it was clear that Germany was going to lose the war, Anthoni was dismissed in March 1944. After the Moscow Armistice he fled to Sweden, but was soon returned to Finland. Anthoni was arrested in the Ostrobothnian village of Rautio in April 1945, and put into preventive detention.

Anthoni never faced the Finnish war-responsibility trials. Poland and the Western Allies wanted Anthoni, Horelli and the State Police officer Ari Kauhanen to be included on the list of war criminals, but the Soviet Union never made a claim to the Finnish government. This was most likely because the Soviets focused on people who had committed war crimes against their own citizens.

In early 1948, Anthoni was put on trial for misconduct, Anthoni claimed to have no idea of what would happen to the Jews, and that the deported were chosen by Horelli.

Anthoni worked his last years as a lawyer for the mineral company Oy Lohja Ab, owned by the prominent Finnish Nazi Petter Forsström, who had served time in prison for treason after being convicted of participation in the pro-German resistance movement during the Lapland War after Finland had switched sides. He died at the Malmi Hospital in Helsinki.