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believed that soon people would return to rebuild
and live there again. Of the 145,000 inhabitants of
the province, 111,000 had been evacuated. A total
of 87,000 buildings were destroyed in Finnish
Lappland.
But the evacuees began to return. With strong
feelings of nostalgia they journeyed back through
the wastes to the ruins of what once had been their
homes. They took refuge in cellars or temporary
wooden huts. It was the will to live, the well-known
Finnish tenacity, which gave them the strength to
get back to work again. Now fifty-four percent of
the destroyed buildings in the province had been
rebuilt. This achievement is the more admirable
since, at first, difficulties seemed almost
insurmountable. Naturally, there was a great shortage of labor
and construction material. After they had succeeded
in acquiring the necessary material, the problem of
transport had to be solved. The railroad stopped two
kilometers south of Rovaniemi and the country roads
had been almost completely blasted. In addition, land
mines were a perpetual threat to the builders.
Buttheir will was indomitable. They had also experience
in reconstruction work in Carelia. Trees were felled
in the forests. Hundreds of makeshift saw mills
transformed them into planks, and as early as July,
1945, the railroad had been extended to Rovaniemi.
There were, however, other difficulties which these
people had to struggle with, difficulties which were
of special interest to us. When the population
evacuated, our guides told us, all medical personnel
naturally went with them. The result was that in the
autumn of 1944, there was not a single nurse to be
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