perished in Nazi concentration camps. Finland and World War II overall During World War II, Finland was anomalous: It was the only European country bordering the Soviet Union in 1939 which was still unoccupied by 1945. It was a country which sided with Germany, but in which native Jews and almost all refugees were safe from persecution. It was the only country that fought alongside Nazi Germany which maintained democracy throughout the war. It was in fact the only democracy in mainland Europe that remained so despite being an involved party in the war. According to the Finnish records 19,085 Soviet prisoners of war died in Finnish prison camps during the Continuation War, which means that 29.6% of Soviet POWs taken by the Finns did not survive. The high number of fatalities was mainly due to malnutrition and diseases. However, about 1,000 POWs were shot, primarily when attempting to escape. When the Finnish Army controlled East Karelia between 1941 and 1944, several concentration camps were set up for Russian civilians. The first camp was set up on 24 October 1941, in Petrozavodsk. Of these interned civilians 4,361 perished mainly due to malnourishment, 90% of them during the spring and summer of 1942. Finland never signed the Tripartite Pact, but was aided in its military assault on the Soviet Union by Germany from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and in its defence against Soviet attacks in 1944 prior to the separate peace with the Soviet Union in 1944. Finland was led by its elected president and parliament during the whole 1939–1945 period. As a result, some political scientists name it as one of the few instances where a democratic country was engaged in a war against one or more other democratic countries, namely the democracies in the Allied forces. However, nearly all Finnish military engagements in World War II were fought solely against an autocratic power, the Soviet Union, and the lack of direct conflicts specifically with other democratic countries leads others to exclude Finnish involvement in World War II as an example of a war between two or more democracies. Finnish President Tarja Halonen, speaking in 2005, said that "For us the world war meant a separate war against the Soviet Union and we did not incur any debt of gratitude to others". Finnish President Mauno Koivisto also expressed similar views in 1993. However the view that Finland