Algoth Niska, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Algoth Niska

adventurer, bootlegger, footballer

Date of Birth: 05-Dec-1888

Place of Birth: Vyborg, Leningrad Oblast, Russia

Date of Death: 28-May-1954

Profession: association football player

Nationality: Finland

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About Algoth Niska

  • Algoth Niska (5 December 1888 – 28 May 1954) was a Finnish bootlegger, footballer and adventurer. He was born in Viipuri in 1888 and was the youngest child.
  • When his father died in 1903, the family moved to Helsinki, where he got interested in football.
  • He was a member of the Finland football team which played at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, losing 4–0 to England in the semi final. Niska joined his first ship in 1908.
  • When the First World War broke out, he went to navigation school and graduated the following year – thought he never got his papers.
  • He was married twice and divorced both women.
  • He had two children.
  • The well-known Finnish musician Ilkka Lipsanen is his grandson. In 1919, when Finnish prohibition came into force, he acquired a large supply of now-illegal liquor.
  • High society in Helsinki soon found out whom they could ask for refreshments.
  • When the supply begun to run out, he bought a boat and begun to smuggle liquor from Estonian and German ships who waited outside Finnish territorial waters.
  • Later he also smuggled liquor from Sweden, where it was legal but tightly controlled. Over the years he used various tricks to dodge police boats – and sometimes the bullets of their machine guns – during his trips between Turku, Helsinki, Tallinn and Stockholm and in the Åland archipelago.
  • He never shot back.
  • In one case he unloaded his cargo right in the heart of Helsinki while people were distracted during the visit of Gustav V of Sweden.
  • In one stage he was sentenced for a year in prison for resisting police.
  • He claimed to the end of his days that he was innocent. Niska was eventually wanted both in Sweden and Finland.
  • He was sentenced for short periods in both countries.
  • In prison he became a model prisoner and was often released early for good behavior. In 1932 Niska was exiled from Sweden and he spent time in Riga, Tallinn and Danzig.
  • He spoke at least Finnish, Swedish, German and English. In 1938, prior to World War II, Niska begun to smuggle something else — Jewish refugees from Germany to the relative neutrality of Finland.
  • His own estimate was 151 Jews.
  • He used stolen and forged passports and various devious plots to get Jews from Germany through the Netherlands and Estonia.
  • Reportedly he sometimes refused payment.
  • When his network was exposed in 1939, he fled to Estonia and found that the Soviet Union had occupied the country.
  • According to his own story, he fled back to Finland in a rowboat. Niska fought in Laatokka during the Winter War.
  • There is no clear knowledge of what he did during the Continuation War. In the mid-1940s Niska tried to finance the building of a new boat by giving interviews about his life – he needed the money and knew he could afford to ask.
  • In 1951 Niska went through surgery in Antwerpen but did not pay the bill – he was in serious debt in that time.
  • In 1953 he was diagnosed with brain tumor and lost his speech and power of movement.
  • He died on 28 May 1954.

Read more at Wikipedia

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