A register number is all that remains of their Lebensborn childhood. Many of the Lebensborn children still feel ashamed to talk about their abuse and mistreatment. Paul Hansen broke his silence and changed his anonymous Lebensborn identity. And we had to eat and to go to the toilet in the same room", he says with bitterness. We were locked up together with mentally ill people. "I was transferred from the Lebensborn home Goodhaab into an asylum, together with some others. Most of the "Lebensborn" children are today in their 50s or 60s and are slowly coming out with their stories of mistreatment and abuse. Some of the former "Lebensborn" children say, they were tied to their beds for hours. There, the children were mistreated and abused. They were put in orphanages, some of them were send to lunatic asylums. A Norwegian commission after the war decided that the children should remain in Norway.īy now the children were looked upon as outcasts. Their mothers could not stand the shame of having been engaged to German soldiers. Ostracized and mistreated- a marred childhoodīut the fate of the children resulting from the special breeding program was at times cruel. From 1941 onwards, these "superior" children were automatically considered as being German. About 6,000 of them were born in Lebensborn institutions. A relationship with consequences: about 10,000 to 12,000 children between 19 were fathered by Germans. Around 350,000 German soldiers occupied Norway during World War II and coupled, favored by Heinrich Himmler, with Norwegian women. The majority of these homes were in Norway. Altogether, Himmler established more than 20 Lebensborn institutions. The program was also set up in other German occupied countries such as Belgium, France and Luxembourg. They could also leave their children in special homes called "Lebensborn", where the children received special nutrition and an education which reflected the Nazi way of thinking. Incentives for bearing Aryan children Image: DW-WORLDĮvery pregnant Norwegian woman who could prove her child’s Aryan ancestry was entitled to financial support or a privileged treatment in maternity homes.
The aim of the programme was to entrust leadership of Norway to these "Aryans" after the war, or to have them and their mothers move to Germany to bring more Nordic blood into the German Reich. Himmler regarded the Norwegians with their blue eyes and blond hair as especially aryan and pure. He wanted to breed what he considered racially "superior children". "Lebensborn" was a special Aryan breeding Programm established in 1935, the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Born to a German nazi officer and a Norwegian mother during the German occupation of Norway, Anni-Frid belonged to the "children of shame" – unwanted after the Germans lost the war.īeing an illegitimate child of a Nazi, her grandmother took her to Sweden to escape mistreatment - children of enemies were ostracized in post-war Norway.
Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad ,one of the singers of the former pop cult band ABBA is probably one of the most famous Lebensborn-children.
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