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Children of the Enemy:

Norway’s Lebensborn Survivors

Teresa Wilder

TexasA&MUniversity—Texarkana

History 501

Dr. Michael Perri

8 May 2008

This paper will explore one facet of the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s unique genetic experiment by examining the treatment of Lebensborn children growing up in post-war Norway. It will consider the long-term damage they have suffered due to their treatment by their own countrymen; and their continuing—and thus far unsuccessful—efforts to force the government of Norway to officially admit its responsibility for the abuses they suffered.

The story of Nazi Germany’s negative population policy—with its stated goals of exterminating eleven million Jews, thirty million Slavs, and several million other assorted undesirables; plus deporting an estimated seventy million “sub-humans” to Siberia, Africa, and Latin America by 1980--is well documented and well known.[1] However, this negative policy was only one half of a two-pronged attack on the populations of Europe, for it was balanced by the Third Reich’s equally well-documented, but much less widely known, positive population policy—a policy intended to repopulate an expanded Germany with pure Aryan bloodlines.

Heinrich Himmler, architect of much of the Nazi genetic engineering program, had set a goal of fillingGermany and its expanded lands (the Lebensraum) with two hundred million Aryan Germans to replace those “unworthy of life.” His plans included kidnapping children of Aryan appearance from conquered areas—in particular Poland. Those who passed racial inspection would be offered for adoption by genetically-approved German couples. He also wanted to increase the birth rate of Aryan children within Germany, which had seen birth rates drop during the twentieth century. To this end, abortion (common during and following the Great Depression) was strictly forbidden, monetary and honorary rewards for large families were written into law, and vigorous propaganda campaigns aimed at removing the social and religious stigma of illegitimate birth were instituted. Schutzstaffel (SS) men, as prime genetic stock, were ordered to father a minimum of four children each with suitably Aryan women.

Germany’s system of maternity homes was expanded, and became part of the new Lebensborn (fountain or wellspring of life) Society. Young women could give birth secretly and without censure in these homes. While there, the mothers received ample and nutritious foods, even when the rest of Germany was suffering rationing and privation. The women were promised that the German government would provide them with job opportunities and other benefits upon leaving the homes. They were also told that the children they produced would be provided for and educated by the state.

Looking beyond Germany’s borders, Himmler saw the Scandinavian countries as a great reservoir of Nordic blood available for transfusion into the new German population. The pseudo-Nordic mythology of Nazism made the populations of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Holland—believed to be descendents of the Vikings—particularly desirable for building up Germanic warrior-stock.

Lebensborn homes were planned for these countries in order to take advantage of this source of suitable genetic material. Success varied. They were never established in Denmark, and had only limited success in Sweden and the other countries. In Norway, however, these homes flourished, and in the five years preceding Germany’s defeat by the Allies an estimated ten to twelve thousand children were fathered by German men and born to Norwegian mothers.

After 13 September 1936, the newly expanded Lebensborn program was under the direction of the SS—which from that point on discreetly referred to Lebensborn in its documents as the “L office”. Heinrich Himmler was its direct supervisor. He maintained an obsessive interest in this method of creating valuable humans for population growth,even while busily overseeing the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen death squads which were carrying out the negative portion of his population policy. He insisted that babies born in the homes be given a Nazi parody of baptism, in which a dagger was held over their bodies and the mothers were required to swear allegiance to Hitler. Himmler sometimes attended these naming ceremonies, and in fact, was so enthusiastic about the program that he personally served as godfather for any Lebensborn infant who happened to be born on 7 October, his birthday.[2]

The first Norwegian home opened in April 1942, and soon nine others were operating in villas and hotels which had been commandeered from private ownership.[3] The homes were soon filled to capacity with babies and young mothers, in contrast to those in other Scandinavian countries. In part, this was because Quislling’s collaborationist government[4] signed agreements with Nazi Germany and passed laws making parents unable to forbid their underage daughters to marry or to leave home without parental permission. Children born to Norwegian women and German fathers could receive German—instead of Norwegian—citizenship under the new laws. This ensured that the infants could be easily removed to Germany for adoption—with or without their mothers, or their mothers’ consent. In addition, women of Aryan appearance were encouraged to relocate to Germany, and bear more children. In some cases, German women traveled to Norway to give birth in the homes there, farther from the dangers of Allied bombing.[5]

Although the plan was for Norwegian-born babies to be adopted by suitable families inside Germany, documents show that only about 250 of the Norwegian-born babies were actually sent there. Of those, some died in transit. The vast majority of them remained in Norway; and some of those who were sent to Germany were located by Allied relief agencies after the war’s end and returned to Norway. Thus, thousands of krigsbarn or war children (most of them under the age of five) were living in Norway when the collapse of Nazi Germany ended its control of their native country and negated the safety and support which had been promised to the Lebensborn mothers and babies by Himmler, the SS, and Hitler’s government.[6]

It seems a given that innocent children would have no need to fear retribution and cruelty in a newly liberated Allied country. Unfortunately, this was not the case. These thousands of children, abandoned by the Nazis, were not rescued and nurtured by their own countrymen as justice would demand. Instead, ironically, many of them were abused by their own families, schoolmates, and even government representatives--who saw them as shameful proof of Norway’s cooperation with Nazi Germany. As they grew up in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s most suffered pitiless discrimination as “children of the enemy.”[7] Their brutal treatment was sometimes not much different from that suffered by children in the Eastern countries over-run by Nazi Germany.

That fact is documentedby the accounts of aging krigsbarn or war children (as they refer to themselves) who have recently begun to speak openly of their experiences and to trace their long-hidden genealogies. As these Lebensborn survivors near retirement age, a number have begun to share their stories publicly. Like some of the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust who feel compelled to record their stories before they die or become incapacitated by age, a few of the adult children of Lebensborn also feel the need to make the world aware of the injustice that shaped their lives. Rather than sublimate their memories, they choose to remember--as an almost sacramental act; and as a caution against history repeating itself.

Violette Wallenborn, the child of a Norwegian singer and a Nazi choir director, sums up this feeling of urgency: “We need to find the courage to publicly tell our stories as long as we are still alive.”[8] The consequences of Norway’s participation in Lebensborn, and the prejudice and intolerance which followed, are best described in the words and memories of its innocent victims. Here are some of their stories.

Gerd Fleischer’s mother had a love affair with a young German officer who wanted to marry her when she became pregnant. They were not allowed to marry, however, once her Nazi-required genetic examination showed that she was part Sami (Lapp). This fact also disqualified her from receiving continued benefits from the Lebensborn program. Thus, Gerd and her mother were left to live among family in their native village, where she had a relatively normal childhood until the end of the war.[9]

With liberation came a great nation-wide revulsion for Germany and all things German. When Gerd entered elementary school at age seven, other children called her tyskerhore--German whore. She remembers going home and asking her mother what the word meant: “It was the first bad word I learned in Norwegian.” She was frequently a victim of beatings and bullying at school:“I learned very soon that there was something very wrong with me,

basically wrong with my blood. I was the child of the hated.” Home, however, remained a refuge from the enmity she encountered at school—until her mother married. Her new step-father had been a resistance fighter and was a bitter angry man who despised all that his half-German step-daughter symbolized. “A Norwegian patriot who hated me” is Gerd’s description of him.

The young girl withstood the rejection and beatings at home until age thirteen, when she ran away. She never returned home. She lived on the streets at times but somehow managed to make a scanty living and put herself through school. She says that Norway’s social welfare organizations were aware of her situation but did not help. She finished school at seventeen, left Norway, and did not return until she was 35 years old. “I knew that if I was to become a whole person, I had to leave the country.”[10]

Two major turning-points of Gerd’s life came during those expatriate years. First, she traveled to Germany and located her birth father. He had married a woman who “was the spitting image” of her mother, had fathered a German family, and denied knowing her or her mother. Ms. Fleischer believes that her healing process began when she took her father to court and successfully forced him to recognize his paternity.

Secondly, while living in Mexico, Gerd rescued two young street children; and when she finally returned to Norway she took her two foster sons with her. Perhaps she had seen the suffering of her own childhood in them, and was determined to give them a chance at a decent life. In any case, her desire to help others who had suffered like herself had crystallized; for by the time she moved back to Norway, Gerd Fleischer was also determined to do what she could to seek justice for all of Norway’s ill-treated war children. She began reaching out to other krigsbarn, and encouraging them to give up the secrecy which had been forced upon them.

Gerd Fleischer was—and is—active in the organizations formed to accuse the Norwegian government of neglect, lack of protection from abuse, and active attempts to conceal the existence of the “war children.” In the past decades, she has offered support to many other war children as they began to trace their family roots and seek legal redress.

One of those adult war children is Paul Hansen. He was profoundly harmed by the government’s attempts at concealment and denial, for he was one of the hundreds of children hidden away in institutions. Most were placed in orphanages or foster homes, but Hansen was among those committed to mental hospitals. Hansen’s mother had had a brief affair with a Luftwaffe pilot and had given her baby up at birth. He was three and still living in the same Lebensborn home where he had been born, awaiting adoption, when the war ended.

These unfortunate ones like Paul Hansen—children living in groups in the Lebensborn homes, not with their mothers or maternal relatives—were wards of Nazi Germany. Hitler’s German state and the SS (entities which no longer existed) had been their sole guardians. Now they had no parents, legal guardians, nor extended families to question the disposal of their persons. Thus, many of them soon vanished into a shadowy existence, shielded from public scrutiny.

Paul was four years old when he was placed in the locked ward of a mental institution. There he was surrounded by profoundly disturbed adults and children who were incontinent, unable to feed themselves, or even speak. He was insulted and beaten by guards, and slept in feces-spattered dormitories where he was often awakened at night by the screams of psychotic patients. He received no affection, and no opportunities for normal childhood play. He would tell the employees, “I’m not insane. Let me out.” No one listened. He remained there until he was twenty-two years old.[11] During those years he was never tested or diagnosed with any disability. He received no education, so, upon his eventual release in 1965[12] the only work for which he was qualified was unskilled menial labor such as cleaning and janitorial services.

Today Paul Hansen is nearing retirement age and still works as a janitor at a university. He has become outspoken about Norway’s treatment of its war children, and he becomes emotional when retelling the story of his childhood. “Why the hell did they send us there?” he concluded a 2005 interview with the Seattle Times. “What did we do wrong?”[13] Hansen was part of the first group of war children to file suit against Norway in 2001.

Harriet von Nickel, born in Oslo, was raised by foster parents who “took every opportunity to beat the German out of me.” Her foster father often locked her up with a dog chain.[14] She says she was always an outcast in her village, considered fair game for those who thought of her as rubbish left behind by the Germans. “Drunken fishermen grabbed me when I was little and carved a swastika on my forehead with a rusty nail.”[15]

Many of the krigsbarn recall other children throwing rocks at them and adults chasing them away from public gatherings. Anne-Lise Fredriksen says she always used to walk bent over to try to avoid attracting such attentions. Every time that one particular woman in her small fishing village spotted her she would shout, “Straighten up! I can see you, you German kid!” Anne-Lise soon developed a form of anorexia. She explains, “I didn’t eat because I wanted to be so skinny no one would see me.”[16]

One of the best-known of the war children is Anni-Frid Synni “Frida” Lyngstad, a member of the 1970s Swedish rock band ABBA. She is the product of a liason between her teen-aged mother, Synni, and a young German sergeant. The soldier was transferredfrom the small northern town before learning of the pregnancy; and Frida’s mother and grandmother were so badly treated by their acquaintances that they chose to immigrate to Sweden when the child was eighteen months old. Being raised outside of Norway did not completely insulate Lyngstad from stigma, but it spared her the worst of the abuses suffered by those who stayed.[17]

A man from Romsdal, in the mountains of Norway, chose to tell his story to a Norwegian magazine, but did not allow his name to be published. He says he was shuffled between at least twenty different orphanages in the years following the war. He remembers being locked in closets because he “stank” like a German, having his skin scrubbed raw with ammonia, and raped by some of the older boys—with a teacher’s knowledge and approval.

Another child, Tove Laila, was one year old when her father was killed in action, and the SS sent her from her birthplace in Norway to the home of her paternal grandparents in Eberswalde in eastern Germany. Ms. Laila remembers her time there as “the happiest period in my life.” It did not last long. In 1947, when she was six years old, a repatriation agreement between the Allies and the Norwegian government sent Tove back to her birth mother in Norway. The little girl spoke no Norwegian, was not wanted by her mother, and was beaten by her step-father when she spoke any German word. Eventually, he would also sexually abuse her.

Gerd Synnove Andersen was also returned to an unwelcoming mother, who placed the girl in an orphanage. Andersen states that she was beaten many times, and in sixth grade was sexually molested by her teacher. Once, orphanage employees locked Gerd and a little boy inside a stone pig sty for an entire day, and then mocked them for their “German stink.” They washed her with scaldingly hot water while telling her that it was the only way to wash “German children with greasy hair.” As an adolescent, she was involuntarily sterilized upon the recommendation of a pastor from the state church.[18]