I know finding my topic is just the start of a long journey- and the first step is getting a wider knowledge and understanding of the events I want to explain.
I have started to read everything I can get my hands on about the Lebensbørn initiative. I’m finding the complexity of what happened hard to soak up fully, so I have made notes and created timelines to solidify my knowledge.
At the moment, my A4 folder is overflowing with colour coded, annotated notes and maps of information and places of interest. I’ve also read through the European Court of Human Right’s notes on the 2007 court case and summarized it to make sure I know what had happened to the children’s campaign for justice in recent years.
This is a short summary of what I could gather from my findings:
1. 13thSeptember 1936, Heinrich Himmler writes to members of the S.S. informing them of the Lebensbørn initiative he had formed on 12thDecember 1935. He describes the “selection and adoption of qualified children”. The initiative demands the following obligations: the support of valuable families with many children, the placement and care of valuable pregnant women, care for the children and care for the mothers. All leaders of the central bureau were to become members of the Lebensbørn organization.
2. The first Lebensbørn home opens in 1936 in Steinhøring, a village not far from Münich.
3. In 1939 there were 8,000 members of Lebensbørn, this year the Nazis also started kidnapping ‘valuable’ children from other countries and WW2 begins.
4. 1941 the first home outside of Germany opens in Norway. 8,000 children were born in Germany and 10-12,000 were born in Norway.
5. 1945 WW2 ends. In the final stages of the war, files of the kidnapped children were destroyed, as a result researchers found it almost impossible to get a solid estimate of how many were taken.
6. After the war, the branch of Lebensbørn organization operating in North-East Europe were accused of kidnapping children deemed racially valuable in order to resettle them with German families. However, of approximately 10,000 foreign-born children located after the war in the American-controlled area of Germany, in the trial of the leaders of Lebensbørn organization (United States of America vs. Ulricht Greifet et al) the court found that 340 had been handled by Lebensbørn. The accused were acquitted on charges of kidnapping. The court found ample evidence of kidnapping, but concluded that these activities were not handled by Lebensbørn members.
7. 2008, a group of survivors attempted to fight the Norwegian government into admitting complicity. Their case before the European Court of Human Rights was dismissed. The Norwegian government offered 8,000 token as good-will.
What I am finding most difficult to wrap my head around is that these children were not maltreated by the Nazi’s themselves- in fact, the Aryan children they were producing were treated as best as they could be, as they were deemed racially valuable. The abuse and neglect they faced was from local communities post-war, who saw them as painful reminders of the suffering they went through.
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