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WW2 category: Lebensborn - Nazi Master Race - Aryan race  -- See latest WWII news here.
Lebensborn (fountain of life, spring of life) was a child wellbeing and relocation program by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler to aid the racial heredity of Nazi Germany and to encourage Germans, especially SS, to have more children. See also 'HitlerJugend: Hitler Youth',   'Wartime Children'.

The tale of 12,000 blue-eyed blond kids taken by the SS to create an Aryan super-race     dailymail.co.uk :: 2009-01-10
Heinrich Himmler wanted to breed 'pure white' chickens while running a farm. After becoming the leader of the SS, he wanted to do the same with humans. SS men searched occupied lands for blond kids for the Lebensborn program, and SS officers were told to mate with suitable German girls and to father children with Scandinavian women. These Aryan babies were born into a life of privilege. They were baptised in a unique SS ceremony: Cradled beneath a SS dagger, oaths were said on their behalf promising lifelong loyalty to Nazi ideology. After the war they were hated: chained up with a dog in the yard, or thrown into the river to "see if the witch would drown or float".    

Man kidnapped by SS into the Lebensborn programme discovers his true identity     telegraph.co.uk :: 2009-01-07
Folker Heinecke spent 34 years researching his family history before discovering that two soldiers came to his village in the Crimea and seized him under the German Lebensborn (Fount of Life) programme. The Lebensborn organization, set up by SS boss Heinrich Himmler, aimed to populate the Third Reich with racially pure people. One part of the plan involved SS men mating with suitable German women. Another involved stealing kids who fitted the Nazi racial stereotype of blue-eyed, blonde, Nordic super-beings who could be Germanised. "I do not want to die unhappily, like so many Lebensborn children. Just to stand at the grave of my real mother, that will be enough."    

Lebensborn: The war children of a nazi eugenics scheme speak out     independent.co.uk :: 2008-01-20
They were the blue-eyed blonds born into an ominous SS scheme to further the Aryan race. But the defeat of the Nazi Germany left Norway's 'Lebensborn' (the spring of life) facing the payback of an entire nation. Here, 5 war children speak about their ordeal: and their fight for compensation. The Lebensborn Society was born on 12 Dec. 1935, the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler. He had planned a project to promote an "Aryan future" for the Third Reich and turn around a falling birth rate. People were given motivators to have more children in the Fatherland, and also in occupied countries, like in Scandinavia, where the Nordic gene was regarded Aryan.    

Nazi scheme to kidnap 'Aryan' children from occupied countries     dailymail.co.uk :: 2007-10-11
A book about Hitler's Lebensborn programme shows the Nazis kidnapped thousands of children from occupied countries to fill the demand for future manpower. Lebensborn, Fount of Life, is often thought to be just a breeding programme where S.S. "studs" mated with suitable female specimens and 9 months later the offspring were turned over to the state. These were supposed to grow up to be standard bearers of Hitler's "New Order." But historian Volker Koop says in "Give a Child to the Fuehrer - the Lebensborn Organisation" that the SS-run group kidnapped thousands from occupied lands and murdered those that racial "experts" deemed "unfit for Germanisation".    

A daughter for the master race - Between 2 worlds     ap.org :: 2007-05-07
On a April morning in 1944, 6yo Alodia Witaszek was combed and scrubbed, sitting in the children's home that had primed her for membership in Adolf Hitler's master race. Over the past year she had been snatched from her family, gone hungry in a camp and been beaten for speaking Polish. Now she had a German name, "Alice Wittke," and a new German mother. "Guten tag, Mutti!" she called in flawless German to the young woman approaching her. Only years later would she discover the truth: she was among 250 children seized from their families as part of a Nazi attempt to improve the Aryan gene pool in pursuit of racial purity.    

Norway: Court to Consider Compensating Nazi Lebensborn Children     associatedcontent :: 2007-04-17
In 1935, Nazi SS-leader Heinrich Himmler launched the "Lebensborn" program to breed a blond-haired blue-eyed master race. After decades of discrimination, 150 surviving Lebensborn children, all with a German father and Norwegian mother, have come forward to ask for compensation from Norway, before the European Court of Human Rights. During the years of Nazi occupation in Norway, a half million German soldiers were urged to father children with "pure blood" Norwegian women - "descendants of the Vikings" - thus, helping create a master race. In Oslo's Nazi Resistance Museum, there's no mention of the Lebensborn children - "war children".    

Norway's Aryan children go to court over years of prejudice     guardian.co.uk :: 2007-03-08
The victims of a Nazi scheme claim they were locked up in mental homes, denied education and faced decades of prejudice. Now a group of Norwegian "war children", born as part of a German plan to create a genetically pure race, are taking their case to the European court, demanding compensation and recognition of their suffering. Up to 12,000 children with a Norwegian mother and a German father were born in Norway during world war II under the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) scheme, introduced by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1935 to propagate Aryan children. Outside Nazi Germany, Norway was the jewel of the programme.    

Lebensborn program still a source of pain - Norwegian view     post-gazette :: 2006-11-26
Anne-Lise Fredriksen was walking one day when her husband told her to straighten up so her back wouldn't ache later. To his shock, she burst into tears. Her husband's remark had dredged up a far darker memory, from the time when she was a girl growing up in Norway. Because her father had been a Nazi soldier during the occupation of Norway in World War II, children threw rocks at her, adults chased her away from public gatherings. She is one of 9,000 to 12,000 Norwegian children part of the Nazis' Lebensborn program, begun by SS chief Heinrich Himmler to increase the supply of blond-haired, blue-eyed "Aryan" children.    

Lebensborn - Bred to be the elite of Hitler's 1,000-year Reich     spiegel :: 2006-11-14
After decades of silence the children of the Lebensborn program to create a master race have started to speak out. Topic number one is the search for their true parents. They were bred to be the elite of Adolf Hitler's 1,000-year Reich but ended up cowed by shame and alienation. Some 8,000 were born in Nazi Germany and 12,000 in Norway as part of Lebensborn, formed by SS leader Heinrich Himmler to encourage women of "pure blood" to bear blond, blue-eyed offspring. Guntram Weber found out that his father was an SS major-general convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in 1949. He had escaped to South America and died in 1970.    

Master race: Born under SS leader Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn     timesonline :: 2006-11-06
Christened in an SS ritual in which the SS dagger was held over them: A group representing thousands of people born under the Lebensborn programme of Heinrich Himmler met in Wernigerode to share experiences and help each other to trace their true parents - who were often committed Nazis. Most Lebensborn records were burnt at the end of the World War 2. "Many women swore the SS oath 'My honour is loyalty' which still seems to play a role in their lives. They'd rather die than tell the truth." There were 14 Lebensborn clinics, and about 8,000 children were born in Germany and 12,000 in occupied Norway.    

Build Aryan Race - Germans Tell of Secret Nazi Program     theage :: 2006-11-05
Folker Heinicke always had the feeling that something about his upbringing just wasn't right. Being raised in a German home full of wealth did not dull his notions that something was missing, but it would be decades before he would learn the truth: he was the child of a Nazi program to strengthen the German race with Aryan blood. Known as "Lebensborn Kinder" they were the product of parents chosen for their traits to breed Hitler's idealized blue-eyed, blonde-haired Aryan race. For the last four years, Heinicke and 40 other children raised in the Nazi program have met. Now for the first time, they told their stories in public.    

Norway finally forgives women who slept with Nazi soldiers     telegraph.co.uk :: 2005-10-27
Norwegian women who slept with German soldiers during the WW2 and have been denied a special pension ever since as punishment are finally to be forgiven. Known as "tysketöser", German whores, they have until now been excluded from the war pension paid to all who remained true to "good national principles" during the occupation. Now Norway's government has quietly reversed its policy of discrimination against the women and will start paying the money to the few dozen still left. "These women are no longer to be punished for the love stories of their youth that took place 60 years ago."    

Lebensborn - Nazi past haunts "Aryan" children     bbc :: 2005-06-13
Between 1935 and 1945, around 10,000 German and 9,000 Norwegian children with "Aryan" characteristics of blond hair and blue eyes were born into a Nazi-run programme called "Lebensborn" or "Fountain of Life". It was part of the Nazis' plan to create a "master race". 60 years later, many are still living with the psychological scars. Gisela Heidenreich was born out of an affair with an SS commander. Her mother also worked as a secretary for Lebensborn. Heinrich Himmler encouraged affairs between SS soldiers and Aryan women, to increase the stock of "racially valuable" Germans in response to falling birth rates.    

Lebensborn (fountain of life, spring of life) was a child wellbeing and relocation program by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler to aid the racial heredity of Nazi Germany and to encourage Germans, especially SS, to have more children. See also:
'HitlerJugend: Hitler Youth'
'Wartime Children'.

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