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"Lebensborn" finds true identity

Discussion in 'WWII Today' started by Kai-Petri, Jan 7, 2009.

  1. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Man kidnapped by SS discovers true identity - Telegraph

    Folker Heinecke, 68, spent 34 years researching his past before discovering that two soldiers came to his village in the Russian Crimea and kidnapped him under the German Lebensborn – Fount of Life – programme.

    It was only with the opening of the world's biggest Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen two years ago that he was finally able to sift through the remaining paper pieces of the jigsaw of his life.

    He discovered that he was born Alexander Litau in Alnowa in the Crimea, now in Ukraine, before being snatched by German soldiers in the onslaught on Soviet Russia in 1942.

    The files showed that he was first taken to Lodz in Poland – the Nazis called it Littmannstadt – where SS "doctors" examined him to find out if he was "worthy" of Aryanisation.

    "The files show I was measured everywhere – head size, body size, whether I had 'Jewish Aspects' or not," he recalled.

    "Then I was declared to be capable of being Germanised and was shipped back to the Fatherland."

    The former shipping agent, who lives in Hamburg, now has one quest left in life: to discover the grave of his real mother and lay flowers on it.
     
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  2. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    Yeah, I read this one. One could imagine what his life would have been had he was not taken and grown up in the USSR. Wonder if he is thankful for that? That is the first thing that came to my mind when I read the story.
     
  3. bigfun

    bigfun Ace

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    Me too PzJgr, My first thought was what life did he leave behind when they took him?!
     
  4. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    I take it he has to be thankful he was kidnapped and found not to "look like a Jew"?

    What if the finding of the Nazi quack "anthropologists" were otherwise? Would he be offered to Dr. Mengele for his experiments to end up with a phenol injection through his heart?
     
  5. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Saddle Tramp

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    That whole "Lebensborn" plan was one twisted idea. But I guess considering it's source should be no surprise.

    Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad ,one of the singers of the former pop cult band ABBA is probably one of the most famous Lebensborn-children. 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.

    Being an illegitimate child of a Nazi, her grandmother took her to Sweden to escape mistreatment - children of enemies were ostracized in post-war Norway.

    See:

    Children of Shame – Norway’s Dark Secret | Culture & Lifestyle | Deutsche Welle | 02.12.2001

    And here is another section from a different site; "During the 12-year history of the Third Reich, roughly 10,000 infants were born in Lebensborn homes in Germany. An equal number were born in homes in Nazi-occupied Norway after the German invasion of 1940, because Himmler admired the Norwegians' "Viking blood," and encouraged procreation between German soldiers and Norwegian women. There were also Lebensborn homes in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. After the war, many of the Lebensborn children grew up scorned as Nazi progeny and tormented by dark uncertainties about their origins. Those who tried to get answers were often stymied by Germans long reluctant to confront their Nazi past. Their natural or foster parents often kept mum about the Lebensborn program; the German media didn't report on Himmler's racial experiments for decades.

    The destruction of thousands of German Lebensborn files by SS troops during the last days of World War II deepened the mystery of the children's real identities. But recently some of the 20,000 Lebensborn children have been getting answers. Last December, German TV reporters uncovered 1,000 long-unnoticed Lebensborn files at the German government archive in Berlin, and two Norwegian Lebensborn organizations are now helping many local war children trace their parents. For many Lebensborn children, the revulsion they feel as they learn more about their backgrounds often goes together with a sense of relief at assembling the missing fragments of their lives. "They have reached the end of their careers, their children are grown and they have time to think about who they really are," says Georg Lilienthal, a German scholar who in 1985 wrote the first authoritative book about Himmler's racial-engineering program. "For many it has been nothing but a black hole."

    See:

    Hitler's Children

    I too wonder what the life would have been if he had remained in the Ukraine. I wonder if it would have even continued if he had looked "less Aryan".
     

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