"The Norwegian people feel very strongly that we're living in a democratic society, human rights, aid for the poor, and we're negotiating around the world for peace - but I know, I know the reality, I know the back side, I know that democracy is not a static situation, one has to fight every day for it." Gerd Fleischer doesn't sound bitter as she says these words. But she has every right to feel bitter. Her life hasn't been an easy one, but it has turned her into a remarkably strong woman. Abused and taunted in school, tormented by an abusive stepfather, she left her tiny northern Norwegian village when she was 13 and moved to the next village where she got herself through school and college by working any job she could get. The authorities, the school staff, the students all knew she was a child living on her own, but "no one lifted a finger to help," she says. The first bad words she remembers came from other school children when she was seven years old. They were: "German whore." "I had to go to my mother and ask her what it meant," says Gerd, trying to compose herself enough to finish the sentence, "and she told me." This is the only moment she allows herself a few tears, although her story, which unfolds over the course of the next few hours, is enough to break the staunchest heart.
'Soft occupation'
Gerd Fleischer's father was a German soldier. From 1940 till the end of the war, almost half a million German troops occupied Norway. According to some, it was a relatively "soft occupation". The Nazis, obsessed with their own ideas of racial purity, saw Norway as a pureblood Aryan land and so an edict from Heinrich Himmler himself, proclaimed that Norwegian women were to be treated "like goddesses". They were encouraged to fraternize with German soldiers, and if some of these unions bore fruit, so much the better. A series of Lebensborn homes were created throughout the country. Lebensborn literally means "the fountain of life". They were essentially refuges for single mothers and their babies. The children of German soldiers and Norwegian women were considered to be the perfect Aryans for the mighty Third Reich, and so they were very well taken care of in these homes - at least for the duration of the war. After their first months in these homes, some of these babies remained with their mothers, but many were adopted out to German or Norwegian families or sent to their German grandparents.
After the German defeat however, the lives of these Norwegian women and their children went through a drastic change. The estimated 50,000 or so Norwegian women who had participated in "horizontal collaboration" were treated very badly. Some were shipped to detention center, others went into hiding and kept their pasts hidden for the rest of their lives. And many of the 10,000 or so children born of these unions, were destined for lives of cruelty and despair.
Abandoned
Paul Hansen and Tove Laila Strand are two such examples. Paul's mother abandoned him in the Lebensborn home where he was born, and he grew up in a series of children's homes until he was four, when he was separated from the other children and placed in an adult mental institution. He would remain there until he was officially an adult. He talks of being frightened of the screaming adults and teenagers around him, of the excrement on the walls, of the total absence of touch throughout his childhood. "The staff did not abuse me, but they were just doing their jobs - I was never hugged or given any special attention," he says, his eyes never making direct contact, but always looking out into a middle distance, seeing who knows what. There was also no schooling or constructive play. At 21, he was booted out of there to make his own way in the world, with very little to equip him for it. Almost illiterate, he has worked as a cleaner for most of his adult life.
Tove Laila Strand, also born in a Lebensborn home, was a toddler when she was sent to grandparents in Germany. She remembers the love she got from them, and their collective horror when they were informed after the war that she was going to be forced back to Norway to rejoin her mother who had abused her when she was a baby. She was only six when she came back to Norway, but vividly remembers climbing out of the bus to meet her mother, her new stepfather and baby half sister. "I remember the terrible look in my mother's eyes when she saw me," says Tove Laila with difficulty, "and the man she'd married - they were both looking at me in a terrible way. That was the day hell started." Tove Laila, torn from grandparents who had loved and wanted her, arrived in a household where she was treated as a servant, with total responsibility for her baby sister. And she remembers the daily beatings. Who beat her - her mother or stepfather? "One held me down and the other beat." She was sexually molested by her stepfather, and her mother's favourite name for her eldest daughter was "German pig". Tove Laila finally escaped when she was 16 and was so frightened of the stigma of her childhood that she never talked about it to family and friends.
Brutality
Stories are now surfacing about the brutality of Norway's children's institutions during the 40's and 50's - many of which seem to have been run by sadists who routinely tortured, abused and raped the small charges in their care. I heard stories of children growing up in such places where their carers poured diesel on them, set them on fire and then urinated on them to put the fire out; children who were woken up in the middle of the night and forced to march in the cold; children who were given out to anyone who came to the institution looking for a child to take home, and then, after being sexually and physically assaulted, sent back to the home with the report that they had been bad, and then punished for it in the institution. I heard stories until I couldn't bear to hear anymore.
For most of Norway's war children, the past was a locked door for most of their adult lives. Elna Johnson was born in a Lebensborn home, and when she was two, her mother advertised in a local paper for adoptive families. The first couple who answered were given the beautiful blond girl. But when they found out that her father was a German, they sent her back to her mother with a swastika on her luggage. The next family to answer the ad was told the truth from the start and raised her with love, but they never told Elna that she was adopted. "When I was 43, I got a phone call from a woman who told me she was my mother," says Elna with a wry smile. "She told me that this little girl with the blond curls and the swastika on her rucksack had followed her through the years."
Taboo subject
For most of the war children, finding out the truth about their backgrounds, perhaps even meeting their parents, has been one of the biggest issues. Another one is to finally be able to talk about what for most of their lives was a taboo subject. "We've been harassed into silence," says Gerd Fleischer, "and its hard to understand why they hated us so much after the war that it took us 50 years for us to be able to even speak about it."
Some of the Lebensborn children have joined one of the two or three organisations that now exist where people can come together to share experiences and unburden themselves of the heavy load they've been carrying alone all these years. Some of the war children are suing the Norwegian government for compensation, saying that the government neglected to take responsibility for them after the war. The compensation issue is currently under discussion - the courts rejected original cases asking for compensation, saying the matter was too old. The Parliament has agreed, however, that war children must be compensated, but the details must still be worked out - how much money should be allocated, how should it be divided, who are the most deserving and so on. Some believe cynically that the government is dragging its heels on the matter, waiting for some of the war children to die out so the end compensation package will be smaller.
Ruined lives
Elna Johnson and Gerd Fleischer are two success stories, but many of the Lebensborn children are not. Some say that the war children have a higher ratio of suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction and unemployment than other Norwegians. "Its easy for me to say that I am stronger because of what happened to me in my childhood, but every child reacts to abuse in a different way," says Gerd Fleischer. "And some people have just never been able to live with what happened to them. Yes…" she tails off pensively, "yes, you will meet many ruined lives among these war children."
http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/features/culture...18children.html