25-10-2006, 04:15 PM
| #2 (permalink) |
| Legendary Member   Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Windsor UK
Posts: 5,014
 | Lebensborn From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search  A Lebensborn birth house Lebensborn (Source of Life, in German) was a child welfare and relocation program initiated by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler to secure the racial heredity of the Third Reich. After the Second World War it was widely reported that the objective of the program was to establish housings where the Nazi regime would breed, through copulation, racially pure humans to create a strong race of Aryans. In reality, evidence of such plans has never been found. Content
The Lebensborn e.V. (eingetragener Verein) organization was founded on December 12, 1935. Located in Munich, the organization was partly an office within the Schutzstaffel (SS) and responsible for certain family welfare programs, and partly a society for Nazi leaders. The purpose of the program was to provide incentives to encourage Germans, especially SS members, to have more children. On September 13, 1936, Himmler wrote the following to members of SS [1]: The organization "Lebensborn e.V." serves the SS leaders in the selection and adoption of qualified children. The organization "Lebensborn e.V." is under my personal direction, is part of the race and settlement central bureau of the SS, and has the following obligations: Part of the Politics series on Nazism Nazi organizations National Socialist German Workers' Party Sturmabteilung Schutzstaffel Hitler Youth Lebensborn Nazism in history Early Nazi Timeline Hitler's rise to power Nazi Germany Night of the Long Knives Nuremberg Rallies Kristallnacht The Holocaust Nuremberg Trials Ex-Nazis and Neo-Nazism Nazi concepts Glossary of the Third Reich Hitler's political beliefs Gleichschaltung Racial policy of Nazi Germany Führerprinzip Lebensraum Positive Christianity Volk Nazi political parties and movements outside Germany Canadian National Socialist Unity Party German-American Bund Nasjonal Samling Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging National Socialist Bloc National Socialist League. Nazi Eugenics Nazi eugenics Aryan race Doctors' Trial German Blood Certificate Lebensborn Life unworthy of life Mischling Nazi physicians Nazi human experimentation Nazism and race Nordic theory Nur für Deutsche Nuremberg Trials Racial policy of Nazi Germany Racial purity Reich Citizenship Law Scientific racism T-4 Euthanasia Program Related subjects Nazism and religion Nazi mysticism Nazi architecture Hitler salute Mein Kampf Swastika Völkisch movement Anti-Semitism Führer Neo-Nazism Fascism Relevant lists Nazi Party leaders and officials Fascists Adolf Hitler books Adolf Hitler speeches SS members Living Nazis Former Nazis influential after 1945 Politics Portal v·d·e (1) aid for racially and biologically-hereditarily valuable families (2) the accommodation of racially and biologically-hereditarily valuable mothers in appropriate homes, etc. (3) care of the children of such families (4) care of the mothers It is the honorable duty of all leaders of the central bureau to become members of the organization "Lebensborn e.V.". The application for admission must be filed prior to 23/9/1936.The Lebensborn office was part of SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Office of Race and Settlement) until 1938, when it was transferred to Hauptamt Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS (Personal Staff of the Reich Leader SS), ie. directly overseen by Himmler. Leaders of Lebensborn e.V. were SS-Standartenführer Max Sollmann and SS-Oberführer Dr. Gregor Ebner. Implementation Initially the program served as a welfare institution for wives of SS officers; the organization ran facilities where these women could give birth or get help with family matters. Furthermore, the program accepted unmarried women who were either pregnant or had already given birth and were in need of aid, provided that both the woman and the father of the child were racially valuable. Parents and children were examined by SS doctors before admittance. Later such facilities also served as temporary homes, orphanages and as an adoption service. The first Lebensborn home (known as Heim Hochland) opened in 1936 in Steinhöring, a tiny village not far from Munich. The first home outside of Germany opened in Norway in 1941. While Lebensborn e.V. established facilities in several occupied countries, activities were concentrated around Germany, Norway and the occupied North-Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The main focus in occupied Norway was aiding children born by German soldiers and Norwegian mothers; in North-Eastern Europe the organization, in addition to services provided to SS members, engaged in the relocation of children, mostly orphans, to families in Germany. Lebensborn e.V. had facilities, or planned to, in the following countries (some were merely field offices):
Post-war trial After the war the branch of the Lebensborn organization operating in North-Eastern Europe was accused of kidnapping children deemed racially valuable in order to resettle them with German families. However, of approximately 10,000 foreign-born children located in the American-controlled area of Germany after the war, the Court in the trial against the leaders of the organization (United States of America v. Ulrich Greifelt, et. al.), found that only 340 had been handled by Lebensborn e.V. The accused were acquitted on charges of kidnapping. The Court did find ample evidence of an existing kidnapping/forced relocation program of children in North-Eastern Europe, but indicated that these activities were carried out by other than members of Lebensborn. Exactly how many children who were relocated by Lebensborn or other organizations remains unknown due to SS members destroying archives before fleeing advancing Allied forces. From the trial's transcript: [2] The prosecution has failed to prove with the requisite certainty the participation of Lebensborn, and the defendants connected therewith in the kidnapping program conducted by the Nazis. While the evidence has disclosed that thousands upon thousands of children were unquestionably kidnapped by other agencies or organizations and brought into Germany, the evidence has further disclosed that only a small percentage of the total number ever found their way into Lebensborn. And of this number only in isolated instances did Lebensborn take children who had a living parent. The majority of those children in any way connected with Lebensborn were orphans of ethnic Germans. As a matter of fact, it is quite clear from the evidence that Lebensborn sought to avoid taking into its homes, children who had family ties; and Lebensborn went to the extent of making extensive investigations where the records were inadequate, to establish the identity of a child and whether it had family ties. When it was discovered that the child had a living parent, Lebensborn did not proceed with an adoption, as in the case of orphans, but simply allowed the child to be placed in a German home after an investigation of the German family for the purpose of determining the good character of the family and the suitability of the family to care for and raise the child. Lebensborn made no practice of selecting and examining foreign children. In all instances where foreign children were handed over to Lebensborn by other organizations after a selection and examination, the children were given the best of care and never ill-treated in any manner. It is quite clear from the evidence that of the numerous organizations operating in Germany who were connected with foreign children brought into Germany, Lebensborn was the one organization which did everything in its power to adequately provide for the children and protect the legal interests of the children placed in its care. Upon the evidence submitted, the defendant Sollmann is found not guilty on counts one and two of the indictment.In Norway the Lebensborn organization handled approximately 250 adoptions. In most of these cases the mothers had agreed to the adoption, though not all were informed that their child would be sent to Germany. The Norwegian government brought back all but 80 of these children after the war. The Norwegian Lebensborn records are intact, the majority stored at the The National Archival Services of Norway. Last edited by Peter Clare; 25-10-2006 at 04:17 PM. |
|  |
|
25-10-2006, 06:41 PM
| #3 (permalink) |
| I Like Tanks.  Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Perfidious Albion.
Posts: 7,682
| An aunt of mine was chosen for the Aryan matching program. Her father, believing her too young at the time managed to 'get her off' using his connections as an SS Officer. She referred to it as her 'great escape' though she still married an SS Officer halfway through the war, any other kind of husband apparently being unthinkable.  Strange times. |
| |
|
04-11-2006, 03:40 PM
| #5 (permalink) |
| Senior Member   Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: New England, U.S.A.
Posts: 617
| And here's some current news on the topic. Lebensborn Children to Meet for First Time By MELISSA EDDY, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 3, 2:39 PM ET BERLIN - For decades they suffered in silence, aging Germans who as children were selected by the Nazis for their Aryan qualities and handed over to SS families. Collectively known as "Lebensborn children," some will gather publicly Saturday for the first time. Many are trying to make peace with pasts they long kept cloaked from shame. They are asking questions, tracing their roots and demanding that the truth be told about SS chief Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn, or "Source of Life," program. "It is an important issue and it is time that it finally comes to light," said 64-year-old Dagmar Jung, whose adoptive parents refused for years to answer her questions about her past as a Lebensborn child. This weekend, Jung will be in the eastern town of Wernigerode, where the Nazis ran the "Harz" Lebensborn home, for a meeting of Lebensspuren — Traces of Life — an association formed last year. For the first time, part of the session Saturday will be open to the public. Of the group's 60 members, nearly two-thirds are Lebensborn children who, now in their 60s, feel a growing need to uncover their past and break one of the last taboos about the Adolf Hitler era in Germany. Lebensborn was a lesser-known side of Nazi racial experiments. While millions of Jews and others deemed "undesirable" were being slaughtered, thousands of children were carefully selected for Aryan physical qualities and given to families of SS members to be raised. The Nazis kept the program so secret that many of those selected often do not know who they really are. Created in 1935, the program became the stuff of legend in the postwar years. Misleadingly depicted in several films as a high-end bordello offering blue-eyed blondes to SS officers with the aim of creating a master race, association with the program became doubly shameful. "To this day, many of them suffer from the consequences of secrecy and the Nazi ideologies of race," said Matthias Meissner, a Lebensspuren member. Conservative estimates put the number of Lebensborn children in Germany somewhere around 5,500, but exact numbers do not exist. "There is far too little written about it in history books and reference works," said Jung, who has spent 30 years trying to piece together her true identity. After years of urging, her adoptive father revealed clues that finally led to her birth mother, and Jung has built a relationship with her. The search for her father took several more years and ended in disappointment when Jung discovered they had lived in the same city for years but he died in 1963. In the early years, those running Lebensborn preyed on the difficult situation many unwed pregnant women found themselves in during those more conservative times. It offered them a chance to have babies in comfortable state-run homes, where the children stayed until they were adopted. Adoptive mothers and fathers were required to prove not only their Aryan qualities, but also the absence of any mental or other genetic illnesses or defects. Only about 50 percent were accepted, historians say. Lebensborn was expanded after the Nazis overran Denmark and Norway in 1940. There, German occupation soldiers were encouraged to find suitable local partners, who were offered the chance to have babies in one of 10 Lebensborn homes set up in the region. Some 8,000 children were eventually born in Norway, and thousands more were registered in Denmark. Lebensborn also operated in the occupied Netherlands. Stigmatized and reviled by their own societies as "war babies," some Lebensborn children began speaking out several years ago. In 2002, the Norwegian government offered them compensation. In Germany, the focus is more on education than on compensation, and on creating a network of support. Germans raised in the program have contacted similar groups in Denmark and Norway. "I want to give others courage," said Jung. "To send the message, no matter how old you are, it is worth it to find out where you came from." JT |
|
| |
|
04-11-2006, 10:37 PM
| #7 (permalink) |
| Legendary Member  Join Date: May 2005 Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 7,955
| Thanks for posting that Jacobtowne!
__________________ Spidge,  ------------------------------------------------------- My Avatar is the memorial to the 22 Commonwealth Coastwatchers at the Temakin Cemetery on Betio (Tarawa Atoll) who were beheaded by the Japanese on 15th October 1942. http://www.dva.gov.au/media/publicat...mem_beito.html "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." (Winston Churchill made this prophetic pronouncement in a House of Commons speech in 1938, just after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement with Hitler. Chamberlain returned from Germany with the signed agreement in hand, proclaiming that "peace in our time" had been achieved. Churchill attacked Chamberlain's "politics of appeasement" in this and many other speeches.) What did the Australians do in ww2 and other conflicts? Check out this site: http://www.diggerhistory.info/00-pag...ster-index.htm |
|
| |
|
05-11-2006, 05:00 PM
| #10 (permalink) | |
| Very Senior Member   Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 3,105
 | Quote:
Some of the stories have been described at: http://www.projectinposterum.com/docs/lucas2.htm
__________________ _______________________________________ Squadron Leader Pujji - Audio Interviews (half way down the page) | |
|
| |
 |
« Previous Thread
|
Next Thread »
| Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
Linear Mode
| |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 11:16 AM.
