How frightening and creepy it can sound an organization which provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and single mothers, with the only goal of expanding the Aryan race? For me too much and almost impossible to understand. But it really exists and it was called the Lebensborn project or organization.
Lebensborn project that means “wellspring of life” or “fountain or life” was one of most secret and terrifying Nazi projects and it was founded by Heinrich Himmler on December 12, 1935, the same year the Nuremberg Laws outlawed intermarriage with Jews and others who were deemed inferior. Germany’s birthrate was decreasing and Himmler’s goal was to reverse the decline and increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany. Himmler encouraged SS and Wermacht officers to have children with Aryan women. He believed Lebensborn children would grow up to lead a Nazi-Aryan nation.
This society offered to young girls who were deemed “racially pure” the possibility to give birth to a child in secret. The child was then given to the SS organization which took charge in the child’s education and adoption. Both mother and father needed to pass a “racial purity” test. Of all the women who applied, only 40% passed the test and were admitted to the Lebensborn program. The majority of mothers were unmarried.
But this project became worst when Himmler issued a proclamation that every SS soldier should father a child before he left for war. The child could then be born and raised at the Lebensborn facilities. Through these policies the birth rate increased.
The Lebensborn transformed into places where “racially pure” Germen women wanted to meet and have children with SS officers. The children born were then taken by the SS. Lebensborn provided support for expectant mothers, we or unwed, by providing a home and the means to have their children in safety and comfort. The first Lebensborn home was opened in 1936 in Steinhoering, near to Munich.
But by 1939, the program had not produced the results Himmler had hoped, so he issued a direct order to all SS and police to father as many children as possible to compensate for war casualties. Luckily the order created controversy and Himmler backpedaled, but he never condemned illegitimacy outright. Himmler himself had two illegitimate children.
Lebensborn soon expanded to welcome non-German mothers. In a policy formed by Hitler in 1942, German soldiers were encouraged to fraternize with native women, with the understanding that any children they produced would be provided for.
But that was not enough, one of the most horrible side of the Lebensborn policy was the kidnapping of children “racially good” in the eastern countries after 1939, organized by the SS. They take by force children who matched the Nazis’ racial criteria (blond hair and blue or green eyes). Everything was done to force the children reject and forget their birth parents. The children who refused the Nazi education were often beaten; most of them were finally transferred to concentration camps and exterminated. The others were adopted by SS families. Thousands of children were transferred to the Lebensborn centers in order to be “Germanized.” It is known that thousand of children were not deemed "good enough" to be Germanized were simply exterminated.
After war of 250,000 children that were kidnapped and sent to Germany only 25,000 were sent back to their families. But several German families refused to give back the children they had received from the Lebensborn centers. In some cases, the children themselves refused to come back to their original family - they were victims of the Nazi propaganda and believed that they were pure Germans.
Did you know Anni Frid the famous ABBA singer was a Lebensborn child? Anni was born on, 1945 in Norway, five months after World War II end, as a result of a relationship between Synni (mother), and a married German sergeant, Alfred Haase. Anni-Frid always believed that his father had died when their boat sank back to Germany during the war. After a German magazine published the story of its origin in 1977, Anni-Frid discovered that his father never dies and she was able to meet him. Surprising isn’t it?
The racial policies of Nazi Germany, the things they made like the Lebensborn and the Holocaust, were terrifying and demented ideas that in the XXI century sound impossible and many times we don’t want to learn about them, because sometimes we have fear to face them. But these things happen. Many people got kill because of nothing. As we know Nazism ideology is mainly concentrate in racism and considered "Aryanism" as more important and claimed Aryan master race over all other races.
Many children were born and then kidnapped just because they believed that the Arian race was superior and they viewed the progress of humanity as depending on the Aryans. Imagine how many kids suffer in these places, their lives were a lie, they didn’t knew their real parents, and the most important thing they were not born from love. This is not the only horrible idea of Nazism, to maintain the purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally disabled also.
Racism is present in our times too, especially with homosexual people. Of course these measures sounds radical and exaggerated, but how many times we hear that a homosexual could not get to a restaurant or a party, anywhere, or a black child suffer from bullying at school, they are different ways of discrimination, but the point is the same. The disappearance of discrimination is very difficult to achieve, but we have the obligation to do everything possible for it to decrease. We have to teach the little ones and those around us that if someone is different don’t have to be discriminated or mistreated because finally he or she is a human being, and he deserves respect.
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By: Luciana López-Albújar
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