There was a program on the History Channel about this and they talked to some of the children ...... some were adopted by German officers and some were just abandoned .... but all of them only found out when they were in their 50'and 60's !! This was one of the most bizarre experiments of the SS. Sponsored by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, his idea was to breed a race of super pure blooded Nordics. Tall, fair haired and blue eyed men and women, who were near perfect physical specimens, were chosen. Nursing homes were set up (mostly properties confiscated from Jews and maintained with the money from their bank accounts) to accommodate the mothers until their babies were born. They could then keep their babies or put the child up for adoption in a one hundred per cent Nazi non-Catholic family. The first home opened was at STEINHORING near Munich, on December 12, 1935. It was a place that offered an attractive alternative to a hospital birth to many women, especially single ones. The Lebensborn homes offered unwed mothers a place to go have their baby in secret, in pleasant surroundings, with top-notch pre-natal care. "We were treated like princesses," remarked one girl who brought her baby into the world at one of these homes. About 75 per cent of these girls came from the BDM or the Reich Labour Service. A number of children were born disabled and were dispatched to euthanasia clinics where they were either poisoned or gassed. Later, others were established at WERNIGERODE, at ACHERN (Baden) at KLOSTERHEIDE (Berlin) at BAD POLZIN (Pomerania) at WEINERWALD (Vienna) at VEGIMONT (Belgium) and in February, 1944, the home at LAMORLAYE, near Chantilly, was opened and reserved for the children of German officers and French mothers. The number of children born in these homes is not known, as records were destroyed at the end of the war. However, one set of registers was found intact and showed that more than 2,000 births were registered at Steinhoring. In the ten homes set up in Germany and other countries in Europe, it is now estimated that between six and seven thousand babies were delivered. After the D-day landings all the children born in these homes were evacuated to Bavaria to the Steinhoring Home. In an atmosphere of total panic the Lebensborn homes in Belgium, Holland, France and Luxembourg were abandoned. By 1946 these 'orphans of shame' were left to their fate and entrusted to anyone willing to take care of them. Lesser Known Facts of WWII - More Lesser-Known Facts of WWII
Anni Fried/Frid Lyngstad from ABBA was one of these children ! ABBA's Nazi Connection? - Associated Content
GHDI - Image Room for Newborns in the "Lebensborn" Association Maternity Home in Steinhoring (Upper Bavaria) (1938)
