Medium | Ingrid von Oelhafen (born in 1941) had a tough childhood. Her father Herman von Oelhafen was often away. Her mother Gisela was emotionally distant. Her parents sent Ingrid to the children’s home, where she grew up without true parental love.
When she was eleven years old, she found out that she was a foster child. Her actual name was Erika Matko. Her father Herman and mother Gisela were not her true parents. Her brother Dietmar was not her real brother.
When she was fifteen, she saw a Red Cross poster with her childhood image with the name Erika Matko on the streets of Hamburg. She realized she was not German.
In 1999, Red Cross contacted Ingrid, asking if she wanted to learn about her true origins. She was fifty-eight years old.
Medium | ABBA was one of the most popular music groups in history. You have probably heard at least one of their hits. For example Waterloo, SOS, or Mamma Mia. At the height of their popularity, ABBA earned more money than another Swedish trademark — automobile company Volvo.
Lebensborn means Spring of life in German. However, this word received a much more malevolent meaning in the time of Nazi Germany. The Lebensborn program was a notorious Nazi project, which tried to increase the Aryan population. They used various inhumane methods, including state-sponsored breeding and abducting of children from Nazi-occupied countries such as Poland, Russia, and Yugoslavia.
The ideal Aryan had blue eyes and blonde hair. The Scandinavians perfectly fit into this requirement. The Lebensborn program encouraged German soldiers to have relationships with Danish and Norwegian women. In Norway only, over 12,000 children were born from such relationships.
wikipedia | Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the goal of raising the birth rate of Aryan children of persons classified as 'racially pure' and 'healthy' based on Nazi racial hygiene and health ideology. Lebensborn provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of these children by likewise 'racially pure' and 'healthy' parents, particularly SS members and their families. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalised (and, more commonly, endorsed) by the Nazis for disabled and non-Germanic children, but strictly punished otherwise.
Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries with Germanic populations during the Second World War. It included the selection of 'racially worthy' orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members. It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of 'racial purity' on both sides. During the war, many children were kidnapped from their parents and judged by Aryan criteria for their suitability to be raised in Lebensborn homes, and fostering by German families.
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