Posted on 12/07/2002 9:32:01 PM PST by gd124
Beaten, abused and sidelined since birth because their fathers were German soldiers, justice is finally in sight for Norway's 12,000 krigens barn, or war children. The children - the offspring of Norwegian women who slept with German soldiers during the second world war - have been fighting for justice for the past 16 years and are in the process of suing the government.
Their aim has always been to receive an official acknowledgement that they endured unacceptable levels of abuse in postwar Norway while an ambivalent state looked on.
More importantly they want financial compensation to the tune of £200,000 per child, amounting to more than £2bn.
Until now the establishment has dismissed their demands but in a landmark decision the Norwegian parliament's justice committee decided to lay the ghosts of its 1940-1945 occupation to rest by ruling that the government should "make amends" by the end of next year.
Its official recommendation - which received all-party backing - is being considered by the ruling coalition.
The alleged crimes for which the state must make amends are grave: institutionalised physical and sexual abuse, systematic discrimination, the internment of 14,000 women and girls who slept with German soldiers, and the placing of the children in mental homes where they were often treated like animals.
The children, all of whom are now in their fifties and sixties, say they will only believe their quest has succeeded when they have the money in their hands.
"We are so sceptical in our genes about everything concerning the Norwegian state," said Tor Brandacher, 56, the child of an Austrian alpine fighter posted to Norway.
However he concedes that this is a major breakthrough.
"For the first time the justice committee, which is very powerful, is united. We see light at the end of the tunnel. This is very important. It's the first political statement of its kind."
Randi Spiedevold, an Oslo-based lawyer who represents the children, also believes it is a milestone. "It's a big relief for my clients. They are phoning me in tears and say they are happy that for the first time someone understands."
The Norwegian media has thrown its support behind the children too and Mr Brandacher believes that the Norwegian government will have to pay out "billions of pounds."
Many of the children had to confront another unpalatable truth: that they are the direct product of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn Aryan breeding programme.
It was supposed to supply a 1,000-year Reich with a rich pool of racially pure leaders.
Himmler ordered the German army to go forth and father as many children as it could in Norway, whose inhabitants boasted the requisite blue eyes and blond hair.
A particular admirer of "Viking blood", Himmler set up nine Lebensborn mother-and-child clinics in Norway where the offspring of German-Norwegian couplings were often brought up and Germanised.
But after the country's hated puppet government fell and the last German soldier departed, the infants became despised reminders of the occupation.
The authorities interned the mothers and threw many of the children into mental institutions or unloving foster homes.
"Nobody was older than four years old when hell began for them," Mr Brandacher said. "People suffered abuse all their life. They were called German bastards, Hitler bastards, human garbage, mentally retarded and fifth columnists. It was pure racism."
At one notorious children's home in Trysil, in southern Norway, the children were allegedly forced to endure a horrific daily regime, in which they were lashed to their beds at four in the afternoon and forced to lie still until eight the next morning.
Forbidden from using the bathroom they often soiled themselves and would lie in their own faeces until morning when they would be woken by being doused with a bucket of water. The children were force-fed, and if they threw up their meals, they were forced to eat them again.
"They were beaten, sexually abused and suffered every possible human crime," Mr Brandacher added.
Time is running out for the children; many have taken their own lives or sought solace in alcohol or drug abuse.
Mr Brandacher believes Norway has a moral duty to confront its dark past.
"A nation which doesn't see clearly what it has done in the past is doomed to do the same again," he said. "Norway will always be a fairytale country for the rest of the world but it is not."
if we keep trying to re-distribute wealth in this sad way, there will be no dollar free to spend for anyone!!
Shit happens and thats that!!
"Forbidden from using the bathroom they often soiled themselves and would lie in their own faeces until morning when they would be woken by being doused with a bucket of water. The children were force-fed, and if they threw up their meals, they were forced to eat them again."
Just thought that bore repeating. I'll never buy a product from Norway again.
True, but you never see these lawsuits/reparations against non-Western governments. Hell will freeze, for instance, before the northern Muslim Sudanese pay reparations to the southern Christian Sudanese that they are currently enslaving and or murdering. It's a guilt game only for those countries that are expected to feel guilt. A leech game. The non-Western countries are invulnerable to guilt, that's only for Western countries because there's no money to be gained by lawsuits against non-Western countries. Just ask the babies born nine months after Pakistan invaded Bangladesh.
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