Free Republic

Why home doesn't matterMay 2007Judith Rich Harris The BBC series "Child of Our Time" assumes that studying children with their parents will help us understand how their personalities develop. But this is a mistake: parents influence their children mainly by passing on their genes. The biggest environmental influences on personality are those that occur outside the home During much of the 20th century, it was considered impolite and unscientific to say that genes play any role in determining people's personalities, talents or intelligence. But we're in the 21st century now, the era of the genome. So when Robert Winston informs...

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia". Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland. With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult. But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a...

Lebensborn children feel shame of 'master race' ideology Anne-Lise Fredriksen was walking on the beach one day during a Key West vacation when her husband told her to straighten up so her back wouldn't ache later. To his shock, she burst into tears. Her husband's innocent remark had dredged up a far darker memory, from the time when she was a young girl growing up in a fishing village in Norway, the child of a German father and a Norwegian mother. Because her father had been a Nazi soldier during the occupation of Norway in World War II, children threw...

WERNIGERODE, Germany -- Folker Heinicke always had the feeling that something about his upbringing just wasn't right. Being raised in a German home full of wealth and privilege did not dull his notions that something was missing, but it would be decades before he would learn the full truth: he was the child of a Nazi program to strengthen the German race with Aryan blood. He and other children -- known as "Lebensborn Kinder" or "source of life" kids -- were the product of parents chosen for their traits to breed Hitler's idealized blue-eyed, blonde-haired Aryan race. For the last...

Folker Heinicke always had the feeling that something about his upbringing just wasn't right. Being raised in a German home full of wealth and privilege did not dull his notions that something was missing, but it would be decades before he would learn the full truth: he was the child of a Nazi program to strengthen the German race with Aryan blood. He and other children — known as "Lebensborn Kinder" or "source of life" kids — were the product of parents chosen for their traits to breed Hitler's idealized blue-eyed, blonde-haired Aryan race. For the last four years, Heinicke...

Innocent Children of Hitler's Racial Master Plan Still Haunt Norway 60 Years After War's EndBy Doug Mellgren Associated Press Writer Published: Mar 12, 2005 OSLO, Norway (AP) - Gathered at the Royal Christiania Hotel overlooking rain-swept Oslo, the men and women with their name tags and windbreakers could pass for a perfectly ordinary party of over-60s on an outing. But these 30 or so Norwegians, about to set out on a day cruise, are anything but ordinary. There's Paul Hansen, who grew up in a mental home even though there was nothing wrong with him. There's Tove Laila Strand, sipping...

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...