Steve Rosenberg at the BBC:
In his tiny flat on the edge of Oslo, Paul Hansen shows me his family album. It doesn’t take long. He only has three photos.
One picture shows Paul as a toddler, the other two – the mother who abandoned him – and the father he never knew.
Paul was the product of a brief encounter between a Norwegian woman and a German soldier: a family history which was to make his life a living hell.
“At the end of World War II, I was locked away in a mental home,” Paul tells me.
“Later I found out it was because I was the son of a German soldier. They called me a ‘Nazi brat’. But it wasn’t my fault I was born this way. Hitler, the war, none of it is my fault. I was just a child.”
It was Adolf Hitler’s henchman, Heinrich Himmler, who had encouraged liaisons between German troops and Norwegian women: part of his plan to breed an Aryan master race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies for the 1,000-year Reich.
They were known as the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) children and – after the war – they became targets for revenge.
More here. [Thanks to Ruchira Paul.]