http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBH7SN686E.htmlInnocent Children of Hitler's Racial Master Plan Still Haunt Norway 60 Years After War's End
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 a drink and looking as fragile as the single orange zinnia on her table. Her parents used to beat her with a clothes hanger.
Downstairs in the lobby, Hugo Frebel, a large, amiable 62-year-old, starts to tell his story, then lowers his voice and glances around. "People are listening," he says, and leads his guest upstairs to the company of the few people who can possibly understand what he has been through - the League Lebensborn of Norwegian Children of War.
Of all the victims of World War II who still gnaw at Europe's conscience, these are the last and in many ways the saddest. They are the children born of Hitler's dream of breeding a master race by pairing German soldiers with north European women deemed to meet the blond, fair-skinned "Aryan ideal."
Their parentage condemned many of them to the margins of society. It denied them an education or cost them their marriages. Only now, as the 60th anniversary of the war's end approaches, is the government offering them a measure of compensation.
"I was a German baby. Worse than an insect," Frebel recalls. "They threw stones at us. In the winter, we had to shovel snow out of the living room because people had broken the windows with rocks."
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Guess whats going to happen to children born of American fathers and Iraqi women in a few years. Here is a hint.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/peopleevents/p_gis.html
<snip>Many GIs formed relationships with Vietnamese women. The women worked at military bases as cashiers, waitresses, laundresses, and secretaries. It's not surprising that many thousands of young American men who were far from home looked for female companionship. Whether they sought sex, comfort, friendship, or mothering, there were a lot of needs on all sides. The women were often struggling to survive while their husbands, boyfriends, fathers or brothers were away fighting. Despite these women's dire situations, many of their fellow countrymen looked down on them for entering relationships with Americans. Vietnamese public opinion considered them no better than prostitutes.
Vietnamese women often lived with their American boyfriends, and referred to them as "husbands," regardless of their actual marital status. Relationships usually ended when the soldier had finished his tour of duty and went home. Some men left without telling their Vietnamese girlfriends. Others made promises they never kept. Some men married their girlfriends, or at least proposed to them. Once back home, the men faced bureaucratic hurdles trying to bring their girlfriends or wives to the United States. Saigon fell to the Communists before some of them could finish the paperwork, trapping their women in Vietnam. In other cases, women refused to go to the States, either because they did not want to leave their country, or because they had family obligations keeping them in Vietnam.
Mai Thi Kim, Heidi Bub's mother, had an affair with a naval officer who promised to help her struggling family. "I had sacrificed for my children, for food and clothes," Kim said. "Because my husband left without saying anything." Kim knew the American was going to leave, but did not know the exact date. When she found out he was gone, she was four months pregnant with his child. A friend of his comforted her, saying that the boyfriend had not wanted to make her cry. The friend took Kim to her boyfriend's room, and told her she was welcome to any possessions he had left behind. When Kim saw that her boyfriend had not taken her picture with him, she still believed he loved her, but she understood that he had a wife and that she wouldn't be hearing from him again. She left the room carrying the photograph with her.
Vietnamese women who had American boyfriends or had borne a child of an American suffered from their society's disapproval. They might be beaten or rejected by their parents, and most Vietnamese men would not even consider marrying them. Mai Thi Kim said, " When you gave birth to a mixed kid, in the countryside, they hold many prejudice against you... I was very bitter and shameful when they looked down on me that way."
Bi-racial children were called "con lai" (half-breed) or "bui doi" (the dust of life). Contrary to their mothers' fears, the Communists did not hurt Amerasian children after the fall of Saigon. In fact, there was no official national policy of persecution or discrimination. Years later, Kim's husband, Do Huu Vinh, explained that he would have accepted Kim's mixed-race daughter if she had been there when he returned to Danang. He said, "I would have raised her as my own child. We fought against adults. She was only a child."
The greatest cause of discrimination towards Amerasians came from Vietnamese societal attitudes. Mixed-race children were often so horribly tormented by their peers that many did not attend school. The more Caucasian or African American they looked, the more severely they were harassed. Faced with these pressures, many mothers abandoned their Amerasian children. Some were accepted into orphanages, while some became street kids, pursuing criminal activities to survive.
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