Children Of German / Allied Fathers?

Discussion in 'Others' started by isaplesner, Jul 20, 2005.

  1. isaplesner

    isaplesner Junior Member

    Hello

    My name is Isa and I would very much like to find out more about children of German or Allied soldiers. A friend of mine is the son of a Danish mother and German father and he got me interested in this subject.

    In Denmark alone, 6500 children were left behind by their German fathers. This fact has made me curious about how many were left behind in the rest of Europe. I'm sure it must be a staggering amount.

    My friend was raised by his mom alone which cannot have been an easy task, especially not in the conservative post WW2 years. I can imagine how hard it must have been being a single mother in those days, not to mention how people treated someone who had slept with the enemy.

    His mother was publicly humiliated after the liberation. Her hair was cut off and she was made to run naked through the streets by a rallying crowd as punishment for her crime - falling in love for what in her young eyes happened to be an enemy soldier. She was 17 years old when she became pregnant.

    My friend only found out about this after his mother's death when his auntie told him. This had been the most traumatic experience in his mother's life and she took it with her to her grave, never mentioning it to anyone again.

    I am wondering if perhaps anyone reading this would know more about this subject. Perhaps you know someone who went though the same? I would very much appreciate any help I can possibly get. Thanks
     
  2. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

  3. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    The issue of the fate of children during the war is one of the most tragic aspects of the whole conflict. I'm reading a book called Witnesses of War by Nicholas Stargardt which chronicles the tales of Children of the Third Reich. he touches on stories about Hitler Youth, Gypsy Children, Poles and Jews alike. It is well worth lreading.

    Seemingly there were thousands of children all over Europe who lost contact with their fathers at the end of the war. Most of these children suffered terrible humiliation as did their Mothers, because of the association with the occupying forces. Most of the Fathers didnt want to know these children either, either to the fqact that they already had families in Germany or to shame.

    One of the most famous of these children is Frieda from the Swedish Pop Group ABBA. Her mother was Norwegian and Frieda was the child of an affair her mother had with a German Soldier. Her mother was forced to flee to Sweden after the war and the father wouldnt acknowledge his daughter.
     
  4. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Originally posted by Gotthard Heinrici@Jul 20 2005, 08:56 PM
    The issue of the fate of children during the war is one of the most tragic aspects of the whole conflict. I'm reading a book called Witnesses of War by Nicholas Stargardt which chronicles the tales of Children of the Third Reich. he touches on stories about Hitler Youth, Gypsy Children, Poles and Jews alike. It is well worth lreading.

    Seemingly there were thousands of children all over Europe who lost contact with their fathers at the end of the war. Most of these children suffered terrible humiliation as did their Mothers, because of the association with the occupying forces. Most of the Fathers didnt want to know these children either, either to the fqact that they already had families in Germany or to shame.

    One of the most famous of these children is Frieda from the Swedish Pop Group ABBA. Her mother was Norwegian and Frieda was the child of an affair her mother had with a German Soldier. Her mother was forced to flee to Sweden after the war and the father wouldnt acknowledge his daughter.
    [post=36665]Quoted post[/post]


    Certainly the "WAR" did not end in 1945!
     
  5. seven4eight

    seven4eight Junior Member

    hello Isaplesner,
    my father was from the ukraine, when war started he was 16 years old, i do not know the dates but at some point during the war he had to leave home due to the russians invading and because a lot of ukrainians were on the side of the germans the russians were killing them. my father then fought with the germans until his capture by the british in the west. he came to england as a POW and was released at the wars end. he could not return to the ukraine as it was now under soviet rule so stayed in the uk. he met and married my mother (who is english) and they had eight children ( i am second youngest). My mothers family disowned her for going with an ex POW and i can remember my father had problems getting such things as a doctor or dentist, when i was at school i was taunted by the other kids and called a nazi, sometimes the kids would do hitler impressions to me. i got in a lot of fights at school and eventually i was thrown out of school and put in a care home 100 miles from home (i was 13).....i am proud to be british but have never really felt that i belong, i have a ukrainian name and even today i still get people making jokes about my name. sorry if this is not exactly the type of story you were looking for, but for the first time in years i have got it off my chest to someone.......thanks
     
  6. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    Hi Seven4eight,

    What year were you born?

    You now live in Ipswich, where did you spend your childhood?

    Was this a general attitude to Eastern European named children or just to you as someone knew your fathers background?

    I am from Australia and was born in 1952.

    We had a huge influx of Eastern European's as well as Italians, Greeks, Germans, Macedonians, Hungarians, Yugoslavians, Jews, Chinese (the latter had been here forever however their numbers increased dramatically after the war) etc, from the late 40's onwards and yes many people from the Baltic states.

    There was a certain amount of hatred, racism & discrimination by a small amount of the population in the early days, however the people and their cultures were accepted by most before the turn of the 70's.

    Australia in general and particularly Victoria, has a huge multicultural society which is welcomed and has enriched this country.

    Modern Australia is home to people from a wide diversity of cultures. According to the results of the 2001 census there are more than 200 different languages spoken in Australia, with 16% of the population speaking a language other than English at home. The most common of these are Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Arabic and Vietnamese.

    My wife who passed away a few years ago was born in England (Bow) of Italian - Greek - Maltese extraction from Egypt.

    While her parents found it difficult due to the language barrier, they seemed to assimilate very well.

    I am truly sad that you had to go through such prejudice and hope that your present life is fulfilling and not still filled with animosity. Equally, I hope you have learnt to forgive those small minded and hurtful people who made your early life miserable.

    Children in any country can be cruel. Hopefully in this new millennium with better educated "teachers" and children, we will hopefully become a more tolerant society.

    Geoff
     
  7. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    Moderator action: The original topic was posted twice on different forums. I have moved one of them onto this forum and merged the topics.

    seven4eight, describes a very personal experience as the son of a German POW/Ukrainian refugee in post-war Britain.

    I knew a Ukrainian woman who went to Germany to work in WWII and then came to Britain. She was frankly not backward, even as an elderly woman in her 80s, in expressing her admiration of the Nazis and Nazi Germany and as a result was harassed by youths in her neighbourhood even as late as 1999 - because they thought she was a German and a Nazi.

    I also know the son of a German POW who married and settled in Britain, but whose name, while obviously not of British origin, is not obviously German either. I don't think he ever experienced any particular problems.

    The third person I have known who comes to mind was a German man who married a British woman and came to live in Britain. His father was killed on the Eastern Front, but he refused point blank to hold any animosity towards the Red Army. If he was bitter about anything, it was because his mother was left to raise him and his brother alone, but he did not blame the Soviet Union for the war.

    All these come within a range of experiences, as does seven4eight's story, of living in post-war Britain.

    On the other hand, isaplenser's story is very typical of many other examples of how women who had taken part in "horizontal collaboration" (French origin) were treated in Europe in the immediate period after the liberation. In the Channel islands, for instance, some of these women were known as "Jerrybags" for decades and some of those who survive may well be still, at least between elderly people who remember the occupation.

    In other words, what happened in this case fits into a well documented range behaviours in western Europe in 1944/45.

    I imagine that the number of cases of "horizontal collaboration" were relatively high in somewhere like Denmark, compared to somewhere like Poland, where the Nazis behaved like out and out savages, but it would be interesting to know more about how the Poles dealt with it.

    And, of course - I am thinking of France here in particular - taking part in reprisals during the epuration sauvage of the immediate post-liberation was a good way for people who had frankly done very little to establish sound resistance credentials. The politics and emotions of immediate post-liberation Europe were certainly complicated!

    WWII left possibly millions of children to be raised by their widowed mothers - and widowed fathers too - plus orphan children all across Europe. Compared with them, I don't think there was much sympathy left for single women who had had affairs and got pregnant, irresepctive of who the father was. But women who had slept with the enemy could expect least sympathy of all.
     
  8. GUMALANGI

    GUMALANGI Senior Member

    I noticed,..

    European countries seems hard to cope with the assimilation with their new ruler, as they sees it as treachery or collaboration. Some people disagree with me, but i really cant see what love got to do with nationalism. Those young germans soldiers were young, perhaps handsome and (some)symphatetyc as well, not all of them were nazi terror machine, it is like everybody else when they posted outside their countries, they can be interested on local beauties too.

    In the other hand, some if not most of asian countries able to see between personal and national issues. It is very common to see a mixed-breed of natives to Dutch, Portuguese, or even (very rarely) japanese. Some even created their own community, as Eurosian in Malacca (malaysia) or 'indo' people for indonesian mixed with western, this really has no effect during and after the struggle for indepence for the Indonesian. And we do respect their decision, in the even they intend to choose the ruler countries as they countries, in the case of indonesia, it is netherland, and hardly we harassed them.

    regards
     
  9. isaplesner

    isaplesner Junior Member

    Hello :)

    Thanks for the interesting links and answers. That was very helpful!
     
  10. jmacleve

    jmacleve Junior Member

    I hope this isn't too off topic. I wondered if it was possible during/after WWII for individual (US) Army personnel to adopt orphans? Or was it preferred to leave the children in whatever facilities their native countries were able to provide? Would it make any difference if the person was (for instance) Quebecois or Cajun, if the orphan was French?

    Thanks for any info.

    Janet Aldrich
    (father George Lingel was TEC4, 93rd Signal Battalion, Company C)
     
  11. Joefraser

    Joefraser Junior Member

    Hi,
    Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad formally with the pop group Abba is an example of a child born to a German father and Norwegian mother.
    Frida was born in Bjørkåsen, a small village Ballangen, near Narvik, in the north of Norway, as a result of a liaison between 19-year-old Synni Lyngstad (19 June 1926 - 28 September 1947), and a (married) German officer, Alfred Haase (born 1919), just before the end of the Second World War and the German occupation of Norway. Lyngstad's father returned to Germany when his troops were evacuated.
    In early 1947, Lyngstad, her mother, and her maternal grandmother, Arntine Lyngstad, left her birthplace because of fear of reprisals against those who had dealings with the Germans during the occupation. This could entail not just insults, but also forced separation of infants from their parents and relatives.
    Frida was taken by her grandmother across the border to Sweden and eventually south to the city of Torshälla, (near Eskilstuna). Her mother stayed behind in Norway and worked for a period in the south of the country, but then became ill and travelled to Sweden to be with her mother and daughter. Synni Lyngstad died from kidney disease soon afterwards, aged 21. Lyngstad was raised by her grandmother alone. However, close contact with her family in Norway continued, and Lyngstad recalls with warmth summer holidays spent with them at her birthplace.
    Frida believed that her father had died during the war on his way back to Germany as his ship was reported to have sunk. However, in 1977, the German teen magazine Bravo published a poster and a complete biography with details of Frida's background, including the names of her father and mother. It was seen by Frida's German half-brother, who went to his father Alfred Haase and asked him if he had been in Ballangen during the war. A few months later, Frida met Haase in Stockholm for the first time.
     
  12. peaceful

    peaceful Senior Member

    Just want to express my sympathy for you as a child Islapesner to have to go through this horrible bullying to the extreme. No child should be treated with such cruelty. I hope at least some of these wounds are healed. Scars never go away.

    peaceful
     
  13. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Peaceful,

    Islapesner made only three posts and has not been active as the record shows:

    Last Activity: 08-08-2005 09:15 AM

    I agree with your sentiments.

    Regards
    Tom
     

Share This Page