Hitler's Forgotten Children: A True Story of the Lebensborn Program and One Woman's Search for Her Real Identity

By Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate

Book Overview

Hitler's Forgotten Children is both a harrowing personal memoir and a devastating investigation into the awful crimes and monstrous scope of the Lebensborn program in World War 2. Created by Heinrich Himmler, the Lebensborn program abducted as many as half a million children from across Europe. Through a process called Germanization, they were to become the next generation of the Aryan master race in the second phase of the Final Solution. In the summer of 1942, parents across Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia were required to submit their children to medical checks designed to assess racial purity. One such child, Erika Matko, was nine months old when Nazi doctors declared her fit to be a "Child of Hitler." Taken to Germany and placed with politically vetted foster parents, Erika was renamed Ingrid von Oelhafen. Many years later, Ingrid began to uncover the truth of her identity. Though the Nazis destroyed many Lebensborn records, Ingrid unearthed rare documents, including Nuremberg trial testimony about her own abduction. Following the evidence back to her place of birth, Ingrid discovered an even more shocking secret: a woman named Erika Matko, who as an infant had been given to Ingrid's mother as a replacement child. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425283321
• ISBN13: 9780425283325
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Dutton Caliber
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Lesbenborn

Not a lot books about Germany’s Lesbenborn project but quick read

Some good information, but not a great narrative

I am a self-professed Holocaust enthusiast. I've read nearly all there is to read on the subject, and this book has some pretty good information to offer on the Lebensborn program, but it doesn't have ALL the information on it. Most of the other information that there is to be acquired on the Lebensborn program can be found in documentaries. However, this book follows one woman's search of her past, as the title suggests, but it isn't a great narrative. Either it's not written as well as it could have, or the woman's life and search was just not that interesting to make a book out of. Basically, she does not remember her childhood growing up as a perfect "Aryan" baby, but learns of her past and then dives into her own history.