DOC Race and Immigration in the United States: New Histories (Rewriting Histories) by Paul Spickard in History

Description

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. 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.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS