Das endlose Jahr: Die langsame Entdeckung der eigenen Biographie - ein Lebensbornschicksal

For a long time, Gisela Heidenreich did not know the story behind her origins and her birthplace "Oslo." The author was one of the 12,000 children born to a German father and a Norwegian mother during the German occupation of Norway (1940–1945) in one of the ten "Lebensborn" homes and for many years had no idea about the true circumstances of her birth and origins. Lebensborn e.V. was an organization, founded in 1935 by the  SS, the Nazi Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) in Nazi Germany. It pursued the goal of creating a "racially pure" and  "healthy" Aryan elite. During the early stages of the war, Lebensborn played a key role in Himmler's policy to 'germanicize' Northern and Western Europe. While the SS was establishing new units in the occupied countries, Lebensborn homes were founded (especially in Norway) in order to provide care and an ideologically sound upbringing for the children of German soldiers and foreign women. In this way Himmler hoped not only to replenish Germany's racial stock but also to draw all 'germanic' peoples into a grand alliance. Heidenreich's biography makes it "painfully" clear just how fraught the lives of these Lebensborn children or "Tyskerbarn" were, how many "nightmares and uncertainties" they endured.