Hitler's Forgotten Children My Life Inside the Lebensborn Synopsis
'More than 70 years ago I was a gift for Adolf Hitler. I was stolen as a baby to be part of one of the most terrible of all Nazi experiments: Lebensborn.' The Lebensborn programme was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race, leaving behind thousands of displaced victims in the wake of the Nazi regime. In 1942 Erika, a baby girl from Sauerbrunn in Yugoslavia, was taken for a 'medical' examination by the Nazi occupiers. Declared an 'Aryan', she was removed from her mother and held in a children's home; her true identity erased, she became Ingrid von Oelhafen. Later, as Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme and the Nazi obsession with bloodlines became clear - including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her, and the deliberate murder of children born into the programme who were deemed 'substandard'.
'This is a hugely important book which anyone with an interest in the Third Reich, or who cares about the damaging impact of supremacist politics, must read.' - Louise Hector, LouiseReviews
Author
About Ingrid von Oelhafen, Tim Tate
Ingrid von Oelhafen is a former physical therapist living in Osnabruck, Germany. For more than 20 years she has been investigating her own extraordinary story and that of Lebensborn. She is in contact with other Lebensborn survivors and has been invited to give talks in schools about the programme and its effects on those who were part of it.
Tim Tate is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and author. In 2013 he produced and directed Lebensborn: Children of the Master Race, which was broadcast on Channel 5. He is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Slave Girl.
