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History’s Out of the Ordinary Radicals

Khalid Elhassan June 29, 2020 33 min

Lebensborn - Schutzstaffel — Kidnapping of Polish children for the Lebensborn association. Wikimedia

16. Establishing Human Breeding Facilities Across Europe

An SS human selective breeding birth house. Bundesarchiv Bild

The Lebensborn association expanded its operations from Germany to much of occupied Europe, to help breed the “Master Race” with local “racially valuable” women. Eventually, the association had facilities in Germany, Austria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and France. Breeding and birthing homes were set up in former facilities for the elderly or disabled, or in houses confiscated from Jews.

There, the mothers recuperated after giving birth. Some kept their children, while other mothers left them in the care of the association, until a “good” German family was found to adopt them. The association thus enabled unmarried pregnant women – provided they and the man who had impregnated them were “racially valuable” – to avoid the social stigma of illegitimacy by giving birth anonymously.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.