A powerful first-person account from a child of the Lebensborn: the Nazis' program to create an Aryan master race
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. The Lebensborn program was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race. Later, as Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the scheme became clear—including the kidnapping of half a million babies like her, and the deliberate murder of children born into the program who were deemed "substandard." Her research took her to little-known records of the Nuremberg Trials, and, ultimately, to Yugoslavia, where an extraordinary discovery revealed the full truth behind her story: the Nazis had substituted "Ingrid" with another child, who had been raised as "Erika" by her family. Written with insight and compassion, this is a powerful meditation on the personal legacy of Hitler's vision, of Germany's brutal past, and of a divided Europe that for many years struggled to come to terms with its own history.