Norway to pay for lost years of war children

Norway's powerful Justice Committee has ordered the government to compensate thousands of people, many of whom were locked up in lunatic asylums because they were the children of Norwegian mothers and German soldiers.

A statement from the committee said the government should quickly draw up a compensation scheme for an estimated 10,000 claimants.

"The Justice Committee statement has shown us an exit sign from the tunnel of darkness in which we have moved for over 50 years," said Thor Brandacher, chairman and spokesman for the Lebensborn Committee, and the son of a Norwegian mother and Austrian father.

The committee's decision comes as the Norwegian Supreme Court prepares to issue a verdict in December in an appeal case brought by 17 so-called Lebensborn children against the Norwegian government for gross abuse at the hands of the state.

The case has been thrown out in two earlier courts, which ruled that such cases all fell under the statute of limitations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/1414838/Norway-to-pay...


"There are still hundreds of 80-year-old women in Norway wondering where their kids went in 1945 - they never saw them again," said Mr Brandacher. "Their children were put in 200 institutions as well as being sent round for adoption in so-called good Christian homes.

"But the Christianity in these homes did not exist - at least not what we call Christianity. The stories are brutal and grotesque. Every possible crime the human race can do was done to innocent kids after 1945 in Norway," he added. Many of the Lebensborn children claim that they were sexually abused, beaten, mass raped, urinated on and washed in chemicals.

Reports this month suggested the children had been subjected to experiments with LSD in which at least five died. Tweet