Interesting Question... to Nazi or not to Nazi

So ...  my ex-husband, my soon to be ex husband, my children and I all have German blood coursing through our veins.... all varies amounts. 

My soon to be ex            husband has - for sure - confirmed the rumors of Jewish ancestors ... and although his specific line had already come to America by the time Hitler started to pound his way through the Jewish populations in Europe.  Even KNOWING that there were kin - at the time - most likely still living there .. cousins and such ... it's sobering.  Even for me, and I've found now factual Jewish lines.  It's still heartbreaking and brings this sense of loss and anger.  Huge loss and so much anger.  

I also admit I am fascinated with that time period.  All those Nazi bunkers buried under the Earth with miles of tunnels and hidden rooms.  

The controversy/conspiracy  of  did Hitler die, or did he escape.  It's interesting.  

I watch Jewish documentaries and cry, my heart breaks and my soul is shatterd.  I can't understand how someone can do that to another living soul.  

And I watch stuff on them discovering this or that underground tunnel system or the above ground stuff too.  I love architecture but mostly it's the abandoned for over 50 years and finding it now....  and I find the mad brilliance fascinating.  

It's part of history and no one can fix the absolute devastation that was caused on human life and feelings of being safe in not only your own community but your own skin.  Also, I can't help but be fascinated with other aspects.  

I recently read this article about a woman who was basically hired to have "Hitler's Babies" ... not actually Hitler's but .... babies with the proper blood lines.  I had no idea this even went on.  

The woman who gave birth for Hitler   <---- the article I had read. 

I guess girls were found, with the appropriate looks and pedigree, I guess...  and they were taken to these places where they would .... well....  procreate with S.S. Soldiers,   They would get pregnant.  Have their babies, and then the babies would be taken and raised in some institution so that they could be properly brainwashed to believe and live the Nazi ideals.  

It blew my mind.  

And all I can think is - what happened to all those babies???   

Well - first off....  it wasn't Hitler's Babies.  It was Himmlers.  Heinrich Himmler created the program for a few reasons.  During World War I there was a catastrophic loss of life for German soldiers.  The birth rate post-war plummeted because so there was a shortage of German men to marry and have children with the "nice German women." And his precious Aryan race was depleting.  There were not proper families being formed, which lead to the second problem. German women were choosing to have abortions rather than give birth if they were not meeting society standards of marriage and then children .....  it is estimated that 800,000 abortions were happening every year.  Himmler, being the nice guy he was (that was sarcasm) wanted to give these women a place to go to have their babies.  

Then - after that kind hearted gesture (ha ha) he realized that he could control who had babies and the type of people having babies.  He could stack numbers of babies that meet the Aryan race criteria and create a wind fall of exactly what he wanted.  

So - women started applying to be part of the LEBENSBORN PROGRAM.  Some people also refer to it as Fountain of Life that was created by RFSS Himmler.

"Lebensborn" means various things I guess.... I have seen a couple ... most often I see that it means; "Spring of Life," or “Fount of Life.”  It was a way for the Germans a way to rebuild their population of racially acceptable citizens. Because no ordinary citizen would do. 

Himmler realized this was also the opportunity to control who was breeding and being born, and the Lebensborn program became a way for Nazis to lend a helping hand to "racially and genetically valuable families with many children." 

A series of Nazi-sponsored children's homes were set up throughout the Reich.  The very first one opened up in 1937 in a Munich suburb.

In order to be accepted into the program, you had to do the following.

.* Parents needed to prove German ancestry, documented, several generations back.

 * rigorous testing proving no genetic diseases or disabilities. 

 * DEFINITELY NOT JEWISH (assholes) 

 * Dedicated to the Nazi cause

 

Failing ANY of that criteria would get the mother turned away.  It was said only about 40% of women were accepted.  I am sure looks took a part in it also.  But that's just my opinion. cuz they were assholes and it seems like an asshole thing to do.  

Fathers, by the way, had to meet the same criteria - and they did all this in secret from their wives and children, if they had them already.  Men were encouraged to take as many women as they could and have as many babies as they could father to improve the population. So men - spread your seed far and wide - but only with the right women.  

Himmler expected every SS officer to have at least four children. Legitimate or illegitimate.

I think that - unwed mothers - who were already pregnant - would be accepted into the program if they met the criteria.  I don't know this for a fact but Himmler's thought was to provide a place for the unwed mothers to go and have their child away from the judging eyes.  So I believe that happened. 

I also read an interview with one of the women who applied for the program to get pregnant and to have a baby for the greater cause.  (Ugh) 

During their initiation, they were told they would have to sign documents stating they had no rights to their babies, that the babies would be taken to a special place to be raised as loyal Nazi citizens. 

These women would go through all the testing and documentation and then they would move into these compounds.  Their cycles would be monitored and then at the right time, there would be a "date" night with S.S. Soldiers - to see if they connected with any - and if they did - they would basically have a one night stand { wink, wink, smooch } ....  and hope to get pregnant. 

If they did, they would move to a different part of the compound, or move to another compound, and wait out the pregnancy.  Once they went into labor, they would deliver, without aid.  Apparently any "good German woman" wouldn't aid her birth by dulling the pain, that was frowned upon.  

They would "ween" their children for two weeks and then the child would be taken.

 

Everyone in the "program" would have aliases.  No one went by their own given name.  Anonymity was key to the program. Because of this, and the fact that the Nazis' that be destroyed the birth certificates and paperwork for this program, thousands and thousands of children were left not knowing who their parents were ..... and what happened to them at  the end of the war? 

So....  we have unwed mothers, we have woman who signed up for the cause, and then we come to all the children who were kidnapped.  Yes, kidnapped.  

Another part of this program was kidnapping children that physically meet the criteria of an Aryan.  Blond(e) hair, blue eyes... measurements would be taken, height, weight, teeth, head, distance between their eyes and who knows what else.  Some children were just taken based on their looks. Later tested and examined.  Some were tested and examined - accepted or rejected on site.  

Children were taken right out of their classrooms.  Children were taken off the streets.  Children were taken from the Jewish Concertation Camps. Yes, you read that right.  JEWISH children were taken,, tests, accepted or rejected to be part of the Aryan society - and then were told they were no longer Polish or whatever they may have been and only allowed to speak German and raised to be part of the Nazi Cause.  They were put in foster homes at first and later adopted into acceptable German families.  

So we have unwed pregnant women coming in - so they could have their babies and not have abortions.

There were the women who decided to sacrifice their bodies for the cause

And then there were the kidnapped children.  

{ sigh } Can you imagine what those parents went through that were kidnapped?  Taken right out of school and didn't show up home when expected.  Taken off the streets from their parents, I am sure if the parents objected they would be threatened and or shot.  Ugh it breaks my heart.  

So what happened to the children who were born or kidnapped that were deemed unacceptable to the Aryan standard?  

Well ... they were put in orphanages, euthanized, or systematically executed (murdering assholes!).... 

Yep, you read that right.  I read it and it made me absolutely sick.  

There was estimated 20,000 babies born into the program though the TRUE number will never be known.  It was estimated between 100,000 and 200,000 children were kidnapped. 

These are children who really have no idea who their biological parents are. What their history is.  How did their life start?  Were they the product of a war?  Or were they the product of love with a tragic ending?  

The singer, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, from ABBA, was one of these children.  Her mother - Norwegian - and her father a Nazi sergeant .... born in 1945 out of wedlock and branded a Tyskerbarnas (a German Child) ... 

These children are questioning and hurting .... some struggling, some declaring that they grew up happily and that's all that mattered. But the ones who want answers deserve them.  And there aren't any.  Most of them can't do a family tree because they don't know the name of their birth parents.  

There was an article I read - with a comment that touched me so much.  I'm going to quote it.  Linking the article first. 

Hitler’s Lebensborn Children: Kidnappings in German-Occupied Poland

Rena Shepherd December 16, 2020

I am 80 years old now, have wondered all my life about who my real parents were. After reading this article, about the Brown Sisters, I recalled all my life that the woman who talked to me had a red cross on a white bunnet. I recall Lebensborn, remembering a lot of little kids laying outside on a little blanket sleeping and beside each child was a little white potty with a handle on it. I walked from child to child picking up the potties and trying to stack them on top of each other. This memory was first, the one with the red cross lady was after. I remember a ride in the train, laying alone in the top bunk looking out the window at the full moon. This is how I got to Germany. I was in 3 different foster homes in Germany and remember my last one well in Solingen. I was only 5 or so then. I have tried once to find out who the Foster parents in Solingen were, through the Solingen newspaper ad, but never heard back. I can very well understand that it takes us a lifetime to get over this and want to find out possibly who my real parents were. I thought all my life that the lady with the red cross hat, was an angel send to take care of me, until I read your article. I have tried Ancestry.com and Heritage, but I dont have names of my parents so every door was shut for me. I was lucky enough to have been adopted when I was 6 or so by a lovely woman, who may or may have not been my real mother, she passed on in 1981. I never asked many questions because it hurt her to speak about this, she only said that I was her real daughter. I never resembled her by looks. But until now have never opened up about my past. Do I really want to know or keep believing the beautiful story regarding my real father she told me? He never got to see me, was killed before I was born. Perhaps?? I dont know why I am writing this, it will most likely go into your trash, but it felt good talking about it. Thank you .

I think that says a lot.  

Here are some other articles: 

The Children of Hitler's Eugenics Experiment Are Still Alive - Here's What They Look Like Today...

THE BIZARRE TRUE STORY OF THE NAZIS' LEBENSBORN BABIES

The Nazi breeding and infanticide program you probably never knew about

What History Didn’t Tell Us about the Nazi “Super Baby” Breeding Program

The Lebensborn Program — The Nazi Monstrous Initiative to Increase German Population

This is a January 1988 interview done with Ilse, Lebensborn nurse at Steinhoring, Germany from 1936 to 1945.

I need to read a few of them more in depth, some I skimmed.  

Freed Slave Who Penned Sarcastic Letter to Old Master....

So ....  I saw this on Facebook and thought it was a really interesting story.  So I thought I would share.   Here is where you can find it on the web.

Freed slave who penned sarcastic letter to old master after he was asked back to farm pictured for first time

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 13:40 EST, 16 July 2012 | UPDATED: 08:09 EST, 17 July 2012

The photograph, scratched and undated, is captioned 'Brother Jordan Anderson'. He is a middle-aged black man with a long beard and a righteous stare, as if he were a preacher locking eyes with a sinner, or a judge about to dispatch a thief to the gallows.

Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio.

He lived quietly and probably would have been forgotten, if not for a remarkable letter to his former master published in a Cincinnati newspaper shortly after the Civil War.

Scathing: Former slave Jordan Anderson (left) wrote a satirical letter in 1865 to his old master after he was asked to return to work for him. He wrote the letter with the help of Valentine Winters (right)

Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson’s letter has been anthologized and published all over the world.

Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, 'something Twain would have been proud to have written'.

Addressed to one Col. Patrick Henry Anderson, who apparently wanted Jordan to come back to the plantation east of Nashville, the letter begins cheerfully, with the former slave expressing relief that 'you had not forgotten Jordon' (there are various spellings of the name) and were 'promising to do better for me than anybody else can'. But, he adds, 'I have often felt uneasy about you'.

He informs the colonel that he’s now making a respectable wage in Dayton, Ohio, and that his children are going to school.

He tallies the monetary value of his services while on Anderson’s plantation - $11,608 - then adds, 'we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.'

The original: Jordon Anderson's letter was dictated and published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1865

Turning serious, he alludes to violence committed against women back in Tennessee and wonders what would happen to his own family members. 'I would rather stay here and starve - and die, if it come to that - than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters'.

He asks if there are schools now for blacks. 'The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits,' he writes.

Then he signs off with a swift, unforgettable kick.

'Say howdy to George Carter,' he says, 'and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me'.

Anderson’s words, a timeless kiss-off to a hated boss, also are a puzzle: How could an illiterate man, newly released from bondage, produce such a work of sophisticated satire?

After the letter resurfaced online earlier this year, along with questions about its authenticity, The Associated Press sought answers.

Workplace: A house in Lebanon, Tennessee sits on land once part of a plantation where Anderson was a slave to Col. Patrick Henry Anderson. In 1865, Col. Anderson sold the estate for a pittance to get out of debt

Death of him: Two years after the sale, Col. Anderson died at the age of 44. He is buried in Lebanon, Tenn

From documents compiled by the AP and in interviews with scholars, Anderson emerges as a very real person and the very real author of his story — though, from the beginning, it was reported to have been 'dictated'. His letter is an outstanding, but not unique, testament to the ability of slaves to turn horror into humor.

'The sly irony is very much in the Mark Twain style,' Twain biographer Ron Powers said of the letter, especially the request for unpaid wages. 'Whammo.'

'It is that wonderful combination of serious thought and satirical chastisement,' said Yale University history professor David Blight, who loves to read the letter during a lecture class on Reconstruction.

'It represents so many definitions of freedom — dignity, access to education, family. And in the end, it also meant wages.'

According to available records, Jordan Anderson was born somewhere in Tennessee around 1825 and by age 7 or 8 had been sold to a plantation owned by Gen. Paulding Anderson in Big Spring, Tenn.

Patrick Henry Anderson was one of the general’s sons and, by the mid-1840s owned Jordan and other slaves. Jordan Anderson married Amanda McGregor in 1848 and they had 11 children.

Family: Jewell Wilson, the great-grandson of former slave Jordan Anderson, holds a family directory as he poses with his son Jewell Wilson Jr., left, and his nephew Barry Mumford Wilson

Union troops camped on the plantation, and Jordan was freed in 1864 by the provost marshal general of the Department of Nashville.

Roy E. Finkenbine, a professor at the University of Detroit-Mercy who is planning a biography of Anderson, thinks it’s likely Jordan was given to Patrick (born in 1823) as a playmate and personal servant when they were young.

According to the 1860 slave schedules in the U.S. Census, Patrick had five 'slave houses' totaling 32 people - 19 males and 13 females.

While the schedules don’t list the slaves by name, there were two men, ages 34 and 35, who would have been about the age Jordan was in 1860.

Finkenbine says Jordan appears to have been the oldest male slave of working age, and that might be why the plantation owner was so eager to entice him back.

Many of the slaves had fled, and Anderson was mortgaged to the hilt.

'Harvest is coming on. Jordan’s a guy who’s played... sort of a quasi-managerial role in the past,' Finkenbine said. 'And if he can convince this guy to come back, here’s a guy who can not only maybe get the harvest in, but convince some of these other slaves that have gone… get them to come back and be workers on the plantation. It’s kind of his last-ditch effort to save it.'

Proud: Jewell Wilson sits with his wife, Estella Wilson, at their home in Dayton, Ohio. Anderson spent his last 40 years in the state after he was freed from the plantation by Union troops in 1864

Investigation: Roy Finkenbine, from the University of Detroit, holds a print showing Jordan Anderson. Finkenbine is planning to write a biography of the remarkable former slave

But he doesn’t save it. In September 1865, Finkenbine says, Anderson sold the nearly 1,000-acre estate to his attorney for a pittance, in an apparent attempt to get out from under his crushing debt. Just two years later, Patrick Henry Anderson died at the age of 44.

That’s what’s known of the famous letter’s recipient. What of its writer?

Jordan Anderson’s collaborator — to whom he reportedly dictated the letter — was a Dayton banker named Valentine Winters.

An abolitionist who once hosted Abraham Lincoln at his mansion, Winters regarded the letter as excellent propaganda, according to Finkenbine. It was originally published in August 1865 by the Cincinnati Commercial, a paper with Republican leanings.

Jordan probably made his way to Dayton with the help of Winters’ son-in-law, Dr. Clarke McDermont, the surgeon in charge of the Cumberland Military Hospital in Nashville, where Jordan and Mandy worked for a time, says Finkenbine, who places Jordan and his family in Dayton by August 1864. Anderson became an employee and tenant of Winters.

Scene: When Anderson was asked to work back at the plantation, pictured, he asked in the letter for a return on all the money he should have earned and said he had his daughters' safety to think about

Desperate: It is believed Col Anderson, who owned the land where the plantation stood, pictured, appealed to Anderson as his other slaves had abandoned him

McDermont expressed concern for the former slaves working as nurses and orderlies and laundresses at the hospital. 'And he actually writes back and forth to both his father-in-law and some of the other abolitionists in Dayton, saying, 'Can you raise money for these people? Can you send clothing for these people?"' Finkenbine said.

Anderson’s letter comes right out of the life he had survived. From the insanity of slavery, he and others developed a deadpan, absurdist take that revealed their feelings to one another and hid them from their masters.

'Slaves had to be guarded as to what they said because they would be punished if caught critiquing or offending the master class - thus they developed sophisticated forms of indirection and other forms of masking,' said Glenda Carpio, a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard University and author of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery.

Anderson’s letter is special in part, Carpio says, because it was written down. Until late in the 19th century, when Joel Chandler Harris’ Br’er Rabbit tales were first published, slave humor was essentially an oral tradition.

And while newspapers sometimes printed letters to former masters, Finkenbine notes, few were 'so challenging' as Anderson’s.

Words of freedom: The Freedmen's book was reissued after being compiled almost 150 years ago by abolition campaigner Lydia Maria Child (right)

The letter was soon reprinted by Lydia Maria Child in her Freedmen’s Book, used by schools in the South for former slaves.

Finkenbine says he has found instances of Anderson’s letter appearing as far away as Switzerland.

Notes on some of these publications state that Jordan dictated the letter verbatim to Winters and that Winters is the one submitting it for publication.

In a 2006 speech at a conference on slavery reparations, historian Raymond Winbush retold the story of Anderson’s letter. He also revealed that he had tracked down some of Patrick Henry Anderson’s descendants, still living in Big Spring.

'What’s amazing is that the current living relatives of Colonel Anderson are still angry at Jordan for not coming back,' knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war, said Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland’s Morgan State University.

LETTER FROM A FREED MAN TO HIS OLD MASTER

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve - and die, if it come to that - than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jordon Anderson

Christopher Martin

So …  I’m addicted to genealogy … ancestry (dot) com baby …  but one thing that I have to say is that the false leads are so effin frustrating….

So last night, I’m tracing back some of the people I haven’t looked at yet.  So …  I’m looking at my husband’s line .. Susannah North Martin was one of the “witches” hung during the Salem Witch Trials.

Course, I am a witch … So I tease DB saying that my ancestors hung his ancestors (because my family was in Salem too but no one was even involved in the trials) …  to keep the heat off the real witches in the area.

Muahahahaha ….

One of my Kings hung one of his Nobility too…  Ha ha ha …

My family likes to hang his family … ha ha …

Anyway - back to my point.  Susannah was married to a man named George Martin.  He died prior to the Salem Witch Trials - HOWEVER - Susannah was accused TWICE of being a Witch.  The first time, her husband George fought tooth and nail for her. .

Anyway - first thing I do is go through the “Family Trees” on Ancestry to get ideas … then I back up and research … well people on Ancestry had George Martin connected to a Christopher Martin - as George’s father - and Christopher’s wife (who’s name currently escapes me) …  So I’m getting all these hints that Christopher came over on the Mayflower and I’m all excited, this is crazy this is awesome…. OMG ….. historically it’s gold.

And I’m reading and researching and then…. I read this……

Christopher Martin, his wife, and his son (not named George) all perished in the horrible first winter they where around for.  Wiping out his ENTIRE line.

And I thought ……. now wait a minute….

That means………

That’s right folks, Christopher Martin is NOT George Martin’s father.

So I dig deeper into George - trying to find some link to his family line.

Turns out - he came to America as another man’s servant.  There still may be a connection, but it’s not a direct connection.

So I had to delete all this fun and interesting and exciting research I did… because it wasn’t connected.

Blows…….