Norway’s Dark Secret, The Lebensborn, ABBA

It doesn't rule out that he could still be viewed as a good president, but with some "baggage".

I'm not quite sure what the relevence is here. How does the Old South's refusal to vote for Republicans relate to them not being especially more racist than the rest of the country?

I'd never admitted it - only got my coming out with some ABBA-revival band

Norway's Aryan children go to court over years of prejudice

Associated Press in Strasbourg
Thursday March 8, 2007
The Guardian


They claim they were locked up in mental homes and denied education, the victims of a monstrous Nazi scheme and decades of public prejudice.
Now a group of Norwegian "war children", born as part of a German plan to create a genetically pure race, are taking their case to the European court of human rights, demanding compensation and recognition of their suffering from the government in Oslo.

Up to 12,000 children with a Norwegian mother and a German father were born in Norway during the second world war under the Lebensborn - Fountain of Life - scheme, first introduced by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1935 to propagate Aryan children. Outside Germany, Norway was the jewel of the programme.

A group of 154 Norwegians, along with four Swedes and a German, have turned to the European court of human rights, arguing that the Norwegian government's inaction to protect them violated their civil liberties. "We want it to be recognised that the government of Norway violated the rights of these people, and we are asking for financial damages," said Randi Hagen Spydevold, a lawyer for the group.
Norwegian courts have ruled that the government cannot be held responsible for failing to sufficiently protect the Lebensborn children before 1953, when Norway signed the European convention on human rights. But the group argues that ill-treatment continued long afterwards. Discrimination included public denouncement by doctors and clergy who claimed they were mentally and genetically defective and potential Nazi sympathisers. Many also had problems finding work.

One claimant, Paul Hansen, said he was locked up in a psychiatric institution until 1965. Another, Karl Otto Zinken, was sent to a school for children with learning difficulties, where he said he was raped by two men. "The big problem is that the rights violations started before 1953 but continued long after. Research has been done showing what they had been exposed to, and we say the Norwegian government was to blame," Mr Spydevold said.

In 2002, the Norwegian parliament ordered the state to make amends, and the government offered to pay the children up to 200,000 kroner (now £16,700) each, depending on how much suffering the victims could document. But the group is demanding £34,000 per person, and up to four times as much for those who suffered the most.

The European court will hear the group's arguments today before deciding whether the case is admissible. A decision could take several months.