What happened to the Norwegian royal family?

Upon becoming independent in 1905, Norway decided through a referendum to remain as a monarchy, with its first monarch being the Danish-born King Haakon VII, whose family consisted of the British Princess Maud and their son Olav. It is King Haakon’s descendants that today make up the current royal family of Norway.

Did US help Norway in ww2?

After the German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, Norwegian Americans quickly organized themselves to help their relations and continued to do so throughout and after World War II. The American Red Cross donated $45,000 and the Chicago Norske Klub donated $30,000.

Was Anni-Frid Lyngstad a Lebensborn child?

Anni-Frid Lyngstad, a Norwegian-born Swedish singer from the pop group Abba, is also a child of Lebensborn, the most famous one.

How many children were born in Norway’s Lebensborn facilities?

An astonishing 8,000 to 12,000 children were born into Norway’s Lebensborn facilities alone. When Germany was defeated and the war came to an end, the governments of the countries newly freed from Nazi rule had a difficult choice to make.

Who are the children of the Lebensborn program?

The most famous child of the Lebensborn program is Norwegian ABBA singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who was fathered by a German sergeant. Her widowed mother escaped after the war and took her daughter to Sweden, where the government accepted several hundred refugee children and saved them from persecution.

How many children were adopted from Norway during WW2?

In Norway the Lebensborn organisation handled approximately 250 adoptions. In most of these cases the mothers had agreed to the adoption, but not all were informed that their children would be sent to Germany for adoption. The Norwegian government recovered all but 80 of these children after the war.

How were unwed mothers treated in Lebensborn?

In towns where Lebensborn facilities sprang up — often in homes and buildings where German Jews had lived before their forcible removal to ghettos and concentration camps — the unwed mothers were treated with suspicion and sometimes outright anger. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images German women carrying children of the Lebensborn program.