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Over 150 of these war children are now taking the Norwegian State to the European Court of Human Rights for the discrimination and abuse they suffered after the war because of having a German father.
'War children'
Elisabeth Arnevig is one of a generation of so-called Nazi war children, born during Germany's occupation of Norway during the Second World War: "I was born near the Swedish border and when I was two months old I was put into a home because my family didn't want to know anything about me because of the German father. So I stayed on in that home after the war."
Hatred
During the war, all these half-German children were given special protection by the Nazi authorities. But as soon as the Occupation ended, there was a dramatic reversal of fortune, as these 10,000 or so children became the objects of hatred.
Elisabeth says her mother was stripped of all state support for her half-German child and was forced to send her to a home. Elisabeth was eventually adopted but was already then deeply traumatised: "When I came to the family, I was very scared because I'd been isolated in that home. I didn't dare to go out on my own."Scars
Elisabeth was isolated in her early years and later often treated an outsider, sometimes singled out by teachers who knew she had a German father. Discrimination, she says, plagued all her years in Norway and motivated her to move abroad. But she says she's lucky to have got away with only emotional scars - hundreds of others were physically marked for life:
"Burning the mark of the swastika on the forehead, so you couldn't escape it - the person had to walk around in that. The raping. The boiling water. But there are lots of cases like this. We have had 60 years of hell. And it's still going on. This is a proof that we have to go to Strasbourg and that the Norwegian state hasn't taken its responsibility."
Not guilty
But Thomas Naalsand of the General Prosecutor's Office in Oslo says the state is innocent: "The difficulties that the war children encountered was by no means supported or encouraged by the government. The war children have during the whole post-war period had the same legal rights as other Norwegian citizen.The only exception that's been documented is that in 1945 who'd married germans during the war lost their Norwegian citizenship. Thus meaning that the children also lost their citizenship. However that act was reversed in 1950."
Principle
The case was thrown out of the Norwegian court back in 1999 on the grounds that ït was filed after the expiry of the standard legal timeframe of 40 years. But Elisabeth Arnevig rejects these legal arguments - for her, it's a simple question of principle: "For many of these people who have suffered physically more than I have I would like to see them succeed to have recognition, because we have not been recognised as normal human beings."The first hearing of the case of the Norwegian war children takes place in Strasbourg on Thursday, 8 March 2007.
Tags: ABBA, children, dsicrimination, Fryda, German, hatred, lebensborn, Lyndstad, Nazis, Norway, occupation, rape, war