Les Enfants Oubliee d'Hitler Au Coeur du Program Lebonsborn by Ingrid Von Oelhafen and Tim Tate

 What a moving book is this one: Les Enfants Oubliee d'Hitler Au Coeur du Program Lebonsborn

by Ingrid Von Oelhafen and Tim Tate.

It's a research on an identity long more than 60 years: it's the story of a baby, grown up "thanks" to the program Lebensborn by a rich german family, the one of von Oelhafen.

Born Erika Matko, for certain reasons this girl ended up in the program created by Himmler with the purpose of a quick germanification of people passing through new vigorous arian children. 

It was only later that Erika discovers the truth, and it is shocking because she thought that she was part of the von Oelhafen, exactly like her brother... 

His father, the adoptive one was a hard person. Her adoptive mother had left him and had had another baby with a new man: the mother of Ingrid decides that she must interrupt her studies. She wants to leave her in fact her activity in the kinesitherapy field. Although skeptical, Ingrid will continue the activity of her mother, starting, after her departure the researches of her real origins. It won't be simple but also thanks to meetings with the ex children of the program Lebensborn, she won't give up, discovering the truth at the end.

The centrality of this book is the meaning of identity. Is it just a story of blood? No: it is not, as remarks Ingrid. It's something different: a chemical encounter with people met along her way during the childhood and that marked her existence. 

This book is particularly detailed regarding what it meant the end of the last world war conflict and the assets of the new order; Ingrid won't avoid to tell the atrocities committed by several soldiers of different States on civilians.

It is described pretty well her existence, a good one, the one of her family, and the years immediately after the world war conflict including her relationship with the several members of the von Oelhafen family.

Considering where we are at the moment, with a new conflict in the heart of Europe, the words of Ingrid resonates prophetics: the author writes that this book has been written in a moment of great hostility between several nations, religions. But it is in that countries where there was the rideau de fer, as writes Ingrid, that there is more nationalism, where it is more researched a racial superiority or a historical superiority. "Jamais, depuis 1945, le continent - et,au-delà le monde - n'a été si dangereusement divisé" adds Ingrid ending with a sad idea:  the lesson of History is that people won't learn the lesson of History. 

Highly recommended book.

I thank Fayard for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori