Krigets eko i svenska krigsbarns familjehistorierna

This project explores the life stories of children born to Swedish women and German SS officers during WWII. We know that some of these mothers secretly returned with their children to Sweden in 1945. The journalist Christoph Andersson published a book about the lives of 22 of these so-called ‘Swedish SS wives’ in 2021.1 However, we know little about the children themselves and the role their paternity played throughout their lives. How did these children experience family secrecy, discrimination, shame or perhaps pride around their parents’ war-time choices, within their families and in relation to society around them? How did these experiences and their ways of sharing their family histories with ties to Nazi perpetrators change over time? And how do they pass on their stories today? The goal of this project is to document these children’s memories
through Oral History interviews and to write about the experiences of Swedish children of German SS officers who have come-of-age and lived in Sweden after WWII.