"NICE, FRANCE -- Jean-Jacques Delorme was 23 before he got the truth. "After years of mystery, during which his mother maintained a stubborn silence, Delorme's grandmother reached into a big armoire and pulled out a yellowed envelope filled with photos of a German soldier. He had been his mother's lover during the occupation of France in World War II. "'That's when I understood everything,' Delorme recalled, choking up at the memory of that anguished afternoon in 1967. 'At last I had a father.' "Historians estimate that more than 800,000 children were born to German soldiers enforcing the four-year Nazi occupation of Europe, about 200,000 in France alone. Like Delorme, most were raised behind a veil of secrecy and shame, derided in school and unable to understand what they had done wrong. Many of their mothers had been shaved bald and paraded naked through the streets after the Germans retreated. Others, like Delorme's, were jailed as traitors." washingtonpost.com Dave
Anni-Frid Lyngstad, a member of the singing group ABBA, was fathered by a German officer, Alfred Haase, during the war. Anni-Frid's mother, fearful of reprisals against collaborators, fled her native Norway for Sweden shortly after the war.
