After World War II, about 10 percent of Norwegian women aged 18-35 who engaged in romantic relationships with German soldiers were detained, deported and even deprived of their citizenship, being given the unflattering nickname “German girls.”
Thousands of Norwegian women who suffered various forms of persecution for having started amorous relations with German soldiers during the five-year Nazi occupation have received a state apology from Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
“Several thousand women called ‘German girls' or ‘German lasses' were detained, deprived of citizenship and sent out of the country. Without law or judgment. The Norwegian authorities treated them in an unworthy manner. The rule of law failed them,” Erna Solberg said in her official apology, as quoted by the daily newspaper Aftenposten.
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The excuse is based on an investigation by the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies and is presented as part of the 70th anniversary of the UN Human Rights Declaration. It applies to documented offenses committed by Norwegian authorities. According to Solberg, the apology will make it easier to pay compensations.
The exact number of “German girls” is up for debate. Estimates vary between 30,000 and 100,000 Norwegian women. Subsequently, between 10,000 and 12,000 Norwegian-German children were born, 8,000 of whom were registered…
