TIME REVEALS TRUTH ABOUT MAN’S NAZI ROOTS

When 77-year-old California surfing hall of famer, John Gundersen, saw an article in his local paper about Jennifer Coburn’s new historical novel, Cradles of the Reich, he knew he had to read it. The novel is set in the same top-secret Nazi breeding program where Gundersen was conceived.

“My birth mother was a teen who signed up and lined up to have sex with Nazi officers to have a baby for Hitler,” he told Coburn when they spoke on the phone. Coburn invited him to meet and asked her friend Sandra Scheller, a Holocaust historian, to examine his birth certificate and other documents and authenticate his claim.

Gundersen was conceived during World War ll and born after the war. His birth father was a Nazi pilot. When Gundersen was born, his mother left him at an orphanage in Norway where he was adopted 2 years later. His adoptive parents moved to the United States when Gundersen was a child. As a young man, Gundersen served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. He resides in Cardiff, California where he has lived with his partner, retired UC San Diego sociology professor Rae Blumberg, since 1976. Blumberg is Jewish.

The Lebensborn Society operated in three ways: it served as a maternity home for unwed Aryan women, it arranged sexual liaisons between Aryan women and SS officers, and kidnapped blond-hair, blue-eyed children from countries Germany invaded. In its 10 years of operation, an estimated 20,000 babies were bred through the program and 200,000 were stolen.

Coburn says, “Whenever I speak about Cradles of the Reich, audiences ask what happened to the babies who were bred, adopted, or stolen through the Lebensborn program. I’m thankful that John came forward and shared his history with me. My novel focuses on the women in the Lebensborn program, but it’s important to know what became of children born through Heinrich Himmler’s twisted plan to populate the Reich with 2-million ‘racially pure’ children.” questions about how to go about finding a good place and what to look for. These questions aren’t really in our wheelhouse. So, we went to the person we felt could best answer those questions, the CEO of the Canyon Villas, Ms. Vonda Boller.

Coburn and Gundersen formed a fast friendship, which was recently covered in a feature story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Gundersen discussed his personal story while Coburn shared her research on the Nazi breeding program. They are available for interview.

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Mr. Fontaine: What are some of the definitions people will come across when searching for a Facility?

Ms. Boller: There are just a few, and they most commonly fall into these categories;