European court starts Norway war children hearing

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's top human rights court started hearing charges on Thursday of human rights violations leveled against Norway by nearly 160 children of a Nazi program aimed at creating an "Aryan elite".

The application was lodged with the European Court of Rights in 2003 after the Oslo City Court rejected a case by seven of the applicants, notably because their claims came too long after a statutory time limit. Norwegian courts upheld that ruling.

Joined by 152 others, who were also born during World War Two to a Norwegian mother and a German father, they are now asking the European court to rule on whether their human rights were violated due to the discrimination and hardships they faced toward the end of the war and afterwards.

"The applicants complain about the treatment they suffered as war children as well as the authorities' failure to take any remedial measures subsequently," the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement.

"They claim the violations are continuing in the sense that they are still reminded in negative terms of their origin and value."

Between 10,000 and 12,000 so-called "war children" were born in Norway to Norwegian mothers and German fathers, with a number of them registered as children of "Lebensborn" or "font of life" -- a project launched by Heinrich Himmler's SS to produce children who were deemed racially and genetically pure.

Many children from the Lebensborn homes, particularly in Norway -- which was seen as home to the most Aryan stock -- were socially ostracized after the war.

The European Court of Human Rights said the applicants claimed that many mothers of war children were marginalised, had difficulties in obtaining employment and often had their children adopted or placed in foster homes or institutions.

It also said many of the Norwegian war children were deprived of their original names and identity, subjected to discrimination, harassment and ill treatment and left with psychological problems and registered disabled at an early age.

The court said the cases included that of a woman who was regularly locked up when she was a child, sometimes with a dog chain to await her foster father, and had a swastika marked with a nail on her forehead when aged nine or 10.

One man was placed in psychiatric institutions until 1965 without his mental health being assessed, another was placed in a special school for mentally retarded children where he was raped by two men, and one woman was sexually abused by her teacher in front of her class.