My discussion with Nicho, a German doctorate student on sports management in Australia about the aboriginal people in Australia brought many things untold about this indigenous tribe. Our discussion focused on the well-documented film “Rabbit-Proof-Fence” which was based on a true story, which portrayed the flight of this indigenous community in the 1930s.
"Rabbit-Proof-Fence" is a moving story of racial prejudice, agoraphobic desert vistas, and amazing endurance as three girls walk 1,500 miles to find their mothers in the 1930s Australia.
Molly Craig, who, in 1931, at 14, along with her half-sister Daisy, 8, and cousin Gracie Fields were taken from her mother in Jigalong, a depot on one of the fences that were being constructed across the continent in an attempt to keep marauding rabbits from destroying the western farmlands.
During the early years of the 20th century, the British authorities panicked about the supposed disaster of an "unwanted third race" of "half-caste" Aborigine children. Special detention centers were set up across the continent to keep the mixed race children from “contaminating" the rest of Australian society, and orders were given to forcibly remove "half-caste" children from their families.
Rabbit-Proof Fence [Source: The Sydney Morning Herald]
The film shows that one day the rainstorm hides their tracks. Molly, Daisy and Gracie set off for home, traipsing across the desert, scavenging from farmers and aborigine hunters, cooking what little meat they could obtain over an open fire, close to collapse with hunger, heat and exhaustion. For long parts of the journey the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence. After walking for nine weeks, Molly and Daisy were reunited with their mother (though Gracie was recaptured).
The malicious practice of abducting crossbred children from their mothers was abolished only in 1971 and Australia’s black chapter of violating children’s rights was brought to an end.
Even the invading forces in the historical past and the colonial era committed mass rape on women to celebrate or complete their victory and their illegitimate children suffered a lot thereafter. When I met a few years ago a Palestinian with his Bosnian young wife, she was speaking of the human violation in Bosnia which was wordless to describe. Mothers were raped in front of their children at their their own homes by Serbian soldiers, calling them “Turkish whores”. The "rape babies" faced many difficulties; they couldn’t open bank accounts in their names because they had no birth certificates.
How the illegitimate children of Norwegian mothers and German fathers are still suffering in Norway could be well understood by the words of Ole Wilhelm Kluwer: “We were around ten destiny bound fellows who regularly met, sometimes in privacy, other times in a quiet restaurant. We were all born between 1942 and 1950. Much time was spent presenting us to the others, telling our individual life story. For each newcomer the procedure had to be repeated. An obligatory question was: "Which is your worst remembrance as an NS child?" …… To generate the conversation we used the hottest subjects: the generation gap, the holocaust and our feeling of guilt.
The Nazi children are playing in the backyard of their small new home, by people called the doll house. The family is back in Koppang, living downhill from the taken farm. Two old sisters let them rent the doll house on their ground. The toy lorry maid by the Nazi prisoners of Sandbakken, Elverum, was a Christmas gift from the father.[Source: Nazi Family Photos]
It happened during a walk in the park of "Frogner" in Oslo, the spring 1993, that we formulated the question: "Can a child be born guilty?" Evidently the answer was: "No!" We are fully Norwegians, whatsoever revengeful anti Nazis may say and whatsoever we might feel ourselves. Among the war destinies we have in Norway around 10,000 children born of love between Norwegian girls and German soldiers.
In 1945 the children were rejected as so-called "German kids", by official doctors reported as potential fifth columnists because of their Nazi genes. From outside they have been maltreated because of the roaring hatred in the post-war times of peace, from inside their souls have been eaten by their Nazi anguish.
…In 1999, the "German kids" - they now call themselves "war children" - lack a base in history. The majority of them do not claim just money compensation for wounds and disgrace.
… They wish acceptance and integration, with freedom from anguish. Only our old Germanophile family clans can give to these kids the peace they are longing for.
The war is a volcano where myths force their way to eruption like the lava itself. The warriors' descendants have neither structure nor weight. And no power to parry the "real" warriors. But we NS children have fought a battle lasting forty-five years more than our parents' war. This one lasted only five years. We have been in continuous struggle with society, with our parents and with ourselves.”
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