DNA tests and genealogy research have identified Walther Frisch, a Danish former Waffen-SS soldier, as a secret sperm donor at Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm during the 1960s. At least 15 donor children in four countries now know that he was their biological father.
Frisch worked as a head waiter in Stockholm and repeatedly donated sperm at Karolinska Hospital in the 1960s, DR reports. He was also a convinced Nazi and a former soldier in the Waffen-SS, the armed branch of the SS.
According to DR, the secret held for more than 60 years, until genealogy research and DNA tests exposed his identity. So far, 15 donor children have identified him as their biological father. They live in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany, as reported by Yle.
Frisch was born in Viby J. in 1917 and trained as a waiter at 16. In May 1942, at the age of 25, he volunteered for the Waffen-SS. He was trained at an SS school in northeastern France and later attached to a Waffen-SS barracks in Graz, Austria.
More than 200 Jews and forced laborers were killed in a mass shooting at that barracks, DR reports. It has not been possible to establish whether Frisch was present. After the war he was tried in Copenhagen, where he said he had only worked as a waiter for the Germans, and he was sentenced to one year in prison.
Donor children question the motive
Frisch moved to Sweden after his prison term, married, and began donating sperm. Nobody knows how many children resulted. Several of the 15 known donor children believe the real figure could be well above 100, since finding a sperm donor normally requires a DNA test.
Mats Rydberg, one of the donor children, told DR that he cannot stop thinking about Heinrich Himmler’s demand that SS officers father at least four children. His mother was inseminated at Karolinska Hospital in 1962 and was not told who the donor was. Donors in Sweden remained anonymous until 1985.
Another donor child, Thomas Rasmussen, said the choice of donor may have been ideological. He pointed out that Lars Ove Cassmer, also a former Waffen-SS soldier, was an associate professor of gynecology at the Karolinska Institute in the early 1960s. Cassmer was attached to a research team at the hospital’s hormone laboratory in the same period.
Karolinska Hospital said it holds no information about Frisch, and called it “completely unacceptable” and deeply unethical if the donor selection had been ideologically motivated, as reported by nu.nl. The Dutch outlet adds that there is no evidence the donations formed part of an organized Nazi project. The Karolinska Institute says doctors in 1960s Stockholm could run private projects at the hospital, which may explain the missing archive records.
Frisch died in 1992. Morten Mikkelsen, a nephew of Frisch’s wife, told DR that four elderly men in uniform appeared at the funeral, saluted the coffin and read out a text hostile to the state of Israel. The case is documented in the DR series “Mysteriet om den danske nazi-donor”.
