Danish broadcaster DR reports that Walther Frisch, a Danish Waffen-SS veteran convicted after the Second World War, became a sperm donor father to at least 15 children at Karolinska Hospital in Sweden in the 1960s.
The case was published on August 10, 2026, by DR. According to the broadcaster, Frisch was a committed Nazi who had sworn loyalty to Adolf Hitler as a Waffen-SS soldier. After the war, he was sentenced to one year in prison for joining the Germans.
DR says Frisch was used as a donor in fertility treatments at Karolinska Hospital in Sweden during the 1960s. At least 15 people have identified him as their biological father through DNA testing. They come from four countries: Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany.
One of them is Thomas Rasmussen. He told DR that he could not understand how a Danish Waffen-SS soldier ended up as his donor father. Rasmussen has since made contact with his Swedish half-brother Mats Rydberg, and DR’s reporting follows that contact.
Per DR, both men question how a man in his late 40s, with a conviction for his Nazi past, could be accepted as a donor. Rydberg raised the question of whether they are a result of Nazi ideology. He referred to Heinrich Himmler’s demand that every SS officer should father at least four children.
No records of the donations
The full number of children cannot be established without further testing, DR reports. Rasmussen noted that only a few percent of the population has taken a DNA test. With 15 people already identified, he said the real figure could be well above 100.
Neither Karolinska Hospital nor the Swedish national and regional archives hold any documentation of the donations, according to DR. Rasmussen said the complete absence of records does not add up. He described the arrangement as looking like a deliberate operation.
Karolinska Hospital declined DR’s request for an interview about the case. The hospital stated that it holds no information about Walther Frisch. It described an ideologically motivated choice of donor as completely unacceptable and deeply unethical.
DR says the case is presented in its new documentary series, “Mysteriet om den danske nazi-donor”. The series brings together the DNA findings from the four countries and the gap in the Swedish archives. The broadcaster does not point to any court ruling, official investigation or deadline behind the publication.
The identified donor children were conceived through treatments at a public hospital, decades before current Danish and Swedish rules on donor registration. DR’s reporting does not state whether Swedish authorities have opened any review of the case. Fertility treatment practices from that period remain undocumented in the archives the broadcaster searched.
