Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Bookouture, and author Ann Bennett for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Having been adopted during the “baby scoop era” here in the United States, The Orphan List was a revelation for me. It seems that much of the policy that forced the separation of young, unwed mothers from their babies during the post-war years had its roots in Nazi eugenics and the desire to save the babies of “the master race.” The book focuses on the Lebensborn program, which sought to stop women from terminating their pregnancies if their racial background was Aryan, and give their babies to “proper” German families to raise. Even though this is a work of historical fiction, the parallels to the “baby scoop era” were shocking to me.

In 2005, Margarete Weiss was sitting in an Italian care home when she saw a broadcast from Germany about a young reporter who was researching the Lebensborn program. This brings back memories for Margarete, who was a nurse at one of those homes in Germany. She has one of her carers contact the station so she can finally tell her story. Kristel is the young reporter who has been working on the story. After visiting the town her estranged mother grew up in, she thinks it’s possible that her mother came through the Lebensborn program. It’s personal for her, but it’s also a human-interest story from World War II that she would like to bring to light.

Many horrors are revealed as Margarete tells the story of how she came to be involved in the Lebensborn program. Not only was the Lebensborn Home a place for unwed mothers to have their babies, but it also sought to deliver Aryan babies for the Fuhrer to help populate Germany with the “right” kind of children. Young girls would be indoctrinated before being recruited as volunteers to get pregnant by SS members and then sign the babies over to the State. Those babies would then be given to “proper” German families to raise as well.

Hedda is a young woman at the start of the war. She lives with her parents and sister and attends university. A young man named Sebastian catches her eye. He is kind, walking her home every night from the trolley, and her family likes him. When her family is killed in an air raid, Hedda goes to live with her aunt and uncle, who are anything but loving. Sebastian manages to get to see her. Once he is off fighting with the Wehrmacht, Hedda learns she is pregnant. Sebastian’s answer to the problem is to send her to the Lebensborn program. Hedda does not want to give up her child, but she has no choice once she has entered the program.

The story tells how Margarete risks her own life and that of her family to try to help the girls she meets. Cautiously, she questions them about giving away their babies, but most are so indoctrinated that she gets nowhere. There are a few like Hedda, and Margarete, and a sympathetic doctor try to help them. Margarete begins keeping a journal of the mothers and babies who pass through the Lebensborn home she works at, hoping that it might be possible to reunite them.

The story here is told so well. Young Margarete is sympathetic. She is caught up in the horrors of the war, but cannot do much for fear her family will be targeted. Still, she risks her life to try to preserve some record of what is happening. For the rest of her life, though, she suffers from guilt feeling that she did not do enough. How she came to be in Italy and her life there is told a bit, and it seems she carried a lot on her shoulders. Hedda is a tragic character as her life is revealed throughout the story. I also liked Kristel, as a modern German citizen in 2005 who is still feeling the fallout of Nazi policies. All of them were compelling without being cliched.

Reading it from the perspective of an adoptee, I was horrified. Just as young women in the United States in the post-war years would be convinced that surrendering their child to adoption was the best thing for all concerned, these young German girls are indoctrinated to believe they are doing their duty to the Fuhrer and Germany. If they reconsider, they are treated as mentally ill and the child is removed regardless. I liked reading about how the separation from the mother who gave birth to them induced trauma in the babies, as this is something adoptees struggle with that few people want to talk about. German parents were instructed at the time not to cuddle their babies or stop their crying as it would make the child “weak.” We now know how important contact and comfort are to a newborn; the exact opposite of what the Germans preached.

I gave this book five stars. It’s definitely one of my top books this year. The story it tells is a sad one that has not been talked about much in the context of the many Nazi atrocities committed during the War. Our American politics still seems to want to push the same agenda now as our politicians talk about outlawing abortion to produce a “domestic supply of infants.” That doesn’t sound much different from the Lebensborn Program. Haven’t we learned anything?