Hell in Klarup
I remember from my childhood the stories of the Brems from Klarup, who adopted a total of nine children from abroad. Some of them were children of German women and African-American men who had been posted as soldiers in Germany. Ole Brems, who was a psychiatrist, and Lise Brems, was first a sunbeam story that appeared in the local newspaper and in the weekly magazines - think that so many children with such an uncertain fate could be saved by two Danish community backers. And I remember a TV interview with a lady named Tytte Botfeldt (that name was so remarkable in itself that I didn't forget it). She was dying, but could still tell of her efforts to found the Danish branch of Terre des Hommes. This interview also emerged as a sunbeam story.
A few years later, the Brems couple reappeared in the media. Three of the nine children in Klarup had died because of the systematic cruelty of the adoptive parents. What happened next to the other six kids, I don't know. But because these were children in North Jutland at my own age, it started many thoughts.
There is an interesting article in Information on Adoption and how the countries that have previously delivered many adoptive children to Europe and North America are no longer so willing to do so. A much-talked-about TV show about the fate of two Ethiopian adoptive children focused on adoptions from abroad for some time. And earlier this year came the book Child Import, which unveils how adoptions from abroad began. It is a book I want to read - the whole story of the cruel married couple in Klarup I have thought about occasionally.
It was Tytte Botfeldt who had helped to place adoptive children with the Brems family. According to Jyllands-Posten, when she was dying (maybe it was in the TV interview?) She should have stated that