STOCKHOLM -- More than 500 victims of a Nazi-style forced sterilization campaign in Sweden have applied for compensation, a government official said on Tuesday.
Leif Persson, vice chairman of the Swedish Sterilization Compensation board, said 178 people had so far received 175,000 crowns ($21,250) each -- roughly the amount Swedish courts give to people sterilized through crime or accident."It is a symbolic gesture to make up for past wrongs. The laws between 1941 and 1975 said that sterilizations must be voluntary, but we know that many people were sterilized against their will," Persson said.
Sweden, which prides itself on being an egalitarian welfare state, was shocked in 1997 when details were exposed of a campaign to sterilize forcibly those considered racially or socially inferior.
The mentally ill, epileptics, alcoholics, criminals and women seeking abortions were among the groups targeted between 1935 and 1975.
In May the government ruled that compensation should be paid to victims on claims to be presented from July 1.
Persson said about 63,000 people were sterilized during the 40-year period and it was difficult to distinguish between those sterilized voluntarily and those who were sterilized against their will.
Persson said about 90 percent of the claims for compensation came from people sterilized in the 1940s and 1950s. So far 247 cases have been reviewed.
The operations were performed as a requirement for release from prison and mental institutions, to qualify for certain social security benefits and child custody, he said.
"Almost all the men who were sterilized were put under pressure to be sterilized in prison or mental institutions so that they could leave. The law did not permit this," Persson said.
The sterilization efforts were based on the pseudo-science of eugenics.
which attempts to prevent the transfer of "poor" genetic characteristics between one generation and the next.
The Nazis were among the keenest proponents of eugenics in their attempts to create a blond, blue-eyed German master race.