The SS soldier sperm donor in Sweden case has raised questions about how a committed Danish Nazi became a donor at Stockholm’s Karolinska Hospital in the 1960s. DNA tests have so far linked Walther Frisch, a former Waffen-SS soldier, to at least 15 people conceived through fertility treatment in Sweden, according to a DR documentary reported by SVT.
The discoveries have connected people in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany, some of whom are now trying to understand why Frisch was accepted as a sperm donor and whether his political background had any role in the decision. So far, however, no evidence has emerged that the donations formed part of a Nazi-inspired or eugenic programme.
How Walther Frisch became a sperm donor in Sweden
Frisch was Danish and had joined the Waffen-SS during the Second World War after swearing allegiance to Adolf Hitler. After the war, he was sentenced in Denmark to one year in prison for having joined Nazi Germany.
Years later, he appeared as a sperm donor in fertility treatments carried out at Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm during the 1960s. According to the DR investigation, he became the biological father of at least 15 people.
One of them is Danish Thomas Rasmussen, who discovered the connection after taking a commercial DNA test. The results gradually connected him with previously unknown half-siblings and eventually led investigators to Frisch.
“How the hell can a Danish Waffen-SS soldier be my donor father? It just doesn’t add up,” Rasmussen says in the documentary, according to SVT.
Swedish Mats Rydberg, another of Frisch’s biological children, has raised a more specific question about the political beliefs of their biological father. Referring to the Nazi regime’s emphasis on reproduction among members of the SS, he asks: “Are we a result of Nazi ideology?”
There is currently no evidence establishing such a connection.
At least 15 children, but the total remains unknown
DR has so far identified 15 people conceived using Frisch’s sperm, but the real number could be higher.
Commercial DNA databases only contain genetic information from a limited proportion of the population, meaning other biological children could remain unidentified.
“Only a few percent of the population have taken a DNA test, and we are already 15, so we could be well over 100,” Rasmussen told the documentary.
The number remains an estimate. Without additional DNA matches or historical records, it is not possible to establish how many fertility treatments used Frisch’s sperm.
The case is particularly difficult to reconstruct because the donations took place during the 1960s, decades before Sweden introduced its modern legal framework governing sperm donation.
Sweden later abolished anonymous sperm donation
Sweden fundamentally changed its system in the 1980s. In 1984, it became the first country to abolish anonymous sperm donation, with the new rules entering into force in March 1985.
Under the system introduced at the time, donor insemination could only be carried out at public hospitals under specialist medical supervision. The treating doctor selected the donor, while information on the donor’s identity had to be preserved in a special medical record.
People conceived through sperm donation at Swedish clinics from 1985 onwards were also given the right, once sufficiently mature, to obtain information about their biological donor. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) still describes access to information about biological origins as a central right for donor-conceived people.
Those rules came too late to govern Frisch’s donations, which had taken place around two decades earlier.
Karolinska says it cannot verify what happened
The historical gap is also central to the response from Karolinska.
The hospital declined DR’s request for an interview and said it had been unable to verify the information concerning the case.
“The event described took place a very long time ago and we have not been able to verify this information,” Karolinska said in a statement reported by SVT.
The institution added that the idea that insemination practices or donor selection could have been influenced by ideological motives would be “fundamentally completely unacceptable and deeply unethical.”
That response leaves the central question raised by Rasmussen, Rydberg and the other donor-conceived people unresolved: why was Walther Frisch selected and repeatedly used as a donor?
The available evidence establishes Frisch’s Nazi past and his biological connection to at least 15 people conceived through fertility treatment. What it does not establish is that his selection was motivated by his ideology.
Without surviving institutional records or further evidence, the possibility of an ideological experiment remains a question raised by Frisch’s biological children rather than a documented explanation of what happened at Karolinska.
