I didn’t know I was part of an experiment

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Greenlander Helene Thiesen was just seven, two Danish men came to take her away.

In 1951, Greenland native Helene Thiesen was just seven years old when two Danish men knocked at the family home. That moment would shape the rest of her life. These men, acting at the invitation of the Danish colonial government were rounding up the brightest Inuit children and sending them to live in Denmark to be re-educated as model Danish citizens or ‘little Danes’. Helene suffered terribly from being separated from her mother and siblings and it would take her many decades to discover the horrible truth behind it all: she was part of an experiment. Of the 22 children that were taken, Helene is now one of the few survivors.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar Producer: Edgar Maddicott Translator: Alette Rye Scales Voice: Julia Holden

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.
0:06.5	I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:11.1	I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,
0:16.0	relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life. So one day I'll be
0:23.5	helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature, and the next looking at
0:29.6	how a podcast connects with its audience. And maybe that's you. So if you like this podcast,
0:35.4	check out some others on BBC Sounds.
0:47.1	Hi, Namulanta Kondo here, and I'm excited to tell you that my award-winning podcast, Dear Daughter, is back for a second season.
0:49.0	And it's available now.
0:51.6	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
1:02.7	One night, a very close friend, she asked me suddenly, who was your mother?
1:04.4	Who was your father?
1:06.5	Who was your father?
1:14.3	So when I told her that my mother was called Medellina, my father was called Henlake,
1:17.7	and that I had been at a children's home, and she said,
1:20.5	how come you went to a home when you had your mother?
1:27.0	She said to me, I'm going to go and look at the National Archives and find out because it doesn't make any sense.
1:29.7	She rang me and she said, I found it.
1:33.5	It says you've been part of an experiment.
1:36.5	I dropped the phone.
1:39.7	Part of an experiment.
1:42.2	Your whole life summed up in a word.
	...

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