are recorded on glass plates. They are PLAQUES IN MEMORIA arranged not in alphabetical order or by In 1969 the memorial plaques were remo groups of victims, but randomly. The docu ved from the arcaded walkway and placed in mentation centre and management of the what was then the newly founded memorial house have been of assistance in the search site. In 2002, the plaques were once more for names. This room was used for the placed in the outdoor area. They commemo admission of the victims. Besides the name rate for the most part victims from the Maut INFORMATION AND BOOKINGS plates, the room contains a pit raised in its hausen, Gusen and Dachau concentration entirey from the ground and containing camps, and have been provided by survivors, Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim objects that once belonged to the people relatives and victims' sociaties. Other plaques Schlossstrasse 1 murdered in Hartheim. commemorate the victims of the euthanasia A-4072 Alkoven campaign T4.
Tel +43 (0)7274 6536 546 MEDITATION ROOM Fax +43 (0)7274 6536 548 This room was created by Herbert Friedl [email protected] and stands for quiet and reflection. The www.schloss-hartheim.at room is deliberately kept free of religious or confessional connotations. It is here that the visitors' book is also to be found. The stonefilled cube symbolises the considerable PASSAU number of victims in Hartheim.
B129 THE GRAVESTONE A8 EFERDING The victims' mortal remains were found ALKOVEN on the east side of the castle in 2000/01, SALZBURG LINZ THE FORMER KILLING ROOMS and properly buried there in September A1 These rooms are known to have been the 2002. The land has officially been declared WELS rooms used for the smooth running of the a graveyard. Inscribed on the gravestone killing operation: they are the gas chamber, are two verses from the Old and New Testa the technical room from which the gas can ments, with two verses by Franz Rieger, an isters, supplies and the like were obtained, Upper Austrian poet. the morgue, where the dead were stored prior to incineration, and the crematorium, which housed the combustion furnace.
Only very little information is provided here, as they are rooms for remembrance and not part of the museum concept. Historical docu mentation is presented in the first part of the memorial site.
OPENING These rooms are accessible through a cross section and a walkway, the aim being to Monday and Friday: 9 am – 3 pm maintain a distance to the rooms in which Tuesday – Thursday: 9 am – 4 pm people were murdered. The intention of the Sundays and public holidays: 10 am – 5 pm concept is not for the visitor to trace or "feel" Saturday closed the route taken by the victims, but rather to Tours and Pedagogical Programmes must remain at a distance keeping in mind the be booked in advance. insuperable difference between visitors today and the victims then. Every person who pass ORIGINAL LEAFLET IMPRINT: es through these rooms today should be able Schloss Hartheim Society, Schlossstrasse 1, A-4072 Alkoven Photography: Hartmut Reese to view but also to perceive the difference by MEMORIAL SITE HARTHEIM CASTLE Graphic Design: Viktoria Schlögl means of this distance. HARTHEIM CASTLE THE DOCUMENTATION human bones and ashes were dumped after THE MEMORIAL ROOMS / MEMORIAL SITE OF NAZI EUTHANASIA cremation. These remains were fromally buried THE FORMER EUTHANASIA ROOMS on the east side of the castle in autum 2002. Hartheim Castle was opended as a place for Room: The room documents the sequence of events ENTRANCE education and remembrance in May 2003, NAZI-EUTHANASIA - THE in Hartheim itself and the traces of the mass On the West side of the castle stood the and comprises the memorial site to the DIMENSION OF MASS MURDER murder. shed where the buses transporting the vic victims of the Nazi euthanasia program and Precursed by scientific theories and con tims entered when they arrived. The victims the "Value of Life" exhibiton. The project had firmed as a foundation of National Socialist were led from here through the arcade to been in planning since the nineties, was taken ideology, racial hygiene and eugenics were undress. The places of origin named here on by a community of individuals committed implemented radically by means of the first, have been taken from a "list of German to the issue and was implemented with sup systematically planned and state mass mur institutions for imbeciles and the mentally ill port from the Province of Upper Austria and der by the Nazi regime under the sinister as of 31/08/1941", which the organisation the Federal Government. euphemism "euthanasia". This room outlines T4 used as a basis to plan the murder cam Hartheim Castle, which from 1898 had been how National Socialist euthanasia program paigns. The sites here are listed in ascend a care institute for mentally and severely dis mes came into being, their aims, the organi ing order according to the number of abled people, was seized after the "Anschluss" sations that were set up, and who the main patients registered at each site. A list of (union) of Austria with the Third Reich in accountable figures were. The groups of the native countries of concentration camp 1939. Under the National Socialists it became victims are also documented, as is the victims at Hartheim has been reconstructed an euthanasia institution. Between 1940 and opposition to these activities, together with on the basis of documentation held at the 1944, around 30.000 people classified as the political and legal debate that followed Mauthausen, Gusen and Dachau memorial "unworthy of life" were murdered here. These the end of the Nazi regime. sites. The steel panels are an artist's were physically and mentally handicapped or impression of the room and not a recon mentally unbalanced people and, after the Room: struction. Like the steel panels of the nor end of "centralised" euthanasia in the summer VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS therly arcade and walkway, and the light trail of 1941, prisoners from the Mauthausen, Between 1940 and 1944, some 30.000 in the floor, they are there to mark the route Gusen and Dachau concentration camps who people were murdered in Hartheim. During of the victims. They were created by Upper were classed as ill or "unworthy of life", as these years a considerable number of people Austrian artist Herbert Friedl. well as forced labourers. worked in the castle. Alongside the adminis trative, office and security personnel were carers and nurses, drivers, workmen, general helpers, all employed in the execution of the mass murder. After 1945 only a few were brought to justice. The director of the site was Dr. Rudolf Lonauer, who was also in charge of the Niedernhart Regional Health and Care Institute, where many murders took place. In 1945, rather than accept responsibility, he Room: committed suicide. His second-in-charge HARTHEIM EUTHANASIA INSTITUTE Dr. Georg Renno (died 1997) disappeared In 1940 Hartheim Castle was adapted for in 1945. The court case brought against him the implementation and administration of the in 1970 was withdrawn on the grounds of mass murder of handicapped people (T4 Ac the defendant's ill health and inability to tion) and concentration camp prisoners jud participate in the proceedings. The room THE FORMER ADMISSION ROOM ged unfit for work ("14f13 Special Action"). portrays the victims and the perpetrators, In the same way that the euthanasia site was Because the equipment used in the mass as well as the resistance to the mass murders. closed in 1944/45 and evidence of it erased, murders was removed at the end of 1944, The "Life traces" computer station can be an attempt was made to force eternal ano only a few structural relics had survived. Nev used to access biographical details of the nymity on the victims and to wipe their pres ertheless, during renovation work, many trac victims, a program that has been created with ence from people's memories. Through the es of the crimes were unearthed. As well as the help of the victims’ family members. "Gedenkbuch Hartheim" (Hartheim Memorial remains of the equipment and demolition, a The room also contains a display of the Book) project, the memorial site aspires to large number of victims' belongings were victims' personal belongings found in the give the dead their names once more. In this found. A significant find was the place where castle garden. room, over 15.000 names recovered so far