One of the many reasons I love archaeology is that it can help reveal the actual truth of what transpired in history. And archaeology has shed light on the atrocities of Aktion T4 as documented in Vestiges and Witnesses: Archaeological Finds from the Nazi Euthanasia Institution of Hartheim as Objects of Research and Education on JSTOR. In 2001, archaeologists Simone Loistl and Florian Schwanniger conducted an archaeological excavation at the site of Hartheim Castle, one of the six killing sites created by the Nazis for the purpose of implementation of Aktion T4. Hartheim Castle, built around 1600, was considered to be Austria’s most beautiful and significant Renaissance castle. In 1799, the owners of the castle gave it to the Upper Austrian State Welfare Society (OÖLWV) for conversion and use as an institution for persons with mental disabilities. After the Anschluss in 1938, the castle was taken over by the Reichsgau Oberdonau.
Pre-war postcard showing Schloss (Castle) Hartheim. (Chris Webb Private Archive)
In March 1940, patients at Hartheim were transferred to other facilities and Hartheim Castle was converted into a killing center for Aktion T4. The section of the castle to be used as a killing center was overseen by none other than Erwin Lambert, the engineer who converted the basement of Bernburg Psychiatric Hospital for its’ killing center, and also later, the extermination camps of Sobibor and Treblinka.
The only known picture of Schloss Hartheim with the crematorium chimney smoking, probably in the fall of 1940.
After the end of Aktion T4, Hartheim Castle continued to be used for the killing of Jews and Communists. More than 30,000 people would be killed at Hartheim in the Nazi euthanasia programs.
On December 11, 1944, twenty inmates from nearby Mauthausen Concentration Camp were instructed to destroy any structural traces of the killing center at Hartheim. Approximately two weeks after New Years of 1945, their work was completed, and the exact site of the Hartheim Killing Center was obliterated.
That is, until the end of the 1990’s, when work began on a planned memorial for the victims of the Hartheim Killing Center. Little did the memorial planners realize their intended structure was unintentionally designed to be placed directly on top of the site where so many victims had been murdered. Numerous structural remnants of the killing center were found when construction of the memorial began, and then, in 2001, several pits, including some with human remains, ashes, and bone fragments, as well as personal belongings, were found in the Castle Garden area.
Aerial photograph of April 9, 1945. The light spots on the east side of the castle within the wall of the former castle garden coincide with the location of the finds in 2001/2002. They are probably places without vegetation and thus disturbed areas where pits were filled with ashes and other “trash” and covered with earth. Photo from archaeological report.
Three separate archaeological excavations took place in the autumn of 2001 and the winter and spring of 2002.
“When there was a distinct request, the estate, i.e. the belongings in the possession of the victims, was returned to the relatives and families, but in numerous cases the belongings of the murder victims probably remained in the castle.”
The belongings of the victims, at least the belongings that remained after Hartheim Killing Centers employees had finished rifling through them and taking what they wanted, were tossed into the pits, along with the ashes from the crematorium. The pits were covered up and forgotten by living memory.
Artifacts found in the pits included reading glasses, asbestos gloves (used by crematorium oven workers), and coins in different currencies.
“Some coins were found which apparently were used as special tokens in the Gabersee Psychological Institution in Bavaria. Several hundred patients from that institution were murdered at Hartheim. The existence of such institutional coins had been unknown” before the excavations. Yet only one item owned by the Hartheim euthanasia victims can clearly be attributed to an individual person. Three fragments of a ceramic cup bearing the inscription “Eva Gessl” were found. “This shard is the only found object that can be attributed by name to a victim of Aktion T4.” Eva, listed in the records as an ‘innkeeper’s widow’, was born in 1875 in Rauris in the State of Salzburg and became a patient at the State Psychiatric Hospital in Salzburg in 1936. “On April 16, 1941, she and 67 other female patients were taken to be murdered at the killing institution of Hartheim.”
Fragment of a cup with the inscription, “Eva Gessl” (material: ceramic 6.5 X 5.8 cm).
As a result of the archaeological excavations at Hartheim, the site of the pits where human remains were found was dedicated as a cemetery in 2002.
Signage posted at Hadamar cemetery. Photo credit: http://www.medicineaftertheholocaust.org/gallery/
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