Hartheim Castle in 2005
The Hartheim Euthanasia Centre was a Nazi killing centre that was part of their euthanasia programme, since also referred to as Action T4. In all it is estimated that a total of 30,000 people were murdered at Hartheim. Amongst the killed were the sick and the handicapped as well a prisoners from concentration camps. The killings were carried out using carbon monoxide poisoning.
To prevent the families and the doctors of the patients tracing them, they were often sent to transit centers in major hospitals where they were supposedly assessed before being moved again to “special treatment” centers. Families were sent letters explaining that owing to wartime regulations it would not be possible to visit relatives in these centers. In fact most of these patients were killed within 24 hours of arriving at the centers, and their bodies cremated. For every person killed, a death certificate was prepared, giving a false but plausible cause of death, and sent to the family along with an urn of ashes (random ashes, since the victims were cremated en masse). The preparation of thousands of falsified death certificates in fact took up most of the working day of the doctors who operated the centers.
Collection bus and driver
