Social Studies 11 - The Table

Bystanders at Hartheim Castle

While the Nazis loudly proclaimed the campaigns to demonize and isolate Jews and “Gypsies”

(the name Germans gave to two ethnic groups known as the Sinti and Roma) in newspapers

and magazines, on billboards, and over the radio, they attempted to keep secret the program to

murder mentally and physically disabled “Aryans.” And yet by the end of 1940, most Germans

were aware of some if not all aspects of the killings.

As historian Gordon J. Horwitz investigated the history of Mauthausen, a small Austrian town

90 miles from Vienna, he uncovered evidence of what the residents of a nearby village had

known about the “euthanasia,” or medical killing, program taking place there.

Soon after Austria became part of the Third Reich in 1938, the Germans built a labor camp for

political prisoners in Mauthausen. As the camp expanded, German officials took over buildings

in a number of nearby villages. One of those buildings was Hartheim Castle, which was a home

for mentally handicapped children. In researching the history of Hartheim Castle, Horwitz

discovered a letter written by a man he identified as “Karl S.” The letter recalls events in 1939.

[The] house of my parents was one of the few houses in Hartheim from which one could

observe several occurrences. After Castle Hartheim was cleared of its inhabitants (around

180 to 200 patients) in the year 1939, mysterious renovations began which, to an outsider,

however, one could hardly divine, since no [local] labor was used for it, and the

approaches to the castle were hermetically sealed. Following completion of the renovation

work, we saw the first transports come and we could even recognize some of the earlier

residents who showed joy at returning to their former home.

Karl S. watched the buses arrive from a window in his father’s barn. He recalled that groups of

two or three buses came as frequently as twice a day. Soon after they arrived, “enormous black

clouds of smoke streamed out of a certain chimney and spread a penetrating stench. This

stench was so disgusting that sometimes when we returned home from work in the fields we

couldn’t hold down a single bite.”

A woman called Sister Felicitas, who had formerly worked with children kept in the castle, had

similar memories:

My brother Michael, who at the time was at home, came to me very quickly and

confidentially informed me that in the castle the former patients were burned. The

frightful facts which the people of the vicinity had to experience first hand, and the terrible

stench of the burning gases, robbed them of speech. The people suffered dreadfully from

the stench. My own father collapsed unconscious several times, since in the night he had

forgotten to seal up the windows completely tight.

Horwitz notes, “It was not just the smoke and stench that drew the attention of bystanders. At

times human remains littered parts of the vicinity. In the words of Sister Felicitas, ‘when there

was intense activity, it smoked day and night. Tufts of hair flew through the chimney onto the

street. The remains of bones were stored on the east side of the castle and in ton trucks driven

first to the Danube [River], later also to the Traun.’”

As evidence of mass murders mounted, Christian Wirth, the director of the operation, met with

local residents. He told them that his men were burning shoes and other “belongings.” When

they asked about the strong smell, he told them it came from a device that turned old oil and oil

byproducts into a water-clear, oily fluid that was of “great importance” to German submarines.

Wirth ended the meeting by threatening to send anyone who spread “absurd rumors of burning

persons” to a concentration camp.

The townspeople took him at his word. They did not break their silence.

The castle at Hartheim was one of six facilities, most of which were hospitals, that the Nazis

outfitted with gas chambers and ovens in 1940 and 1941 in order to murder physically and

mentally disabled people and burn their remains. Between May 1940 and May 1941, 18,269

patients were murdered at Hartheim.