Researchers found a layer of human ashes and bone remains several centimeters thick, measuring approximately 460 square meters at the Hartheim Castle memorial site near Linz in Upper Austria. The layer was found at depths of 80 centimeters to 1.50 meters.
Between May 1940 and November 1944, about 30,000 people with disabilities, mental illnesses, concentration camp prisoners, and forced laborers were murdered in gas chambers at Hartheim Castle and subsequently burned.
Hartheim Castle was one of six centers where doctors murdered disabled individuals and people considered unworthy of life by the Reich as part of the T4 program between 1940 and 1941. Many victims of Hartheim Castle arrived from the Mauthausen concentration camp, located a few kilometers away. After the official end of the T4 program, the gas chambers at Hartheim were used to eliminate deportees from concentration camps who had become unfit for work or were considered troublesome due to their status as witnesses, initiating Aktion 14f13.
The bodies were incinerated in a crematorium built for this purpose within the castle grounds. The ashes were scattered mainly in a tributary of the Danube or, as recent discoveries prove, on the site itself.
"Chronologically, the first concentration camp inmates murdered at Hartheim were Dutch Jews rounded up during the large strikes in Amsterdam in February 1941 and gassed on August 11 of the same year, after a transfer through Buchenwald camp," Le Soir noted. Following the Dutch Jews, political deportees from Spain and Poland were also among the victims. More than 400 French deportees from Mauthausen and Gusen were murdered behind the walls of Hartheim Castle, Le Soir noted.
After a pause in gassings at Hartheim in 1943, gassings resumed in the spring of 1944 and continued until the end of that year. It is likely that a convoy of women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp was also among the victims in November 1944, although historical documents have not been found to date.
"These findings clearly show that, even 80 years after the end of National Socialism, not all the tragic remains of this period are known," stated the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, as reported by Die Presse.
"The crimes of the Nazi era must never be forgotten," said Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, as noted by Die Presse.
In December, anomalies in the soil were discovered through aerial photographs and geophysical studies using ground-penetrating radar, leading to targeted drilling that confirmed the presence of human remains, Le Soir reported.
"Only those who know the past can shape the future," added Upper Austria's Governor Thomas Stelzer in a joint press release, as reported by Die Presse.
"Investigators based their suspicions on testimonies from witnesses of the time, according to which human ashes had been dumped into the Danube River for a time," explained Florian Schwanninger, director of the Learning and Commemoration Center of Hartheim Castle. "This became too conspicuous for the Nazis over time, which is why from an unknown point in time, the ash was buried," Schwanninger stated.
Schwanninger assumes that the 460 square meter area on the northern side will be officially dedicated as a war grave, according to Die Presse. Austria is considering making the northern side of the Hartheim Castle a military cemetery, but concerns remain about honoring all victims, including Jewish victims from Amsterdam and Italian deportees like Maggiorano Ciabatti. "Classifying the site as a military cemetery will certainly ensure the maintenance of the place, but behind the administrative logic lies the question of memory, more precisely of memories: memory of the disabled victims of Aktion T4, memory of the concentration camp inmates victims of Aktion 14f13, and memory of the Jews murdered at the same site," Le Soir noted.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
