Hartheim: the Nazi Castle of Horror

Among the sinister buildings

that have left their mark on history, Hartheim Castle stands out like no other. No one could have guessed

that this beautiful Renaissance castle nestled in the Austrian countryside, would become one of the most

terrifying scenes of history. The shock on arrival is beauty. I know very well what happened there,

but every time, its beauty shocks me. Intended as a care center, Hartheim was officially a peaceful refuge

for the physically and mentally disabled. However, by the end of the 1930s,

disturbing phenomena began to occur. Some people say they saw

that there were people on the bus when they arrived and the bus was empty when it left. There was a lot of smoke,

and it was smelling. It was the smell of burnt meat,

of burnt human flesh. People were beginning to think

something strange was happening in this house. Hundreds of sick people were mysteriously disappearing

under strange conditions. What intrigued

the German population was that, a lot of families were receiving

very standardized documents informing them that their relatives

had died of pneumonia or cardiac arrest. It was very fishy. What secrets are hidden

behind the walls of Hartheim Castle? What no one knew

is that the 17th-century building was completely renovated

as an extermination center, a place that was to house

one of the very first gas chambers of human history. Hartheim is not a concentration camp,

Hartheim is a place of murder. Behind this diabolical plan

was the Nazi regime that sought to purify the German race

by removing the genetically sick. Those deemed useless, a clandestine project that transformed

the mansion into a secret base. WWhat was the daily life

of the executioners? What atrocities did they commit? We will reveal the secrets

of these heinous crimes that the Nazis tried so hard

to hide from the world. This is the horrifying story

of Hartheim Castle. The small village of Hartheim

is situated in the northeast of Austria, around 50 kilometers

from the German border. A peaceful province

in the middle of the Danube countryside and its farm markets,

which supply the whole of Austria. Hartheim Castle is located

in the center of this rural village, steeped in Catholic traditions

for many centuries. Hartheim Castle,

in its present configuration, was built at the beginning

of the 17th century, between 1610 and 1620 approximately, in the purest Austrian style. It is a Renaissance castle with painted archways. There is a big indoor courtyard. As the centuries went by,

the castle changed owners, and it ended up

in the hands of the Starhemberg family. A family of local nobility. In the year 1896, it was given to a Catholic society,

and they had to treat handicaps. For over 40 years,

Hartheim Castle became a home for the mentally disabled

from the entire region. It was a place

where 200 people were treated. The special thing was that

the people who were cared for, they also helped in the surrounding. It was a little farm

and it was very interesting to see that they tried to work with the people

and not only care for them. A place where you don't exclude,

but you include. You include because the mentally disabled

worked alongside the physically disabled. The disabled people that could,

had the opportunity to work with animals. It didn't look like they were being used, but that they were given

the best life possible. In that sense,

it was more progressive and even unique. It's a place of life. For decades, disabled people

had the right to live in Hartheim without judgment. An oasis of tolerance

that would soon disappear. At the end of the 1930s, the atmosphere in the castle

became more serious. Officially,

Hartheim was still an institution for the care of the disabled, but they decided

to close it off from the public. Disabled patients disappeared

completely from the gardens and the villagers noticed buses

that arrived and left daily in the courtyard of the castle. In the village next door,

people were surprised to see these cars and buses of sick people. People say they saw

that there were people on the bus when they arrived,

and the bus was empty when it left. Little by little, people were noticing

what was happening. The weird things

that were happening in the castle, and they never brought out

the sick people. Even more disturbing,

thick, nauseating fumes began to emanate from the chimneys

of the castle and spread across the town. There was a lot of smoke. It did not smell like normal smoke

when you burn wood. Witnesses at the time

reported the horrible stench that was permanently being emitted. A smell of burnt poultry

and burnt human flesh. The villagers, frightened,

began to ask questions. They were quickly summoned

by the castle authorities, who gave them an explanation. Of course, people were afraid. Local people spoke about it, that something was going on

and it was something wrong in the castle. There was a meeting in a local restaurant,

in a top-secret area, of course, and they said they were working up diesel

for submarines there, which is why it smelled so bad. These justifications hardly convinced

the inhabitants of the village. However, how could anyone

imagine what was really going on behind the walls of Hartheim Castle? What no one knew was that the castle

was part of a diabolical plan developed by the Nazi powers in Berlin. When Hitler came to power in Germany

a few years earlier, he targeted those accused

of corrupting the purity of Aryan blood, all the sick and disabled people

suspected of having undesirable genes. The Fuhrer wanted to prevent them

from ever reproducing. Tens of thousands of the handicapped

in Germany are sterilized by force. Often without asking the advice

of their families. To legitimize this war

against disabled people, a propaganda campaign was even launched

by his minister, Joseph Goebbels. From 1933, there was a massive campaign managed by academic education

with posters and leaflets, and also by the cinema. We will distribute these in exhibitions,

in films, and in photos. Monstrous, designed to shock and make these people seem useless. These campaigns

were not yet calls to murder. They were awareness campaigns. In the end, these brutal measures led to the sterilization

of over 400,000 disabled people considered a threat

to the German Aryan race. However, this was still not enough. With Germany's entry into the war, Hitler wanted to completely eradicate

all these additional mouths to feed. This is where Hartheim Castle

will soon enter the Fuhrer's plans A top-secret operation was launched

called Action T4. There was a meeting in the chancellery

with Hitler and the doctors in which they decided

to assassinate disabled and sick people. One of the rare orders

signed by Hitler by hand. The T4 administration

sent all the clinic forms that they had to fill out. Then medical experts from the T4

studied each patient's file and they decided who had the right to live and who had to be exterminated. To carry out their plan,

the Nazis created in the greatest secrecy six euthanasia centers

throughout the Reich. Five in Germany,

the majority in old hospitals and one in newly annexed Austria

in Hartheim Castle. The geographical situation of Hartheim

played an important role in this decision. It is located near Linz, a city that constitutes

an important communication hub. However,

it is not in the center of the city nor in the middle of a dense urban zone. an important communication hub. This position, a little bit apart, could guarantee that the crimes which would be perpetrated there

would remain secret. They are aware that they are crossing

boundaries that the German people with their Christian liberal

and humanist morality, would not understand. That's why Operation T4 remained a secret because the operation

would massacre German people. Their first step

was to transform the Renaissance Castle into an extermination center. Work began in the winter of 1939. The 4,000-square-meter building

was completely refurbished for the needs of the T4 operation. The third floor

was transformed into a storage area for confiscated belongings and clothing. On the 2nd floor, dozens of spacious single rooms

were built for staff members, as well as a large reception room. The first floor is dedicated

to the bureaucracy, the area reserved

for dozens of secretaries and administration officials. The bulk of the work

will be concentrated on the ground floor under the arches of the courtyard. First, in the north wing, the creation of several rooms

to treat convicts. Then in the West Wing,

they built what looked like a shower room, which, in reality, was one of the first gas chambers

in history. It's the first time in history that they made a prototype

of a gas chamber. In the framework of Hartheim,

the shower was not effective, unlike some other extermination centers. It didn't work in masking the noise of the gas which entered. This gas chamber measures

barely 25 meters squared. To make it completely airtight, two accesses were dug out,

closed off by two bomb-proof doors. The door to the courtyard

is completely blocked. The gas is released

from a small room next to the chamber where the gas bottles are arranged. There is a small room

that has always been there where they kept the gas cylinders. In Hartheim, they used carbon monoxide. Bought from a pharmaceutical

and chemical industry in Germany. Basically, they ordered the gas cylinders. As an extension of the gas chamber,

they built a morgue to store the corpses. Finally,

at the extreme southwest of the building is the room where they burned

the tortured bodies to ashes. The crematorium. It's a crematorium with two ovens,

called a muffle furnace. It could burn

two to eight bodies at a time. In it was a grinder which was used

to crush the bones that came out of the crematorium. In May 1940, construction was completed. Hartheim Castle was now ready for use. Administration entrusted

the management of the new center to a man

with a particularly disturbing profile. Christian Wirth,

nicknamed Christian the Terrible, a German policeman

who had become an SS officer and was close to the Chancellory. Christian Wirth,

here we enter the category of criminals. Let's say a man, a feared man. He was the man

who made sure everything was functioning. They describe him

as a rather rude guy, really tough, and they were so afraid of him. He was a feared and formidable man. He was a member of the SS,

meaning of the secret Nazi police. He was then a man who Hitler trusted

before he came into power. Known for his sadism without limits, Wirth organized

an assassination project in Hartheim that was planned

down to the last detail. From the moment of their arrival, the people brought here

had a maximum of three hours to live. Throughout the country,

delivery buses were chartered, especially to transport the disabled

who were being sent to their deaths. They arrived in the east wing

of the castle where a garage with a roof was built. This way they disembarked out of sight. The condemned men

then entered the courtyard to begin their last walk outside. As they arrived at the courtyard,

a fence surrounded them. This fence restricted them

from moving around the courtyard and directed them

towards the northern wing. In the first room, the nurses

were tasked with welcoming them and undressing them completely. There were nurses on the transport

and others here in Hartheim, that had a really important role. They knew how to handle handicaps. They created a safe situation for them under the circumstances

when 100 people arrived at this place. Some people were nervous,

so they got medication to get to calm down and that's why they needed nurses. The tasks were clearly divided,

and organized in a systematic way. The whole thing worked

like an assembly line, so to speak. Once they were naked,

they were taken to the adjoining room. Then there was a large room in the corner

with a table and white clothes. This room, or as they called it,

the examination room, was in reality

how they verified their identity. Actually, the examination they did was to look into the mouth

and look for golden teeth. They were given a sign, a cross

either on the chest or on the back. Afterwards, they were told

that they had to go for a shower and before they can enter the rooms later. Then they were guided

into the gas chamber. As soon as the door closed,

that's when the murder process began. One of the doctors

in the castle was responsible for opening the valve

that released the carbon monoxide. The gas chosen for use by T4. After debates between scientists, it was finally decided that

it would be carbon monoxide, as it prevents the red blood cells

from receiving oxygen. The symptoms were vomiting. From this moment, after a few minutes,

the person is normally unconscious. They died 20 minutes after. With the overcrowding,

the number of people, it must have been five horrible minutes. The gas chamber was not big,

yet 120 people were inside. I refuse to imagine how you can cram 120 people in there. After these long minutes

when screams gave way to silence, a ventilation system started up

to evacuate the gas. The macabre work

of the so-called burners begins. A group of men who work 24-hour shifts. Their mission is to collect gold teeth

from the corpses marked with a cross. They must then transport the dozens

of bodies to the crematorium. Once the bodies are burned

and the bones crushed, the burners are in charge

of getting rid of the evidence. Tons of ashes. Disposing of them

into the surrounding waterways. Among the Hartheim burners,

an interesting character, Vincent Noel,

a family man in search of work. Strangely enough,

he was a disabled man himself. He could very well have been

on the side of the victims. He was a really interesting person

because he had a small accident and he was handicapped afterwards. He describes himself

as having a little, slow mind. He was hemiplegic, he had a right arm

that was difficult to use. Some of his comrades said that, his place was not in front

of the crematorium, but inside it. It's this simple individual

who found himself in the middle of this murder

and monstrosity. In order to endure the horror of his work, the fragile Vincent Noel was given an extra half a glass

of schnapps each day. Like the disabled burner,

many Hartheim employees were not initially convinced

by the Nazi program, but no one was oblivious

to what was happening. The systematic murder

of vulnerable and sick people, the extermination center,

functioned as a secret administrative base whose mission

was to create false death certificates to deliver to the victims' families. You have to imagine that Hartheim

was not deserted, but inhabited. It was a hive of activities. There was an army of secretaries in charge of drawing up

false death certificates with fake dates, fake places and fake causes of death,

which were sent to the families. It was a secret mission

because there was no law in 1940, that allowed someone

to kill the handicapped. The perpetrators, of course,

wanted a lex euthanasia. Natural causes, such as pneumonia, influenza, appendicitis,

or heart attack were used. This false information

was meant to mislead the administration as well as the famiies, so that the real events

at the castle would not be revealed. There was a real falsification of history. To add insult to injury, some families

were even given urns filled with ashes taken at random from the crematorium. In total, within the castle walls, there were nearly 70 employees

living in isolation, forbidden to mix

with the rest of the population. In the evening, nurses,

burners, bus drivers, secretaries and doctors

regularly met to dine together. We know that they threw a party

to celebrate the 10,000th corpse. All these extermination centers

were places where alcohol flowed freely, where they had parties and where those who enjoyed music

would dance and sing, romances between men and women,

they would drink alcohol. Hartheim was more than a place to live,

it was a place of debauchery. On weekends, the Hartheim administration also gave its employees

special treats for their entertainment. There were organized group outings

to the theater for the entire staff, as well as excursions. Every Sunday, they took buses and went on excursions in the countryside. In upper Austria, they often went

to a nice lake in the mountains where the Aktion T14

had its own rest center. As soon as you get on the side

of the executioners, there is a moment

when they lead a normal life. They compartmentalize,

and this compartmentalization is part of the monstrosity. In this place, bathed daily in smoke

and nauseating fumes, a wedding was even celebrated. We have a couple who fell in love here. She was a nurse and he was a burner,

and they also married in this house. They had their wedding celebration,

not outside or in a restaurant, they had it here in the house. There is also a photograph

taken in front of the castle with the witnesses of the wedding, who is none other than Christian Wirth,

the chief of police. You ask why. Why not go outside

and celebrate your wedding? Why choose to celebrate it in the house? Among the members

of this exclusive society, one man has forever marked

the history of Hartheim Castle. A 30-year-old German doctor who joined

the group when he was just a student, Dr. Georg Renno. Mireille Horsinga Renno

is Dr. Renno's great-niece. She's one of the last people still alive that personally knew the doctor

from Hartheim during his lifetime. He was a very proud and arrogant person. He was tall and had bright eyes. A good Aryan. He was convinced

that for the good of the nation, it was necessary

to create a superior race. In Hartheim,

Georg Renno had been commissioned by T4 for his very particular skills. It seems that he was noticed by his way of mastering barbiturates. This specialty, even before Hartheim, was to kill patients

without leaving a trace. He accepted the idea

that he would be killing patients because, for him,

these people didn't deserve to live. His pride was above all else. It was his mission as well, his vehicle

to achieve success in his career. In Hartheim Castle, he earned double what

he could have earned in another hospital. Often presented as an artist,

a lover of classical music, Dr. Renno was not at ease in the castle. Renno was a disturbing character because he had a refined side to him. He knew how to perform concerts,

how to play the flute, and so he had an artistic,

cultivated side. He had a room

on the right side of the house where he played the flute

in the evening after work, while corpses were still burned downstairs and the castle reeked of burning flesh. As a doctor, Renno was directly involved

in the extermination process. He was responsible for turning the valve that released carbon monoxide

into the gas chamber. One of his functions

was to ensure that the execution ended with the death of the patients. He also was responsible

for welcoming the Nazi officers who regularly visited the castle. Hartheim Castle was cited as an example, and from time to time

there were Nazi dignitaries who came to witness

the demonstration gassings. Renno confessed

to having turned the valve. There was an eyepiece that allowed him to see the inside of the gas chamber. The Berlin dignitaries

were very curious to see how it worked. The idea was also to see how it was, so they could set up

the same for their camps. It was all to see

how the extermination machines functioned. More disturbing, although he denied it, was that the doctor performed

dissections on the lifeless bodies of the murdered disabled. A small dissection room was specially set up on the first floor

on the other side of the courtyard. Sometimes they were marked

and after their death, there was a dissection of the brain. To study the brain

of a schizophrenic 15-year-old, they would kill a 15-year-old,

extract the brain, and send it to the faculty of medicine. It seemed that dissections

were used to make anatomical plates. Dr. Renno, as a zealous disciple

of National Socialism, took part in the darkest missions

of the T4 Operation in Hartheim. Mireille Horsinga Renno, his great-niece, only discovered

this dark side many years later. In the mid-1980s,

while digging into her roots, she discovered her uncle's secrets. At the time,

she knew nothing about his life. She didn't know

that the former doctor of Hartheim changed his name after the war and managed to escape justice

all these years. He very kindly invited me,

my husband and son to Italy several times. We were always welcomed like family, almost as if we were his own children. He was someone very kind,

warm and interesting. We had very interesting conversations. Then it got very cold. One day, a passing discussion

about the Second World War made the demons of the old man resurface. He tells me that it is a difficult period. He also told me, "Don't believe everything you read

in books or hear on the TV or radio." "The gas chambers never existed." That shocked me,

coming from an intelligent person. I said, "You can't say that." He said, "All that was built afterwards" "by the Americans to harm our country." There, I did not understand him anymore. Deeply shocked,

Mireille researched history books and discovered

the true role of her uncle in Hartheim. I asked myself: is it the same person? I asked him and he said it was him. He said:

yes, but now we have other worries, it's been a long time since it happened. You must forget. He seemed to think

that it was just a detail of his life. A little detail from his life, as if gas chambers

weren't a detail of history. We took our distance,

we didn't return there. On the other hand,

every month he would send me an envelope which contained cutouts

from revisionist articles. Monstrous at this point,

it was unimaginable. Harassed by his letters,

Mireille put an end to their relationship. In 2006, she published a book to tell

the story of her uncle's horrific past. At the beginning of 1941, the number

of gassings increased at Hartheim. Every week,

around ten buses dropped off patients condemned by the regime to their deaths. To get rid of the evidence

that accumulated each day, the burners continued

to pour their wheelbarrows full of ashes into the waters of The Danube. The pace of exterminations was so fast that the chimney connected

to the crematorium couldn't hold up. They had a problem with the chimney

that they have to build a second one. It was told that there was a fire

in the first chimney because it was too small

and there was just one chimney. One chimney had to do the central heating

and also the crematorium roof. Another chimney

was installed in the castle courtyard, a professional chimney, so to speak. The decision was made to build

a second chimney in the castle grounds, in the southwest corner of the courtyard. An industrial brick chimney

connected to the crematorium, measuring 20 meters high

and not one meter higher, so that it didn't protrude from the roof and instead,

remained invisible to the outside world. Completely destroyed

at the end of the war, no trace of this second chimney

remains today. In the village, bellows of toxic smoke

were constantly released into the air, and unsurprisingly, the terrified local population

avoided the perimeter of the property. Nobody dared to break the omerta

imposed by the Castle administration, but the remnants of the murders

continued to multiply. In a crematorium, not everything burns, and we know that the hair

gets carried away when they don't burn. If it never rains, this hair dies, if there is rain and wind, it falls down. The peasants in the area knew very well what happened there

as they found human hair. At one point, the local population

collected bones that they found around and made a little pyramid

at the side of the road. It was a method of disturbing the peace. They knew. In spite of the danger,

a Hartheim resident defied the ban. In 1941, Karl Schumann,

who lived on the neighboring farm, took a photo of the castle from his barn when a plume of smoke

was rising from the chimney. This is the only existing visual evidence

of the Hartheim crematorium in operation. While the village was kept in the dark, hundreds of Catholic families

throughout the Reich began to grow concerned about

the increasing number of disabled people who were dying

under strange circumstances. The secrecy surrounding

Action T4 began to crumble. What intrigued

the German population after a few months was that a lot of families

were receiving these very standardized and conventional documents informing them that their nieces,

daughters, nephews, cousins, had died from pneumonia

or cardiac arrest or breathing problems. Sometimes they would receive an urn. It became obvious

that something very fishy and criminal was going on. A man of the church then

publicly denounced this extermination, the Bishop of Munster,

Monseigneur Von Galen. It was 1941,

and Monseigneur Von Galen gave a speech. Very courageously,

as he literally denounced this political murder

and the protected murderers and what they were doing, that all this was contrary

to the prescription of the Gospel. The Nazi regime at that time did not want

any chaos within the population. On the contrary,

the objective was to unite all the forces of the country, so that they could

concentrate on the war effort. In the face of Von Galen's intervention, the Nazi hierarchy stepped back

and they decided to stop the T4 Action, the murder of the masses by gas. It was at this moment

that Berlin called on the Nazis to stop. In August 1941, the T4 Action ended, and the chimney of Hartheim Castle

finally stopped smoking. However, in the end,

with over 70,000 disabled people murdered, of which almost 20,000

were in Hartheim alone, the mission was,

from the Nazi point of view, a success. The objective was 70,000,

they are at a little bit more. This first operation has reached its objective. We can move on. The crematorium in Hartheim

didn't remain inactive for long. Back in Berlin,

Hitler already had a new plan in mind. The Nazis had invaded almost all of Europe

and were terrorizing populations. Everywhere, opponents of the regime

were systematically arrested and deported to labor camps, and very quickly the number of them

became a problem for the regime. A problem that had to be solved. Hitler then launched

a new operation called Action 14F13. Action 14F13 was an operation aimed

at easing the concentration camps. The idea was simple, to empty

the concentration camp population. They would use

the assassination methods available, which means to transport all the people in the concentration camps elsewhere. Logically, Hartheim Castle

was chosen to become the killing center of the nearest labor camp

located 30km away, Mauthausen. There were three categories of camps,

Mauthausen was classified as three, which means unwanted return. It's a camp where they sent people

who they didn't want to return. These prisoners in the Mauthausen camp must have been

in deplorable health conditions. They were those that the SS

treated in the worst way. There were prisoners

of various categories. Political prisoners,

"asocials", "gypsies". They came mainly from Poland

and the Soviet Union, but also from France, Spain, and Italy. Authorized by Berlin, the Hartheim killing center

was reopened for a second time, with its doctors, who once again

found themselves with the responsibility to select those who were too old

or unfit for work. Doctors were also sent to the camps, and Dr. Renno

made the choice of who would be. It was often a rudimentary selection,

they made them walk and run. Under Action 14F13, they decided

whether a person was executed in Hartheim based on whether or not he could work. If he could no longer work,

he was of no interest to the SS. The decision was made to transfer

prisoners from Mauthausen to Hartheim in order to eliminate them. The same trickery,

the same methods of murder, and the same hiding of evidence. The process

was well established in Hartheim and was as horribly effective as ever. Besides the mentally disabled, nearly 15,000 prisoners

were exterminated in the Austrian castle. In March 1942,

Hitler, assisted by Reichsfuhrer Himmler decided to launch

the Reinhardt action in Poland. It was the first phase of the Holocaust. It will lead to the murder

of over 1.6 million Jews. For this stage,

three new extermination camps were constructed: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Very quickly, to carry out

this new large-scale criminal operation, the skills of the Hartheim staff

were called upon. According to our current knowledge,

about 25 people who worked at Hartheim were sent to occupied Poland

to take part in Action Reinhardt. They included a cook, who played

a central role in Action Reinhardt, police officers,

and crematorium employees. The burner, Joseph Vlasta,

the man who got married in Hartheim, continued his career

in the Soviet war camp. Christian Wirth,

the head of the Hartheim police, was even appointed

to be responsible for the construction of all the Reinhard action camps. He was to become

the head of the Belzec camp. He gained a reputation

for the extreme cruelty with which he treated

the Jewish prisoners, always equipped with a horsewhip

that he did not hesitate to torture to the point of death. Christian Wirth is the real central point. It was he who was put in charge of the so-called 'industrial' process

of murder. The mechanization and industrialization. Hartheim killed around 20

to 30 thousand people over many years. In Belzec, they killed

20 to 30 thousand people in a few days. It is because of Hartheim that Belzec

and Sobibor became possible, and that they could take it

to the next level. The first Holocaust camps

thus benefited directly from the expertise acquired

by the executioners in Hartheim. For historians, Hartheim Castle

is considered a school of crime that made the Holocaust

technically possible. Hartheim served as an example, and played a big role

in the choice of mass murder. In that sense, Hartheim had a more

important function than simply logistical. It was a school of humanity. A school of murderers

that will soon see its last hours. In 1944, in the wake

of the American invasion, Hitler's armies were experiencing

more and more military defeats. The Nazis knew that the war was lost. Berlin quickly ordered the demolishion

of the Hartheim facilities. At the end of December, a group of workers

entered the courtyard of the castle. The military ordered the workers to completely destroy

the ground floor of the building. The partitions, the tiles, nothing must remain of the original

configuration of the place. They are going to erase things, break the chimney,

fill in certain doors, reopen other doors. They wanted to make all the evidence

of their atrocities to disappear. To make it look

as if nothing ever happened. On the upper floors, the secretaries

gathered all administrative documents, archives,

even the least incriminating files to set them all on fire. Under the gaze of German soldiers, Hitler's men hoped to hide the massacre

that took place here from the world. To better fool the future liberators,

the castle will even reopen its doors only a few weeks later

to a completely different public. In 1945, they arranged an asylum for kids,

and for widows here, just to show that it was a place

where kids were treated actually. The idea was that when the war is over, it looks like a special house

because it's a castle, a beautiful house

with children being cared for. Once all the evidence was removed,

the castle became, unbelievably enough, a home for underprivileged children. With the end of the war,

Hartheim's terrible secrets could have been buried forever. However, this was not the case. Thanks to the determination

of an American soldier in charge of investigating war crimes. Major Dameran. Major Dameron was an American officer. He belonged to a unit

that discovered war crimes. He accompanied the Allies, and was in charge of the different sites

suspected of war crimes. This team conducted

a very thorough investigation of the crimes committed at Hartheim. They were able to interview staff members,

take photographs, and interview people who lived nearby, accumulating a large amount of evidence. The major also came

across some incriminating documents that had been forgotten

by the Hartheim employees in their haste. Major Dameron was lucky. He found Nazi

and T4 documents in an armoire. In these documents

were the statistics established by T4 and these documents

in the T4 action, 100%. This means that Major Dameron

also proved the existence of T4 through what he found. It is to the credit

of this American official that the trickery did not succeed. Even today, the Dameron report remains the most important

historical source of information about what actually took place

behind the high walls of Hartheim Castle. At the end of the war, Hartheim's executioners

all had different fortunes. Christian Wirth,

the bloodthirsty police chief, was shot in the back

by his own men in Italy. The disturbing Dr. Renno, after he continued to work

under a false identity, died in his bed at the age of 90. Both of them have it in common

that they escaped justice. [German spoken audio] That was not the fate for all of them. Vincent Noel, The Hartheim burner,

a man who was disabled himself, answered for his actions

at the Mauthausen trial in 1946. He was caught up in the justice system

and they served him the maximum punishment since he knew what he was doing,

that the committed murders, and participated

in the concentration camps. He was given maximum punishment. He said that he had nightmares etc, he also seemed like someone who didn`t have

full intellectual capacity. That was taken into account

in the judgment as well. He was intellectually limited. Sentenced by the Court, Vincent Noel was the only employee

of Hartheim to be tried and executed. Today, peace has returned

to the gardens of Hartheim Castle. In 2003, the building was converted

into a memorial and a study center to honor the thousands

of victims of Nazi barbarism who were murdered there. It's not just a place of remembrance. It's a place for the younger generation, who are invited

to ask themselves essential questions on subjects that are still relevant today. Eighteen thousand visitors

come here every year. Most of them are pupils

with their classes. It's good when thousands of pupils

come here and learn about this because something that happened once

can happen again. With respect to history,

a center for the disabled was built in the 1960s

on the outskirts of the park. People with mental disabilities

are once again welcome in Hartheim. It's a sign that life goes on. Hartheim Castle is not only a place

of death and determination, but also a place where disabled people

can lead an ordinary life, just like everyone else. I think that the institution

for handicapped people being just on the other side

of the road is a great sign. We have a lot of people

from this institution around in the park who sometimes visit us. It seems important

to me that they made this and came back to this place

for treatment again, not in the castle, but around this castle. Even if it appears

as if life has resumed its course, not everyone has received closure. Hundreds of the dead, reduced to dust,

are still waiting to be identified. The Nazi cover-up led to a situation where we know

we will never know the whole truth. We know that we will never know and that is also motivation

for scientists. We know that there are unknown victims

in Hartheim. We know that there are victims

we know nothing about, and the goal of the historians

is to move forward as much as possible and if possible, to find the names

and identities of the victims who are unknown. Historians are still far

from lifting the veil on the many mysteries

that surround this cursed castle. The ghosts of Hartheim

will forever haunt the Great Danube Plain.