Hartheim: Hitler's Secret Death Castle For The Disabled | WW2 Euthanasia Nazi History HD Documentary

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 intended as a Care Center hartheim was officially a peaceful refuge for the physically and mentally disabled but by the end of the 1930s disturbing phenomena began to occur some people say we saw that there we left there were a lot of smoke it was smelling um [Music] hundreds of sick people were mysteriously disappearing under strange conditions it is What secrets are hidden behind the walls of hardheim 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 foreign 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 what 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 thank you the small village of hardheim 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 Market which Supply the whole of Austria hardheim Castle is located in the center of this rural Village steeped in Catholic traditions for many centuries um foreign foreign Catholic society and they had to treat handicap and so for over 40 years hardheim Castle became a home for the mentally disabled from the entire region it was a place where 200 people were treated and the special thing was that the people who were cared for they helped also in the surrounding it was a kind of a little farm and it was very interesting to see that they tried to work with the people and not only care for them at Epic foreign for decades disabled people had the right to live in hardheim 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 hardheim 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 is people say we saw that there were people in the bus when they arrived and the bus was empty when he left vegetables even more disturbing thick nauseating fumes began to emanate from the chimneys of the castle and spread across the town there were a lot of smoke it was smelling not like normal smoke if you burn wood yeah this is The Villages frightened began to ask questions they were quickly summoned by the castle authorities who gave them an explanation [Music] of course people were afraid local people spoke about it but there was something going on and there was something wrong in the castle so we knew that there was a meeting in a local restaurant they said it was top secret area of course and they working up diesel for submarines here and that's why it's it smells so ugly these justifications hardly convinced the inhabitants of the village but how could anyone imagine what was really going on Behind the Walls of hardheim 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 is to legitimize this war against disabled people a propaganda campaign was even launched by his Minister Joseph Goebbels [Music] um foreign civilization in the end these brutal measures led to the sterilization of over 400 000 disabled people considered a threat to the German Aryan race but this was still not enough with Germany's entry into the war Hitler wanted to completely eradicate all these additional mouths to feed and this is where hardheim Castle will soon enter the fuhrer's plans a top secret operation was launched called action T4 Limited foreign [Music] 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 um foreign [Music] 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 [Music] on the second 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 of all 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 [Music] foreign 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 the um as an extension of the gas chamber they built a morgue to store the corpses and finally at the extreme Southwest of the building is the room where they burnt the tortured bodies to ashes the crematorium is in May 1940 construction was completed hardheim Castle was now ready for use Administration entrusted the management of the new center to a man with a particularly disturbing profile Christian vert nicknamed Christian the terrible a German policeman who had become an SS officer and was close to the chancellery [Music] category Criminal s they describe him as a rather root guy really tough and they were so afraid of him the conference known for his sadism Without Limits that organized an assassination project in hardheim that was planned down to the Last Detail here throughout the country delivery buses were charted 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 condemned men then entered the courtyard to begin their last walk outside the visade is in the first room the nurses were tasked with welcoming them and undressing them completely so there were nurses on the transport and there were also nurses here in hard time that that really an important role so they knew how to handle handicapped they created a safe situation for them under the circumstances when a hundred people arrive in this place some people were nervous and so they get medication to get to calm down and that's why they needed they needed nurses thank you because [Music] once they were naked they were taken to the adjoining room s it is actually the examination they did was it was to look into the mouth and look for golden teeth [Music] to go for a shower and before they can enter the rooms later and then they were guided into the gas chamber 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 um foreign concert s available 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 foreign [Music] ERS an interesting character Vincenz 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 his really interesting person because he had a small accident [Music] he was handicapped afterwards he describes himself as a little slow mind um key positive [Music] in order to endure the horror of his work the fragile vincense was given an extra half a glass of schnapps each day like the disabled burner many hardheim 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 foreign 1947 was allowed to kill handicapped so the the perpetrate is of course wanted a Lex euthanasia foreign foreign 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 [Music] foreign [Music] happy birthday to salute exterminations [Music] [Music] devotion on weekends the hardheim administration also gave its employees special treats for their entertainment [Music] um [Music] foreign foreign fumes a wedding was even celebrated we have a couple who fall in love here and she was a nurse he was a burner and they also married in this house and they had their wedding celebration not outside not in a restaurant they had it here in the house foreign [Music] why don't you go outside and celebrate your wedding why do you choose to celebrate it in the house among the members of this exclusive Society one man has forever marked the history of hardheim Council a 30 year old German doctor who joined the group when he was just a student she's one of the very last people still alive that personally knew the doctor from hardheim during his lifetime this is the foreign had been commissioned by T4 for his very particular skills the doctors foreign often presented as an artist a lover of classical music Dr Reno was not at ease in the castle cultivated employee as a doctor Renault was directly involved in the extermination process he was responsible for turning the valve that released carbon monoxide into the gas chamber function s he also was responsible for welcoming the Nazi officers who regularly visited the castle examples demonstration I guess foreign 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 cancer consistency is Dr Reno as a zealous disciple of national socialism took part in the darkest missions of the T4 operation in hardheim 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 is a foreign one day a passing discussion about the second world war made the Demons of the old man resurface is Piggy deeply shocked Murray research history books and discovered the true role of her uncle in hartheim foreign [Music] foreign imaginary [Music] harassed by his letters Murray put an end to their relationship in 2006 she published a book to tell the story of her uncle's horrific past [Music] at the beginning of 1941 the number of gassings increased at hardheim every week around 10 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 he had a problem with the chimney and that they have to build in a second one it was told that the chimney that there was a fire in the first chimney because it was too small and there was just one chimney so one chimney had to do the central heating and also the crematorium off 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 thank you in the village Bellows of toxic smoke were constantly being released into the air and unsurprisingly the terrified local population avoided the perimeter of the property nobody dared to break the omate imposed by the castle Administration but the remnants of the murders continued to multiply foreign foreign foreign resident defied the ban in 1941 Carl Schumann who lived on the neighboring Farm took a photo of the castle from his barn when a plume of smoke was arising from the chimney this is the only existing Visual Evidence of the hardheim 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 begins to crumble population [Music] is [Music] it is a man of the church then publicly denounced this extermination the bishop of Munster monsignor fungalen you know um in August 1941 the T4 action ended and the chimney of heartheim Castle finally stopped smoking but in the end with over 70 000 disabled people murdered of which almost 20 000 were in hard time alone the mission was from the Nazi point of view a success is 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 14 f-13 exactly what I'm eating half um and logically hardheim Castle was chosen to become the killing center of the nearest labor camp located 30 kilometers away Mount Houston foreign foreign authorized by Berlin The hardheim 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 is lucky 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 [Music] in March 1942 Hitler assisted by reichfire 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 belzac solvivor and Treblinka and very quickly to carry out this new large-scale Criminal operation the skills of the hardheim staff were called upon um is the man who got married in hardheim continued his career in the sovivor camp the head of the hardheim police was even appointed to be responsible for the construction of all the Reinhard action camps he was to become the head of the belzech camp who gained a reputation for the extreme cruelty with which he treated the Jewish prisoners always equipped with a horse whip that did not hesitate to torture to the point of death is person Ally impossible foreign the first Holocaust camps thus benefited directly from the expertise acquired by the executioners in hardheim [Music] for historians hardhound Castle is considered a school of crime that made the Holocaust technically possible [Music] uh uh Logistics Humanity a school of murderers that will soon see its last hours [Music] 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 demolishment of the hardheim 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 partitions the tiles nothing must remain of the original configuration of the place [Music] is 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 hope to hide the massacre that took place here from the world to better fall the future liberators the castle will even reopen its doors only a few weeks later to a completely different public we're in 1945 they arranged Asylum for for kids for widows here so just to show it was just a place where we were kids were treated actually so the idea was that when the war is over it looks like a special house because it's a castle a beautiful house where there are children which are cared for once all the evidence was removed the castle became unbelievably enough a home for underprivileged children with the end of the war hardheim'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 Dameron is [Music] um [Music] the major also came across some incriminating documents that had been forgotten by the hartheim employees in their haste is statistics even today the Dameron report Remains the most important historical source of information about what actually took place behind the high walls of hardheim Castle at the end of the war hardheim's executioners all had different fortunes the bloodthirsty police chief was shot in the back by his own men in Italy the disturbing Dr Reno 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 escape Justice but that was not the Fate for all of them Vincenz Noel the heartheim burner a man who was disabled himself answered for his actions at the mount housing trial in 1946 is intellectual s sentenced by the court Vincent Noel was the only employee of hard time to be tried and executed [Music] today peace has returned to the gardens of heartheim 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 18 [Music] 000 visitors come here every year most of them are pupils with their classes it's good when when thousands of pupils come here and and learn learn about this because something happened once it 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 hard time [Music] um I think that the institution for hand [Music] and we have a lot of people from this institution around in the park sometimes visiting us it seems important for me that the tomatoes and they came back to this place for treatment again not in the castle but around this Castle [Music] but even if it appears as life has resumed its course not everyone has received closure hundreds of dead reduced to dust are still waiting to be identified foreign foreign historians are still far from lifting the veil on the many Mysteries that surround this cursed Castle [Music] the ghosts of hardheim will forever haunt The Great Danube plain [Music] this