Hartheim Castle

Back in 1898 the Renaissance-style Hartheim castle was made over to the Upper Austrian Provincial Charity Association and was adapted to suit the needs of physically challenged people.

Since the 1950s Hartheim castle has been used as a residential building. A couple of years before, in 1939, the Upper Austrian Provincial Charity Association was expropriated and dissoluted in order to turn the castle into an extermination site for the T4 and 14f13 euthanasia programs.

T4 was the code name for the euthanasia program concerning handicapped and ill people, whereas 14f13 stood predominantly for the killing of the physically and mentally ill inmates of the Mauthausen and Dachau concentration camps. Those people were sent to the Hartheim gas chambers and their bodies were burnt.

The permanent exhibition "The Value of Life. Memorial - Learning - Understanding." portrays the destinies of people during World War II and takes a closer look at the zeitgeist and the sociopolitical dimension of those extermination campaigns.