The Nazi Past of Steinhof

So, even though the last post and this one happened on the same day, I want to start over, cuz of the seriousness of the subject....

So as you can see, there is the 'golden dome' of the Church. Steinhof was and is a HUGE complex. It was opened in 1907, for a variety of ills, but mostly for psychiatric patients. It hit me that Otto Wagner built it with 'healing' the body, the mind and then the soul (as you move up the hill) with the Church on top. This realization made me even more sad for Otto realizing that roughly 30 years later, his complex would be turned into a death center...



So here you are Art Nouveau or as they call this architectural style in Vienna, Jugendstil.













This is the 'main office' building for the entire complex.








And here we are, at the memorial....

I'll give you more details as we move along...













As you can see, this is a HUGE complex!

There is the Church on the top...

Here is a patient ward in 1938....

Part of the facility was used for children psychiatric patients....

Now, the memorial's website has all of these photos that I want to share with you.

This is a Nazi poster from the time, showing how the 'healthy, Aryan' worker was being 'burdened' by the insane and the 'lazy' criminal to the cost of 50,000 Marks during a 60-year lifespan. (In other words, healthy people 'free' yourselves of 'these burdens'!)

Hence...

one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was pass a law restricting reproduction by mentally handicapped people, forcing many to be sterilized, etc.

Here is an article in a Viennese paper at the time showing the 'disgusting' nature of the mentally handicapped with the title 'The Cruelty of the Compassionate', i.e. 'being kind' is not being kind....

All of this is propaganda, but we're subject to similar 'tricks' today! (Oh and of course on the same page you have a warning that all Jews had to have their 'Jewish' ID's with them at all times! and that is the thing that is significant with the pscyhiatric patients at Steinhof - almost everything was first used on/'perfected' in Steinhof and other locations, which then were put into 'full force' in Auschwitz and other killing centers.)

This was a propaganda piece that was actually released worldwide as a German movie in 1941 showing the 'plight' of a man who tries to save his wife from a crippling disease. She continues to beg him to kill her; he refuses; her suffering mounts; she can't take it anymore; then he 'mercifully' ends her pain, i.e. life.

This was part of the propaganda machine to get Germans/Austrian/others to accept the fact that there are some people whose life is just painful and 'not worth living'...


So you build up the propaganda. As we all know from 'Sound of Music' Germany annexes Austria. Nazis are in charge, especially in Vienna! Here is a picture of the new anatomy professor at the University of Vienna opening his class in Nazi uniform, complete with the whole class 'saluting'. Medicine ended up being one of the most 'Nazi-fied' areas of life in Germany/Austria.



But I don't want to paint it (as it's often done) as the 'bad old Germans' taking over 'innocent and wonderful' Austria. This is a picture of Professor Otto Reche. He was head of the first president of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene. He ended up writing, BEFORE the Nazis annexed Austria, a widely used textbook about the 'Indo-Germanic man', etc. POINT IS - Eugenics was alive and well in the USA, UK, Austria, Sweden and other countries BEFORE Hitler ever arrived on the scene. The Nazis just 'added fuel to the fire' and intensified it....

And this translated into 'euthanasia' centers where doctors/nurses were told to kill psychiatric patients.

Here is a...'diagnosis' sheet of a Jewish patient. She had schizophrenia and her treatment result was deemed 'not needed'. This document was then sent to Berlin to Tiergartenstrasse 4 (there is a post on that building/subject in my Berlin blog) where the 'final word' came what was to be done with this patient. On this form you can see an + at the bottom left, that means the patient was to be 'terminated'.

I KNOW! UGH!! ugh....I don't know, should I go on more? Cuz by the end we'll all be sad and miserable....anyway....

Immediately after the Nazi law was passed 3,200 patients were sent to a Hartheim castle in northern Austria for 'further care' (that is another thing, the families of the patients were constantly lied to). There were NO BEDS at Hartheim! There were only gas chambers (they were killed with carbon monoxide) and then ovens - they were burned afterwards!


And here we arrive at the additional importance of all of this. It's HORRIBLE and 'bad enough' to kill people, but the techniques and 'system' that was developed to 'rid' German/Austria of its 'inherited disease' problems, was then put into full use in the killing/concentration camps, such as Auschwitz!

This is Christian Worth. He was director of the Hartheim killing center from 1940-41. Once the 'euthanasia' program was found out and there were protests all over, Hitler shut it down (but it continued secretly). Worth afterwards went on to become the director of the Belzec and Sobibor concentration camps!!



In Steinhof they have an exhibition where most of this information can be found (I read most of it on their website). Here is an 'apparatus' for deeming which 'racial' category you fell into - complete with racial map of Europe and the Mediterranean.

The point is, the killing solutions now found + rabid racism + racial categorization of humanity = Auschwitz, etc.!

This is Dr. Jekelius (I know seriously! Dr. Jekyll?!!) who ran the T4 (euthanasia program) in all of Vienna...he is responsible for the murder of thousands!!!

This is Dr. Heinrich Gross....he was head doctor in the children's 'Spiegelgrund' area....remember him, it's important!

Dr. Illing...he was Dr. Jekyll's replacement and was the main architect for the murder of the children at Steinhof....

He was executed after the War...

Dr. Bertha...he was director of Steinhof from 1944-45 (that is what is also SO WACKO with these people - they, including Auschwitz-types, etc., they did this till the 'bitter end', when most people would have stopped...they continued!! ???) and was responsible for the 'radicalization' of the death rates at Steinhof. You can see below in the chart, how under 'his care' the death rates shot through the roof!

He was never brought to justice AND later worked at a univesity in Graz, Austria as a professor....more to come on this....

Steinhof does get a big complicated...it was a pscyhiatric hospital, a killing center, an 'asocial' teenager 'rehabilitation' center (they would starve, beat troubled teens to 'shape them up'); etc. But all in all, they can prove that 800 children were killed here. Usually the doctors would administer heavy doses of pain medication, not feed the children, keep windows open, until most were so weak that they died from pneumonia.

Now, I don't want to give the impression either that all Austrians were in cohoots with the Nazis. Here is the Mother Superior of Salzburg who fought and fought to keep her patients out of the death centers. In the end, she failed and was kicked out of Salzburg, but she wasn't silent and tried her best to fight! So she earns my respect...

There were also others who tried and as I mentioned at the very least due to public outcry (which only made the Jewish situation even harder for me, cuz the people rose up, they told Hitler 'no', he backed down on the whole euthanasia thing, at least officially....they could've done it with the Jewish persecution as well....so that was a sad realization...I've always 'excused' the German/Austrian people on grounds of it was a 'police state', you do it or die!, but in the end, the euthanasia protests prove that even Hitler had to listen to the people sometimes....but anyway...) the euthanasia program was officially stopped, but continued secretly....

After the war, some of the guilty were brought to justice. Here are two women and then Dr. Illing on the far right. He was executed. The women were reprimanded....

I remember reading a letter the middle woman, Dr. Turk, sent to a family. She told them how their child had died and then at the end she said 'and your comfort in this time should be knowing that your child's suffering has ended.' Classy....Snow Queen....


SO....here we have DR.GROSS, we met him a while back (in the pictures). He was head doctor in the children's area of the hospital from 1944-45. In other words, he would have been there, aware and more than likely responsible for the deaths of many children. After the war....there was this short spurt of justice, but then (and Rwanda has been the best example to me - what do you do, as far as justice is concerned, when 3/4 of your population SHOULD be put in jail?!! I think that is what happened in Austria and Germany....'yeah get them! Hang the evil-doers!' 'Oh wait...Grandpa's guilty, Uncle Fritz is guilty, dad is guilty, Aunt Thelma is guilty...' 'umm...nevermind...let's just forgive and forget!') a lot of people were just let go! This guy....guess where he went to work after the war?! STEINHOF!!!! YES, so he went back to the very same area/hospital where he worked when all of these kids were killed!! It was only until the late 70's/early 80's when he was asked to give testimony in court (which he had done thousands of times as a psychiatric expert) about a man. Dr. Gross read word for word from this man's file as he had been one of these 'troubled teens' at Steinhof during the war. A movement started against Dr. Gross and finally he was set to have a trial in 2000 - but then it was cancelled due to his being ill-fit to stand trial! He died in 2005!!

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!!! NO WORDS....NO WORDS.....

And then to make things worse, Dr. Gross all throughout the decades published and became quite famous due to his investigations in 'diseased brains'. GUESS WHERE HE GOT THE BRAINS?!! From the dead children whose brains had been removed for study at Steinhof during the war!!! Here you see a picture of two jars with the names, ages and 'diagnoses' of the children....the brains were just sitting in the basement of the building where this exhibition was....UGH!
So FINALLY these brains and other cadaver pieces of the victims were interred in 2002 Vienna's 'Central Cemetery' with the mayor of Vienna and the Austrian President there.

UGH....no words, right now I just want to leave it alone cuz it's 'too heavy' and 'too much'....I already yelled at God about it, and I don't understand....and for now I'm just going to leave it....

Here is Building 15 and then 17 to the right....

This is where over 800 children were murdered because they were 'die Minderwertigen' (those of less value)....

Building 17 and 15 in the distance...

In the end I am hoping that 'life is just a dream' cuz I don't want to deal with or accept this was/is real....

On the hospital complex they built a memorial to the Victims of Spiegelgrund (the name of the children's part of the complex back in the Nazi times)....

These are all lamps which are to represent the 'lights' that were extinguished when they/the children were murdered....

Stand tall my little babies and do what you do best....

SHINE!!!

That is about the only comfort right now that I feel....knowing that they are Celestial and that nothing or no one can hurt them now or ever again....

I just hope that when I'm put in a situation like people had to live from 1933-1945, that I don't give in....

Byebye my little babies.....you're wonderful!