Memorial Children's Clinic Am Spiegelgrund

In this children's clinic in Vienna, about eight hundred children were murdered by the Nazis because they were considered not worth living (Lebensunwertes Leben). The clinic was part of the psychiatric hospital Am Steinhof. Sick and disabled children and adolescents became victims of medical experiments, starvation and psychological abuse here. The victims were killed by lethal injections, gassing and starvation, among other methods. The Viennese doctor Hans Asperger, namesake of Asperger's syndrome, is accused of sending incurably ill children, whom he deemed useless to society, to the clinic. At the time, this was under the direction of a former colleague of his, Erwin Jekelius.

This location is today set up as a memorial site. There is an exhibition on display about the Nazi euthanasia program and the clinic's role in it. There is also a monument, designed by Tanja Waltemer, with 772 illuminated crosses symbolizing the victims. Six hundred urns containing the victims' remains were interred in the section for victims of National Socialism at the [towid]150132,Vienna General Cemetery[towid] in 2002.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Bob Konings