Remembrance Day at Schloss Hartheim 2025

Today, 1 October, the annual memorial service at the Hartheim Castle Learning and Memorial Centre is being held to commemorate the 30,000 men, women and children who were murdered there as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" programme. Among the victims were people with disabilities and mental illnesses, concentration camp inmates and forced labourers.

Invitation to the memorial day at Hartheim Castle on 1 October 2025
Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim

The widows and widowers, parents and children of those murdered there are officially recognised as victims of National Socialism by the National Fund.

In autumn 1939, Adolf Hitler signed the so-called Gnadentoderlass (“Mercy Killing Decree”) – a classified decree authorizing Nazi “euthanasia” and thus also the “euthanasia” murders at Hartheim and five other killing centres in the German Reich. The headquarters of this operation was located at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin (hence the name “Operation T4”).

Passing on knowledge about Nazi crimes is an act of remembrance. That is why the National Fund supports academic research not only into the fates of the victims, but also into the perpetrators – such as the recent biographies of Franz Stangl and Christian Wirth.

The commemoration at Hartheim reminds us to keep the memory of the victims alive and to take responsibility for the present and the future, in constant awareness of the dignity and worth of every single human life.

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