>Creepy news from the region. A field of graves containing the remains of approximately 220 people was discovered in the course of a construction project at the hospital in Hall in Tirol. It is suspected that at least some of the dead were victims of the NS euthanasia policy. It has been determined that the bodies were interred between 1942 and 1945.

Construction plans were immediately halted and plans made to exhume and try to identify the bodies. According to local historian Horst Schreiber (an excellent author of many in-depth books about the region during the Nazi era), plans had been submitted for a euthanasia program involving lethal injection, but was rejected by the Nazi authorities (for whatever reason). It has been long suspected, however, that hundreds of patients were simply starved to death in Hall.

In the Anschluss years, at least 3000 people from Tirol and Vorarlberg were reported as carrying hereditary diseases — by doctors and other caregivers, who were legally bound to report them. At least 400 were forcibly sterilized; over 700 from Tirol, including children, were deported to Schloss Hartheim near Linz, a main area of euthanasia activity where thousands of people were gassed. Records were kept top-secret and death certificated were falsified, the families of the deceased given false information about the fate of their loved ones.

Exhumation of the graves will begin in March.

Wikipedia entry on “T4”
Article in Der Standard (de)