Hartheim Castle

Commemoration Ceremony and Exhibition: Signs of Remembrance

Ulrike Wieser commemorates victims of the Nazi euthanasia program in the “Eingestickt” project(Bild: Ulrike WIESER)

Hartheim Castle, in Alkoven, Upper Austria, invites you to its annual memorial service. The focus is on commemorating the victims of Nazi crimes, particularly the victims of the Nazi euthanasia program. The memorial service begins on Thursday, October 1, at 5 p.m. A new exhibition will open beforehand.

“The Nazis wanted to erase their names and their very existence, and I won’t let that happen,” says Ulrike Wieser. A native of Tyrol, she is presenting the installation “Eingestickt” at the Hartheim Castle Learning and Memorial Center, which was developed in collaboration with historian Melanie Dejnega and the House of Austrian History.

It all began with a photo
“I found a portrait of my second cousin Elfi Schlager, who was murdered in Hartheim when she was eleven years old. This was a family secret for a long time, but now I want to come to terms with it.” She embroidered a flower onto the photo.

Ulrike Wieser with her commemorative images(Bild: Ulrike WIESER)

A view of the exhibition(Bild: Ulrike WIESER)

Hartheim, Upper Austria

At the Renaissance castle in Hartheim, which served as a care facility for people with disabilities until March 1940, approximately 30,000 people were murdered between May 1940 and November 1944. More than 18,000 of them were people with disabilities, mental illnesses, or chronic diseases; up to 12,000 were prisoners from concentration camps who could no longer work due to physical exhaustion, as well as forced laborers.

The exhibition “Eingestickt” commemorates 67 residents of the St. Josef Institute in Mils, Tyrol, who were taken to the Hartheim killing center in 1940 and murdered.

A Crime Silenced
A total of 67 people were taken from the St. Josef Institute in Mils, Tyrol, to the Nazi Hartheim killing center in 1940 and murdered there. “We never heard about this in school,” says Wieser, lamenting the silence surrounding these fates. She researched all the names and embroidered them—along with flowers—onto portraits or photographs of the victims’ hometowns.

Exhibition and Large Memorial Ceremony
The project will be presented on Thursday, October 1, at 4:00 p.m. at Hartheim Castle. The memorial service will begin at 5:00 p.m. at the cemetery grounds. Welcoming remarks will be followed by speeches from Governor Thomas Stelzer and Christine Haiden of the Upper Austrian Press Club. Prayers and a wreath-laying ceremony will mark the commemoration, which is expected to be attended by guests of honor, relatives and descendants of the victims, as well as representatives from numerous countries.