The Murders of Priests at Hartheim Castle under “Sonderbehandlung 14f13”
The Murders of Priests at Hartheim Castle under “Sonderbehandlung 14f13”

Summary/Abstract: In the years 1940–1944, Hartheim Castle served as a Nazi euthanasia center, in which people were put to death on a mass scale. From May 1940 to August 1941, over 18,000 people were murdered there under Action T4, while between August 1941 and November 1944 more than 10,000 prisoners of concentration camps and forced laborers were in the Castle. The latter group included 330 priests who were brought to Hartheim mainly from Dachau, but also from Mauthausen-Gusen. According to our present knowledge, at least 310 of them came from Poland. Considered by the occupier as enjoying high social and political standing, they were arrested and deported as part of the Nazis’ systematic effort to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and Polish leadership elites. Using selected examples, the paper examines what exactly the priests experienced on their way to the concentration camps, and also the circumstances that accompanied their deaths at Hartheim Castle.

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