Memorial for Murdered Children of the NS Euthanasia Institution Am Spiegelgrund

The memorial for the children and youth from the Jugendfürsorgeanstalt of the City of Vienna "Am Spiegelgrund" who were murdered during the NS regime is located in Grave Group 40 at the Central Cemetery in Wien-Simmering. In April 2002, more than 600 remains of murdered children were interred in an honor grave maintained by the City of Vienna. The unveiling of the memorial took place on April 27, 2002. Between 1940 and 1945, approximately 800 sick, disabled, or deemed "uneducable" children and youth were killed in the institution "Am Spiegelgrund," after being classified as "life unworthy" according to Nazi racial ideology. The mass murder was euphemistically referred to as "euthanasia." Doctors like Heinrich Gross, who continued their careers after the NS regime, used cadaveric preparations for training and publications until the 1980s. Heads and brains were stored in a cellar of the pathology section of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt "Am Steinhof." Histological sections from these preparations were discovered in large numbers in Pavilion B of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt in 1998. Other preparations were transferred for research to the Neurological Institute of the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Gießen. Only in 1999 did justice file charges against Gross for his involvement in the murder. The case was indefinitely postponed due to "inability to proceed" after Gross's death in 2002. The memorial consists of several ground-level stone slabs with engraved names of all known victims and dedicatory inscriptions.