The remains of 220 people are buried at a cemetery in Hall in Austria's Tyrol province, and authorities believe many were physically or mentally disabled people who died as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. Thousands of people with disabilities were deemed unfit to live and killed by Nazi troops under the program. Hospital spokesman Johannes Schwamberger released a statement confirming that a planned construction project had been suspended indefinitely to allow an investigation and to identify the dead. Deputy hospital director Christian Haring said in comments cited by the Associated Press that suspicions were aroused in part by the fact that there was "a noticeable increase in deaths at the Hall Institute" between 1942 and 1945. "We know that murder was actively carried out at other psychiatric institutions, by overdosing patients, neglect or undernourishment," Oliver Seifert, a historian who recently found documents relating to the graveyard is quoted by the Guardian as saying, noting that the remains are expected to be fully exhumed by March.
– Mass exhumations at an Austrian psychiatric hospital are expected to shed light on a lesser-known aspect of the Nazi's murderous agenda: the killing of thousands of disabled people who, regardless of race, didn't fit the Third Reich's vision of an ideal society. The "euthanasia" programs are thought to have quietly murdered patients in mental hospitals across Axis territory. Austrian officials will exhume 220 bodies buried in a hospital cemetery in the Austrian town of Hall between 1942 and 1945 to look for evidence they were murdered, the BBC reports. The exhumations won't begin until March, putting a a planned construction project on hold. "This dark chapter of history must now be carefully brought to light," says the local governor. Click here for more.