Human remains thought to be from Nazi euthanasia project

Austria announced plans to exhume graves containing the remains of 220 suspected victims of Nazi Germany's infamous euthanasia programme yesterday after building workers unearthed a mass of human bones in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital.

The discovery of what are thought to be some of the last hidden graves containing the remains of the tens of thousands of mentally and physically disabled people murdered by the Nazis, was made by workers digging up a yard in the grounds of a hospital in Hall, in the Austrian Tyrol on Tuesday.

Tyrol's Governor, Gunther Platter, said he was "deeply shaken" and pledged to set up a commission of experts to investigate.

"There can be no cover-up. This dark chapter in our history must now be examined," he said.

Tilak, the state-owned construction firm whose workers stumbled across the remains, said an initial examination of the graves by experts had established that they contained the remains of people buried between 1942 and 1945.

Historians said the graves were located in a former hospital cemetery that had been abandoned after the war.

Nazi Germany launched its euthanasia project in 1939 in an attempt to rid the so-called Master Race of those deemed "unworthy of life". About 275,000 men, women and children with mental or physical disabilities were systematically murdered under the programme which is regarded as forerunner of the Holocaust.

Under the programme, doctors, midwives and nurses throughout the Third Reich were compelled to inform the authorities of all newborn children displaying the symptoms of severe disabilities or hereditary diseases. Thousands were held in psychiatric clinics until they were murdered by staff.

- INDEPENDENT