Weissenbach am Attersee

About fifty kilometres east of Salzburg in Weissenbach am Attersse lies villa Schoberstein, beautifully situated on a hill overlooking Lake Attersee and surrounded by majestic mountains. Between 1940 and 1944, the villa served as a recreation home for employees of the T-4 program. A programme aimed at killing German citizens who were carrying hereditary diseases or mental and physical disabilities. These murders took place mainly at one of the six Euthanasia centers established in Germany, Brandenburg and der Havel, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Sonnenstein, Hadamar and Hartheim (present-day Austria). People considered a burden to society or a threat to the Aryan race because of their disabilities were murdered in one of these centers’ gas chambers with carbon monoxide.

To villa Schoberstein, employees could travel with their families or girlfriends to relax in an idyllic setting that was in stark contrast to the environment they worked in. From 1942, employees from one of the three "Operation Reinhardt" death camps in current Poland, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, could also use Schoberstein for relaxation. Many of those who served in "Operation Reinhardt" had previously served in the T-4 program before being transferred to Poland to participate in the murders of about 1.7 million Jews in the General Government. In 1944, as a security measure, the T-4 headquarters in Berlin was briefly transferred to Schoberstein because the Allied bombing of Berlin had intensified.