MASS MURDER

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 July 1946, Page 7

MASS MURDER

KILLING OF 250 CHILDREN ALLEGED

LONDON, July 16

A doctor and his two women assistants are on trial before an Austrian court on charges of the mass murder of 250 children, states the Vienna corresopndent of the Associated Press. The doctor is Ernest Illing, aged 42, a phychiatrist' and his women assistants are’Dr. Marianne Tuerk, aged 32, and Oagarethe Heubsch, aged 43. They were in charge of a hospital used, for children up to 18 years of age, who were afflicted with mental, lung and other diseases.

The charges allege that the defendants gave the children overdoses of drugs. Illing admitted killing a “certain number of children.” He claimed that he was shown in 1942 a letter from Berlin ordering the mercy killing of mentally deficient children. Illing said that he was informed that this order could not be published as a law “for foreign political reasons.”

All the accused claimed that the alleged murders were ordered by •Berlin to “purify and improve the physical standards of the German race.”

Two doctors, Jekelius and Professor Hyde, who are alleged to have been implicated in the mass killings of children at the Steinhof Hospital, near Vienna, are missing. Jekelius, who is alleged to have killed thousands of mentally deficient adults, was once reported to be engaged to Paula Hitler, the Fuhrer’s sister.