Almost all the staff at a notorious Vienna clinic where the Nazis killed hundreds of disabled children kept their jobs after 1945 and subjected other inmates to abuse and neglect.

A report from Austrian authorities said 600-700 children and youths were kept at “Pavilion 15” under a “comprehensive system of violence” between the end of World War II and the early 1980s.

 

The report, based on interviews with former patients and staff, said that an “inadequate employment and ideological break with the Nazi period contributed to these inhumane conditions”.

 

Staff, most of whom were inadequately qualified, made “heavy” use of drugs to sedate the children and put them in caged beds and straightjackets.

 

And at least 70 died at the facility, now closed, around 80 percent of them from lung infections brought on by the harsh treatment and undernourishment, the report said.