Is that a victim of Hitler in your anatomy handbook?

And there was more: a link between university scientists and Heinrich Gross, the doctor who headed the infants’ ward of Spiegelgrund, the children’s wing of the Vienna Psychiatric Hospital, during the war. Gross did painful experiments on living children there, some of whom died as a result. One child who survived said the children called Gross “the Scythe”; another remembered that his arrival on the ward “was like a cold wind coming.” All told, 772 children were killed at Spiegelgrund, about half of them from Gross’ ward. In 1948, he was charged with murder. But the penal code he was prosecuted under did not define murder to include disabled peoplebecause they were “not capable of reasoning.” He was found guilty only of manslaughter, and when Gross appealed and won, the prosecutor chose not to retry him.

Gross returned to Spiegelgrund (it had been renamed) and continued his research using brain specimens from the children who had been killed there. He published 35 papers, some written with University of Vienna faculty. He also testified as a psychiatric expert in thousands of cases in the Austrian court. In 1975, he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.

As the University of Vienna committee brought renewed attention to this history, evidence against Gross also surfaced in the files of the Stasi, the East German secret police. In 1999, he was indicted for murder again. But Gross’ lawyers said he had Alzheimer’s and could not understand the proceedings against him. The court accepted this defense. But Seidelman does not believe it. “Do you know what Gross did?” he asked. “He smiled and went off to a coffee shop with his friends and family to celebrate.”