GRAY MATTER

Deep in the basement of the former Spiegelgrund children’s clinic in Vienna is a room lined with shelves. Until 2002, they were filled with over 700 specimen jars, containing the brains of children with physical or mental handicaps which were systematically murdered under the Nazi “euthanasia” program, led by Dr. Heinrich Gross. In April of 2002, Joe Berlinger traveled to Vienna to film the burial of the preserved brains of the euthanasia victims, in a surreal public ceremony presided over by Austria’s president. Hearing that the 89-year-old Dr. Gross was still alive and in seclusion somewhere near Vienna, Berlinger was spurred to learn more about this man and how it was possible that he had evaded justice for so long.