Zdenko Hoyos – victim of the Nazis’ Aktion T4 in 1941

In March 2023, I was contacted by Dr Helen Atherton, a researcher working with Dr Simon Jarrett to document the lives of 13 people who were born in Britain and killed by the Nazis in 1940 and 1941. In all, at least 70,000 people with learning disabilities or mental health problems were killed in the program, which was called Aktion T4 and took place in Germany and Austria. The victims were considered unworthy of life and the Nazis saw their care as a drain on the economy; Hitler signed an order in 1939 for them to be killed.

Helen first started work on Ivy Angerer, but soon incorporated other victims and contacted me about my great-uncle, Count Zdenko Alexander Anton Hoyos. I learned that he was born in Shrivenham near Oxford in 1903, lived mostly in Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia), and was killed at Hartheim, Austria in 1941 because of his poor mental health. My grandmother’s memoirs show that Zdenko, known in the family as Cocco, lived a privileged and happy life until his mental health deteriorated from around 1928. He was diagnosed with what was then termed ‘catatonic schizophrenia’. The family placed him in a clinic in Switzerland, perhaps in an attempt to keep him out of reach of the Nazis. In 1936 he was brought to an institution at Mauer-Öhling, Austria. From there he was transported to Hartheim in March 1941 and killed. His parents were told that he died of typhus.

Helen and Simon’s research resulted in the exhibition Finding Ivy; I wrote the panel below about Zdenko and attended the opening event in London in April 2024 with other members of the family (photo above).

Information about where you can see the exhibition Finding Ivy is available on the website of the Hartheim Memorial Site.

Helen and I were interviewed by Emma Tracey about Aktion T4 and Zdenko for the podcast Access All: Disability News and Mental Health in January 2025 (our part starts 19 minutes in):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0kld0wx

Nancy Jennings

Cocco with his brothers Georry and Balthy, 1910
Zdenko Alexander Anton Hoyos, ‘Cocco’

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