Eduard Wirths | |
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| Born | (1909-09-04)4 September 1909 Geroldshausen,Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire |
| Died | 20 September 1945(1945-09-20) (aged 36) Staumühle,British zone, Allied-occupied Germany |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Branch | Schutzstaffel |
| Years of service | 1933–1945 |
| Rank | SS-Obersturmbannführer |
| Commands | Formal responsibility of medical staff atAuschwitz;human medical experimentation performed on prisoners at Auschwitz |
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| Spouse | Gertrud Petavy |
| Children | 4 |
Eduard Wirths (4 September 1909 – 20 September 1945) was the chiefSS doctor (SS-Standortarzt) at theAuschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945. Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the nearly twenty SS doctors (includingJosef Mengele,Horst Schumann andCarl Clauberg) who worked in the medical sections of Auschwitz between 1942 and 1945.
Eduard Wirths was born inGeroldshausen nearWürzburg, Bavaria into aCatholic family withsocial democratic anddemocratic socialist leanings. His father served as a medical corpsman in theFirst World War and according toRobert Jay Lifton had emerged from the war "...in a depressed state with pacifist leanings, which were undoubtedly expressed in his (as one son put it) 'making doctors of us all...'"[1] Wirth's younger brother, Helmut, became a notable gynecologist (who later went to Auschwitz to visit his brother to participate in cancer experiments but said that he left after only a few days on his brother Eduard's advice, due to a disagreement and because of his revulsion of the place[2]). According to Lifton "...Among the boys it was Eduard who came most under the father’s influence in becoming meticulous, obedient, and unusually conscientious and reliable — traits that continued into his adult life. He never smoked or drank and was described as compassionate and "soft" in his responses to others..."[3] The Wirths family was not known to be anti-semitic or sympathetic to radical nationalist politics.
Eduard Wirths, however, became an ardentNazi while studying medicine at theUniversity of Würzburg (1930–35). He joined theNazi Party and theSA in June 1933 and applied for admission into the SS in 1934. He entered theWaffen SS in 1939, saw action in Norway and the Russian Front and was classified as medically unfit for combat duty in the spring of 1942 after having a heart attack. Wirths then chose to undertake special training for Department leaders in Dachau Concentration Camp and served as chief SS psychiatrist inNeuengamme concentration camp during July 1942. Coincidentally, in 1942,Josef Mengele was also wounded at the Russian Front, pronounced medically unfit for combat, and promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer before being assigned to Auschwitz.
Wirths was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and appointed as chief camp physician[4] at Auschwitz in September, 1942. He was appointed on the basis of his reputation as a competent doctor and committed Nazi who would be capable of stopping thetyphus epidemics that had increasingly affected SS personnel at Auschwitz.
Wirths was a profound anti-Semite.[5] At Auschwitz, Wirths was known to be protective of "Aryan" prisoner doctors and other prisoners, such asHermann Langbein,[5] and to have improved conditions on the medical blocks and was remembered favourably by most prisoner doctors and other inmates who had contact with him. At the same time, Wirths approved of harsh treatment of Jewish people and he recommendedJosef Mengele for promotion in August 1944. Wirths considered Mengele as of "open, honest, firm … [and] absolutely dependable" character and "magnificent" intellectual and physical talents; of the "discretion, perseverance, and energy with which he has fulfilled every task … and … shown himself equal to every situation"; of his "valuable contribution to anthropological science by making use of the scientific materials available to him"; of his "absolute ideological firmness" and "faultless conduct [as] an SS officer"; and personal qualities as "free, unrestrained, persuasive, and lively" discourse that rendered him "especially dear to his comrades".[6]
Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz between 1940 and December 1943, is said to have held Wirths in particularly high regard. He is said to have remarked of Wirths that "During my 10 years of service in concentration-camp affairs, I have never encountered a better one."[7]
In 1943 the impact on inmates of Wirths' actions at Auschwitz resulted in his receiving a Christmas card fromHermann Langbein, a political prisoner who worked with him, which contained the message “In the past year you have saved here the lives of 93,000 people. We do not have the right to tell you our wishes. But we wish for ourselves that you stay here in the coming year.” It was signed: “One speaking for the prisoners of Auschwitz.” The figure of 93,000 was the difference in mortality rate among prisoners from typhus in the year prior to Wirths' arrival.[8] In 1943–45, Wirths protected the Austrian nurseMaria Stromberger against accusations by several SS men at Auschwitz, as Stromberger took charge of and contained thetyphus infections and, working for the Auschwitz resistance, saved many prisoners herself.[9] However, Wirths was unaware of Stromberger's clandestine work for the resistance. After the war, Langbein called Wirths an "anständiger Nazi"[5]– a decent Nazi – which must be read from the above statement in relation to Nazi perpetrators of a most extreme category such asMengele orGlobocnik and excepting the Jewish victims.
Wirths was involved in ordering medical experimentation, particularly in gynecological and typhus-related experimental tests. Wirths's primary research concerned pre-cancerous growths of thecervix. Wirths was also interested in the sterilization of women, by removing their ovaries through surgery or radiation. It is generally acknowledged that he himself never directly participated in such experiments but delegated their conduct to subordinates. The victims of these experiments were Jewish women who had been imprisoned inBlock 10 of the main camp in Auschwitz.[10] E.W.J. Pearce, an associate professor ofObstetrics and Gynecology at theTruman Medical Center has made the following observation regarding Wirths' medical experiments: ". . . Wirths, without consent, photographed the cervices of women prisoners, thenamputated the pictured cervices, and sent both photographs and specimens for study to Dr. Hinselmann of Berlin". Hinselmann was the physician who developedcolposcopy.[11]
Importantly, Wirths also asserted medical control of prisoner selections at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which, prior to spring 1943, had been conducted by the camp commander and his subordinates. Wirths insisted upon taking his own personal turn in performing selections, which he could have deferred to physician subordinates. Witness testimony given at the Trial ofAdolf Eichmann provided a useful insight into how the SS approached the issue of how to record the deaths of Auschwitz prisoners (this did not include those who had been immediately selected for gassing – their admission was simply not recorded in the death registers). Those who died while imprisoned at Auschwitz were always recorded as having died from natural causes and never from being executed or murdered.[12][13]
Wirths was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major) in September 1944. Following the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945 he was transferred, along with many other former Auschwitz personnel, to theMittelbau-Dora concentration camp inThuringia. Wirths again held the post of chief camp physician until Mittelbau-Dora's evacuation in April 1945.[citation needed]
Wirths was captured by theAllies at the end of the war and held in custody by British forces. Later, on 20 September 1945, knowing that he would face trial forwar crimes, Wirths committedsuicide by hanging.[14]
In 2014 Wirths' son Peter donated his father's photo albums to theUSHMM – these contain photos of the Wirths family at theSolahütte, Wirths with Rudolf Höss, pictures of the old village of Birkenau before it was destroyed and pictures of the building of the SS hospital atAuschwitz.[15]
Robert Jay Lifton has said that
. . . Wirths was significantly immersed in Nazi ideology in three crucial spheres: the claim of revitalizing the German race and Volk; the biomedical path to that revitalization via purification of genes and race; and the focus on the Jews as a threat to this renewal, to the immediate and long-term "health" of the Germanic race. While Wirths did not absolutize these convictions in the manner of Mengele — they were in him combined with a strong current of medical humanism — his commitment to the Nazi cause was probably no less strong . . .[16]
Perhaps illustrative of Wirths' commitment to medical 'leadership' was his tendency while at Auschwitz to drive about in a car flying aRed Cross flag as well as his enthusiasm for acting as a marriage counselor and personal adviser to other SS personnel. According to Helgard Kramer, Wirths
. . . first seized on a career as a military doctor and officer in the German elite troops of the SS, because he desperately wanted to become a member of the upper class; eventually to provide his future wife with a "decent marriage". To reach that goal he had to become a "tough man"...[citation needed]
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