Eduard Wirths
Eduard Wirths | |
---|---|
Born | Geroldshausen, German Empire | 4 September 1909
Died | 20 September 1945 Staumühle, Allied-occupied Germany | (aged 36)
Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
Service/ | Schutzstaffel |
Years of service | 1933–1945 |
Rank | SS-Obersturmbannführer |
Commands held | Formal responsibility of medical staff at Auschwitz; human medical experimentation performed on prisoners at Auschwitz |
Awards |
|
Spouse(s) | Gertrud Petavy |
Children | 4 |
Eduard Wirths (4 September 1909 – 20 September 1945) was the chief
Early life
Eduard Wirths was born in
Nazi party membership
Eduard Wirths, however, became an ardent
Auschwitz (1942–1945)
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 the typhus epidemics that had increasingly affected SS personnel at Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz, Wirths was known to be protective of prisoner doctors and other prisoners doing medical work, 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 in recommending Josef Mengele for promotion in August 1944, was able to speak of Mengele's "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".[5]
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."[6]
In 1943 the impact on inmates of Wirths' actions at Auschwitz resulted in his receiving a Christmas card from 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.[7]
Prisoner experimentation
Wirths was involved in ordering medical experimentation, particularly in gynecological and typhus-related experimental tests. Wirths's primary research concerned pre-cancerous growths of the
Selection of prisoners
Importantly, Wirths also asserted medical control of prisoner selections at the Auschwitz-
Wirths was promoted to SS-
Capture and suicide
Wirths was captured by the Allies at the end of the war and held in custody by British forces. Later, on 20 September 1945, knowing that he would face trial for war crimes, Wirths committed suicide by hanging.[12]
In 2014 Wirths' son Peter donated his father's photo albums to the
Summary of SS Career
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 . . .[14]
Perhaps illustrative of Wirths' commitment to medical 'leadership' was his tendency while at Auschwitz to drive about in a car flying a
. . . 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]
SS ranks and awards
- Ranks
- September 1942, Promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer
- September 1944 Promotion to SS-Sturmbannführer
- Final rank in the SS: SS-Obersturmbannführer
- Awards during SS career
- War Merit Cross 1st Class With Swords
- Iron Cross 2nd Class 1939
- DRL-Sports Badge in Bronze
- German Sosial Wellfare Medal 2nd Class
- Eastern Front Winter Medal
See also
References
- ^ Lifton: p. 385
- ^ Lifton: p. 400
- ^ Lifton, p. 385
- ISBN 978-0615251721.
- ^ from "Beurteilung des SS Hauptsturmführers (R) Dr. Josef Mengele," 19 August 1949 (Berlin Document Center: Mengele
- ^ Lifton: p. 386
- ^ Lifton: p. 389
- ISBN 978-3455502220.
- ISBN 9780323018593– via Google Books.
- ^ The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, Session 70 (Part 2 of 6)
- ^ Eichmann trial – The District Court Sessions Archived 2005-09-06 at the Wayback Machine at www.nizkor.org
- ^ "Memorial and Museum: Auschwitz-Birkenau". Archived from the original on 26 February 2009. Retrieved 16 April 2009.
- ^ "Eduard Wirths collection - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum".
- ^ Lifton, p. 412
- Hermann Langbein, (2004) People in Auschwitz. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill & London in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- Robert J. Lifton, (1986) THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books.
- University of Linz: SS-DOCTOR DR. EDUARD WIRTHS
- Dr. E.W.J. Pearce, (1996) "Antigone: An Exercise in Medical Ethics" in History and Philosophy of Medicine Newsletter published by the University of Kansas Medical Centre.
- Transcript (in German) of the documentary Film (1975) "Dr. Eduard Wirths – Standortarzt von Auschwitz" by Dutch film makers Roland Orthel and others.
- Webster University, Nazi Doctors & Other Perpetrators of Nazi Crimes at www.webster.edu
- Holocaust at www.shoa.de
- Shoa.de - Eduard Wirths (1909-1945) at www.shoa.de
- Helgard Kramer, "The ‘Doubled Self’ of SS Doctors at Auschwitz Revisited" Paper presented at the 25th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) in Berlin, July 16–19, 2002.
- Healing-Killing Conflict: Eduard Wirths