19 Facts About Eduard Wirths

Eduard Wirths was the chief SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945.

Eduard Wirths was born in Geroldshausen near Wurzburg, Bavaria into a Catholic family with democratic Socialist leanings.

Eduard Wirths never smoked or drank and was described as compassionate and "soft" in his responses to others.

Eduard Wirths became an ardent Nazi while studying medicine at the University of Wurzburg.

Eduard Wirths joined the Nazi Party and the SA in June 1933 and applied for admission into the SS in 1934.

Eduard Wirths entered the Waffen 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.

Eduard Wirths then chose to undertake special training for Department leaders in Dachau Concentration Camp and served as chief SS psychiatrist in Neuengamme concentration camp during July 1942.

Eduard Wirths was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer and appointed as chief camp physician at Auschwitz in September, 1942.

Eduard Wirths 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, Eduard Wirths was known to be protective of "Aryan" prisoner doctors and other prisoners, such as Hermann Langbein, 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.

However, Eduard Wirths was unaware of Stromberger's clandestine work for the resistance.

Eduard Wirths was involved in ordering medical experimentation, particularly in gynecological and typhus-related experimental tests.

Eduard Wirths was interested in the sterilization of women, by removing their ovaries through surgery or radiation.

Importantly, Eduard Wirths 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.

Eduard Wirths insisted upon taking his own personal turn in performing selections, which he could have deferred to physician subordinates.

Eduard Wirths again held the post of chief camp physician until Mittelbau-Dora's evacuation in April 1945.

Eduard 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, Eduard Wirths committed suicide by hanging.

Eduard 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.