Eduard Wirths
| Eduard Wirths | |
|---|---|
Eduard Wirths
|
|
| Born |
4 September 1909 Geroldshausen, German Empire |
| Died | 20 September 1945 (aged 36) Germany |
| Allegiance |
 Nazi Germany
|
| Service/branch |
 Schutzstaffel
|
| Years of service | 1933–1945 |
| Rank | SS-Sturmbannführer |
| Commands held | Formal responsibility of medical staff at Auschwitz; human medical experimentation performed on prisoners at Auschwitz |
Eduard Wirths (4 September 1909 – 20 September 1945) was the Chief SS doctor (SS-Standortarzt) at the Auschwitz concentration camp from September 1942 to January 1945. Thus, Wirths had formal responsibility for everything undertaken by the nearly 20 SS doctors (including Josef Mengele, Horst Schumann and Carl Clauberg) who worked in the medical sections of Auschwitz between 1942–1945.
Eduard Wirths was born in Geroldshausen near Würzburg, Bavaria into a Catholic family with democratic Socialist leanings. His father served as a medical corpsman in the First World War and according to Dr. Robert 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...'" Wirth's younger brother, Helmut, became a notable gynecologist (who later went to Auschwitz to visit his brother to participate in cancer experiments but claimed 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). 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..." The Wirths family was not known to be anti-semitic or sympathetic to radical nationalist politics.
Eduard Wirths, however, became an ardent Nazi while studying medicine at the University of Würzburg (1930–35). He joined the Nazi Party and the SA in June 1933 and applied for admission into the SS in 1934. He 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 a heart-attack. 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. Coincidentally, in 1942 Josef Mengele was also wounded at the Russian Front, pronounced medically unfit for combat, promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer before being assigned to Auschwitz.
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