On January 27, 1945, the Red Army entered Auschwitz, the largest extermination complex in German-occupied Poland. Estimates indicate that at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp between 1940 and 1945, and that at least 1.1 million of them were killed.
Soviet soldiers found thousands of surviving prisoners, many starving and suffering from serious diseases that had spread through the overcrowded camp. They also discovered evidence of medical experiments performed on men, women, and children by SS doctors who viewed human beings as nothing more than laboratory animals.
For years, Auschwitz was a place where selections decided who would live and who would die. Newly arriving prisoners were sent either to forced labor or directly to the gas chambers, while others were handed over to SS doctors.
This vast medical system was overseen by the highest-ranking SS doctor at Auschwitz. He supervised the camp's physicians, organized the selections, and bore responsibility for the crimes committed by the medical staff under his command. His name was Eduard Wirths.
Eduard Ergud Wirths was born on September 4, 1909, in the village of Geroldshausen near the Bavarian city of Würzburg, then part of the German Empire. He grew up in a Catholic family whose political views leaned toward social democracy rather than extreme nationalism.
Wirths's father had served as a medical orderly during World War I, which lasted from July 1914 to November 1918. Influenced by his wartime experiences, he encouraged his sons to practice medicine, and Eduard followed that path from an early age.
Wirths had several siblings, including a younger brother, Helmut, who later became a gynecologist. The brothers remained close throughout their lives. Within the family, Eduard earned a reputation as disciplined, loyal, and dependable.
He was known as a quiet, serious young man who avoided smoking and drinking and generally treated others with kindness and respect. Nothing in his upbringing suggested he would one day be linked to one of the worst concentration camps in history.
The Wirths family was not known for anti-Semitism and was not associated with extreme nationalist politics. In 1930, Wirths began studying medicine at the University of Würzburg. He completed his studies five years later and received a doctorate in medicine.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. In June of that same year, Wirths joined the Nazi Party and the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary organization known as the Brownshirts because of the color of its uniforms.
In October 1934, Wirths left the SA and moved to the SS, the elite organization that became one of the main instruments of Nazi terror and persecution. In 1936, he married his medical school classmate Gertrud Baffi, and they had four children.
World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. After the outbreak of the war, Wirths joined the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the SS.
In the following months, he served as a military doctor and took part in fighting in Norway, and later on the Eastern Front during Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. His military career ended abruptly in the spring of 1942 when a health condition made him unfit for front-line service.
Wirths received the Iron Cross, Second Class, but instead of returning to civilian medicine, he was assigned to the concentration camp system. After brief service at Dachau near Munich and then as chief physician at Neuengamme outside Hamburg, he received a far more significant posting.
In September 1942, Wirths was promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer in the SS, equivalent to a captain in the U.S. Army, and became the chief SS doctor at Auschwitz, where all camp doctors came under his authority, including Josef Mengele, Horst Fischer, and Horst Schumann.
Wirths quickly became one of the key figures in the administration of Auschwitz. Rudolf Höss, the commander of the Auschwitz camp complex, was said to hold him in particularly high regard. Speaking later about Wirths's performance, Höss stated: "During 10 years of service in concentration camp affairs, I never met a better doctor than him."
As medical director, Wirths participated in the selection system that determined the fate of countless prisoners. Newly deported people were examined on arrival, and camp doctors decided who appeared fit enough for forced labor and who would be sent directly to the gas chambers.
Wirths assigned doctors to these selections and also took part in them himself. He was also involved in the killing of elderly, sick, and weak prisoners under Nazi policies that regarded those unable to work as surplus.
Alongside the selections, Wirths was deeply involved in the medical experiments conducted at Auschwitz. He was responsible for choosing the prisoners who would be used in the experiments and supervised the doctors who conducted research on detainees.
Most of this work took place in Block 10, where imprisoned Jewish women underwent painful gynecological procedures. Wirths personally took part in research aimed at the early detection of cervical cancer.
Women were examined, photographed, and operated on without their consent. Tissue samples were taken and sent to specialists in Germany for further study. Wirths also showed interest in sterilization research, a subject closely tied to Nazi racial policies.
Under his authority, prisoner doctors, including the French physician Adélaïde Dorval and the Jewish doctor Maximilian Samuel, were forced to assist in experiments on women. In another case, Wirths deliberately ordered four Jewish prisoners to be infected with typhus to test a vaccine serum. Two of the victims died as a result.
Among the doctors who served under Wirths was Josef Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death, a physician whose name later became synonymous with the horrors of Auschwitz. Rather than objecting to Mengele's activities, Wirths held him in very high esteem.
In a promotion recommendation written in August 1944, he described Mengele as open, honest, firm, and absolutely reliable. He praised his intelligence, energy, perseverance, and devotion to duty.
Wirths also commended what he called Mengele's valuable contribution to anthropological science through the use of the scientific materials available to him at Auschwitz. He further praised Mengele's ideological commitment and described him as an ideal SS officer.
On the other hand, unlike many other SS doctors, Wirths took measures that improved conditions in parts of the camp. He worked to limit the spread of typhus and typhoid fever and introduced hygiene improvements in the prisoner hospitals.
These measures contributed to a significant drop in the mortality rate caused by disease. He also prevented SS medical orderlies from carrying out unauthorized phenol injections against seriously ill prisoners.
Previously, some prisoners had been killed by being injected directly into the heart without any formal procedure. Wirths ordered that such procedures follow official channels instead.
He sometimes used his authority to prevent the condemnation of certain prisoners and employed capable prisoner doctors in medical positions. Some prisoners later recalled that he tried to prevent certain abuses when they fell within the scope of his authority.
One prisoner who knew him well was Hermann Langbein, an Austrian political prisoner who worked as a clerk for Wirths. Over time, the two developed an unusual relationship.
Langbein, who was secretly involved in the Auschwitz resistance movement, gradually gained Wirths's trust through intermediaries. The resistance even conveyed to Wirths that the Allies considered him responsible for the crimes committed at Auschwitz, but that they had refrained from targeting his family. This gave the resistance a degree of influence over him.
However, none of these actions changed Wirths's essential role within the camp. He continued to oversee the selections, supervised the doctors involved in human experiments, and remained responsible for the medical administration at Auschwitz during some of its bloodiest years.
In September 1944, Wirths was promoted to the rank of Sturmbannführer, a rank equivalent to a major in the U.S. Army, and received the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords.
After the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Wirths was transferred to the Mittelbau camp in central Germany, where he again served as chief physician. He later worked at Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen in the north as Nazi Germany approached its final collapse.
World War II in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. After Germany's defeat, Wirths hid with his brother Helmut in Hamburg.
Despite the collapse of the regime he had served, Wirths appeared unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. In a letter to his wife dated May 24, 1945, he wrote: "We can answer with a clear conscience before our God and before people."
In the same letter, he added: "What crime have I committed? I really do not know."
In July 1945, British forces arrested Wirths and imprisoned him in the Neuengamme internment camp. He was later transferred to the Stummel camp, where he awaited interrogation about his role at Auschwitz.
Before the interrogation began, a British Army officer named Colonel Draper reportedly greeted Wirths with a handshake and then gave him a blunt assessment of his responsibility. Draper told him: "I have shaken the hand of the man who, as chief doctor at Auschwitz, bears responsibility for the deaths of 4 million people."
"Tomorrow, I will interrogate you about this," he continued. "Think about your responsibility all night. Look at your hands."
That night, Wirths attempted to end his life by hanging himself in his cell. Guards discovered him and cut him down while he was still alive. However, the damage had already been done.
Shortly before his death, Wirths left a written justification for his conduct. In it, he claimed: "I sought, in accordance with my Christian and medical conscience, to help sick prisoners."
On September 20, 1945, Eduard Wirths died from injuries caused by his suicide attempt. He was 36 years old.