Eduard Wirths - Auschwitz (1942-45)

Auschwitz (1942-45)

Dr. Wirths was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and appointed as chief psychiatrist 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 Dr. Josef Mengele for promotion in August 1944, was able to speak of Mengele's "open, honest, firm … 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 an SS officer" ; and personal qualities as "free, unrestrained, persuasive, and lively" discourse that rendered him "especially dear to his comrades". (from "Beurteilung des SS Hauptsturmführers (R) Dr. Josef Mengele," 19 August 1949 (Berlin Document Center: Mengele).

Thus, the 'kind,' 'decent' Wirths (as some inmates described him) became adept at combining bureaucratic skill and passionate Nazi ideology with a quality of correctness that allowed him to protect 'useful' inmates while ensuring that his organizational loyalty to the SS was always irreproachable. 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." (Lifton: p. 386)