Early Life
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...'" ( Lifton: p. 385) Wirth's younger brother, Helmut, became a notable gynecologist (who later went to Auschwitz to visit his brother to participate in cancer experiments but left after only a few days due to his horror at what he had seen there). 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..." (Lifton, p. 385) The Wirths family was not known to be anti-semitic or sympathetic to radical nationalist politics.
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