Date of birth:

September 4th, 1909 (Geroldshausen, German Empire)

Date of death:

September 20th, 1945 (Germany)

Nationality:

German (1933-1945, Third Reich)

Eduard Wirths 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 to the SS in 1934. He joined the Waffen-SS in 1939, came into action in Norway and the Russian front. After a heart attack, Wirths then chose to undergo special training for ward leaders at Dachau concentration camp and served as SS chief psychiatrist at Neuengamme concentration camp in July 1942. Coincidentally, Josef Mengele was also wounded on the Russian front in 1942, declared medically unfit for battle, promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer before being assigned to Auschwitz.
Dr. Wirths was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer and appointed chief camp physician in Auschwitz in September 1942. He was appointed on the basis of his reputation as a skilled physician and dedicated Nazi who would be able to stop the typhoid epidemics that had increasingly hit SS personnel at Auschwitz.

Wirths was involved in ordering medical experiments, particularly gynecological and typhoid-related experimental tests. Wirths' primary study involved precancerous cancer of the cervix. Dr. Wirths was also interested in sterilizing women by removing their ovaries through surgery or radiation.
Wirths was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in September 1944. After the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, he was transferred, along with many other former Auschwitz personnel, to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Thuringia. Wirths would again hold the position of chief camp physician until the evacuation of Mittelbau-Dora in April 1945.

Wirths was captured by the Allies at the end of the war and held in custody by British forces. Later, on September 20, 1945, knowing he would be on trial for war crimes, Wirths committed suicide by hanging.

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• Photo 1: Database KZ-Bergen Belsen
• - CRIPPA, L. & ONNIS, M., De fotograaf van Auschwitz, Boekerij, Amsterdam, 2014.
  - Ulrich Völklein: Dr. med. Eduard Wirths: Ein Arzt in Auschwitz: Eine Quellenedition. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-3598-4.