Bequest Eduard Wirths

The Fritz Bauer Institute acquired the bequest of Eduard Wirths from his wife and children in July 2005. Eduard Wirths was born in Geroldshausen near Würzburg on September 4, 1909. He studied medicine at the University of Würzburg from 1930 to 1935 and earned his doctoral degree in 1936. Subsequently, he worked for the Thuringian Landesamt für Rassewesen, the public health office in Sonneberg, the University gynecological clinic in Jena, and the Reichsärztekammer. He joined the NSDAP and the SA as early as 1933. In 1934, he switched from the SA to the SS and became a member of the Waffen-SS at the beginning of World War II. Until 1942, he was stationed in Norway and Russia. Then, he was classified unfit for military service due to a cardiac disease. After a short deployment in Dachau and Neuengamme concentration camps, he became the SS garrison doctor at Auschwitz concentration camp. Thus, the camp's physicians all reported to him. Wirths behaved ambivalently in the camp. On the one hand, he was a loyal National Socialist. On the other hand, many prisoners, among them his writer Hermann Langbein, described him as comparatively humane. Wirths was especially concerned with the containment of spotted fever and typhus. In this respect, he improved the sanitary conditions in the camp. He also prohibited killing sick prisoners by phenoline injections since the prisoners wouldn't report an infection otherwise. At the Gestapo drumhead trials, he used his medical veto several times. Simultaneously, as the chief physician, he participated in the systematic murder of old, sick, and weak prisoners. He assigned the doctors to the selections and selected himself. He chose prisoners for medical experiments and attended them occasionally. After the evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp, Wirths was stationed at Mittelbau, Bergen-Belsen, and Neuengamme concentration camps. After the end of the war, he hid away at his brother's house in Hamburg. The British military government arrested him there in July 1945 and he was then detained in Neuengamme and Staumühle. The night before his examination, he tried to commit suicide. He died a few days later, on September 20, 1945, from the injuries he sustained from his suicide attempt. The bequest Eduard Wirths covers after description, demetallization, and filing two archival units with a total extent of 0.15 running meters. Since the record group did not have an inner structure upon the acquisition in July 2005 the processor Inga Steinhauser completely reorganized the holding during indexing in January 2023. It follows the "rules for the description of personal papers and autographs" (RNA, Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autographen). The holding only consists of photocopied personal documents ("Lebensdokumente"). On the one hand, it contains correspondence from Eduard Wirths and his relatives with lawyers and former Auschwitz prisoners, and on the other hand copies of the investigation files regarding Wirths.