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Page from a photo album documenting the construction of the SS Truppenlazarett, the SS troop hospital in Auschwitz.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 69268
Page from a photo album documenting the construction of the SS Truppenlazarett, the SS troop hospital in Auschwitz.

Page from a photo album documenting the construction of the SS Truppenlazarett, the SS troop hospital in Auschwitz.

Date
1944
Locale
Auschwitz, [Upper Silesia] Poland
Variant Locale
Brzezinka
Birkenau
Auschwitz III
Monowitz
Auschwitz II
Photo Designation
KILLING CENTERS -- Auschwitz -- WARTIME -- Documents
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Peter Wirths

About This Photograph

Biography
Dr. Eduard Wirths was born September 4, 1909 in Geroldshausen, a small village near Wuerzburg in southern Germany, the oldest of three boys. Though Catholic, the family had socialist leanings. Yet while in college Wirths became attracted to Nazism. He joined the SA in 1933 and the SS in 1934 and volunteered serve in the Thuringian State Office for Racial Matters. He initially served as a combat physician in Norway and Russia, but after suffering a mild heart attack he left the front lines to work in a series of concentration camps. He first served in Dachau and Neuengamme before being appointed chief physician at Auschwitz on September 6, 1942 where he oversaw some twenty SS physicians, dentists and medical personnel. Though tasked with eradicating a typhus epidemic, Wirths also participated in selections on the ramp and abetted medical experimentation on Jewish female prisoners from Block 10. However he also protected prisoner inmates working in the camp. In September 1944, Eduard Wirths was promoted to the rank of Sturmbannfuehrer (major). After the evacuation of Auschwitz in advance of its capture by the Red Army, Wirths was transferred to Dora Mittelbau where he served as the chief medical officer until April 1945. Dr. Wirths committed suicide on September 20, 1945 after his capture by the British.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Peter Wirths
Source Record ID: Collections: 2015.66.1
 
Record last modified: 2014-02-12 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1179225