Christian Wirth (; 24 November 1885 – 26 May 1944) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and leading Holocaust perpetrator who was one of the primary architects of the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard. His nicknames included Christian the Cruel (), Stuka, and The Wild Christian due to the extremity of his behaviour among the SS and Trawniki guards and to the camp inmates and victims.

Wirth worked within the Action T4 program, in which people with disabilities were murdered by gassing or lethal injection, and then at implementing Operation Reinhard, by developing almost single-handedly, the extermination camps for the purpose of mass murder. Wirth later served as Inspector of all the Reinhard Camps. He was killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in Hrpelje-Kozina near Trieste after the conclusion of Operation Reinhard.

Early life

Christian Wirth was born on 24 November 1885 in Oberbalzheim, Württemberg, part of the German Empire. The son of a master cooper, after attending elementary and continuation school, Wirth learned the sawyer's craft. From 1905 to 1910, he was a member of the Württemberg Grenadier Regiment 123. By 1910 Wirth had worked as a policeman in Heilbronn, but he soon moved to Stuttgart, where he was a detective of the police.

During the First World War, at his own request, he served as a non-commissioned officer in the army on the Western front, distinguished himself in battle, was wounded, and was highly decorated. Wirth was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, Iron Cross Second Class, and the Order of the Crown (Württemberg). After the war Wirth returned to Stuttgart in June 1919 and was promoted back to police detective sergeant.

Family

Wirth married Maria Bantel and fathered two children.

Early Nazi career

Wirth was one of the original members of the Nazi Party, joining for the first time in 1923, before it was outlawed briefly in Germany following the unsuccessful Hitler Beer Hall Putsch.

He again joined the Nazi Party as an Alter Kämpfer ("old fighter") on 1 January 1931 (#420,383). He joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) on 30 June 1933. But Wirth's most intimate connection with T-4 was at the Hartheim killing centre, where he was chief of the office staff and director of personnel. At Hartheim, Wirth oversaw paperwork as head of the registry office, directed the killing process as the individual responsible for security, and commanded the junior staff as director of personnel. Wirth was coarse and brutal, feared by his subordinates and known to use any means necessary to ensure a smooth killing operation. When four female patients at Hartheim were suspected of having contracted typhus, Wirth shot them to prevent the spread of disease to the staff.</blockquote>

thumb|Christian Wirth as SS-Sturmbannführer

Fellow SS man Erich Fuchs described his impression of Wirth from his brief interaction with him during Action T4 and at Belzec:

<blockquote>Polizeihauptmann [police captain] Christian Wirth conducted the Aktionen in Bernburg. Subordinate to him were the burners, disinfectors and drivers. He also supervised the transportation of the mentally ill and of the corpses. One day in the winter of 1941 Wirth arranged a transport [of euthanasia personnel] to Poland. I was picked together with about eight or ten other men and transferred to Belzec... I don't remember the names of the others. Upon our arrival in Belzec, we met Friedel Schwarz and the other SS men, whose names I cannot remember. They supervised the construction of barracks that would serve as a gas chamber. Wirth told us that in Belzec "all the Jews will be struck down." For this purpose barracks were built as gas chambers. I installed shower heads in the gas chambers. The nozzles were not connected to any water pipes; they would serve as camouflage for the gas chamber. For the Jews who were gassed it would seem as if they were being taken to baths and for disinfection.

SS-Unterscharführer (corporal) Franz Suchomel testified about Wirth:

<blockquote>From my activity in the camps of Treblinka and Sobibor, I remember that Wirth in brutality, meanness, and ruthlessness could not be surpassed. We therefore called him 'Christian the Terrible' or 'The Wild Christian'. The Ukrainian guardsmen called him 'Stuka'. The brutality of Wirth was so great that I personally see it as a perversity. I remember particularly that on each occasion, Wirth lashed Ukrainian guardsmen with the whip he always kept...</blockquote>

During the construction of Sobibór, the second Aktion Reinhard camp, Wirth visited the incomplete site, and conducted an experimental gassing of 25 Jewish slave-labourers. He liked to carry a whip, and he used it on both Jewish victims and guards. When Treblinka (the last and most efficient Reinhard camp) was set up, Wirth took a direct role in reorganizing it when the first Commandant, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, was replaced by Franz Stangl. Stangl recalled one of Wirth's inspection visits to Treblinka as Inspector of Operation Reinhard, around September 1942:

<blockquote>To tell the truth, one did become used to it... they were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager [extermination area] in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of black-blue corpses. It had nothing to do with humanityit could not have. It was a massa mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said 'What shall we do with this garbage?' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.

Death

Wirth was shot and killed on 26 May 1944 by Yugoslav partisans while travelling in an open-topped car near Kozina, Istria while on an official trip to Fiume (now Rijeka). He was buried with full military honours in the German Military Cemetery in Opicina, near Trieste. In 1959, his remains were transferred to the block 15, tomb 716 of the German Military Cemetery at Costermano, near Lake Garda, northern Italy.

Sources

  • Bresheeth, Hood and Jansz, The Holocaust for Beginners, Icon Books, 1994,
  • Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, Penguin, 1990,
  • Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, Fontana, 1990,
  • Laurence Rees, The Holocaust, Penguin/Viking, 2017,
  • Gitta Sereny, The German Trauma, Penguin, 2000,

References

  • Christian Wirth