Archive/File: holocaust/poland/reinhard/belzec wirth.01 Last-Modified: 1994/07/19 From mala!cs.brown.edu!dzk Thu Oct 22 11:00:59 PDT 1992 Article: 1060 of alt.revisionism Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Path: oneb!mala!cs.brown.edu!dzk From: dzk@cs.brown.edu (Danny Keren) Subject: Christian Wirth: a Bestial Murderer Date: Thu, 22 Oct 92 11:03:57 -0400 Message-ID: <9210221503.AA01766@cslab6e.cs.brown.edu> Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA One of the most cruel Nazi murderers was Christian Wirth, the inspector of the "Operation Reinhard" death camps (Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor). He began his "career" in the Euthanasia, or "mercy killing", centers; about 120,000 retards, insane people, and incurably ill were murdered in this operation which paved the way to the larger extermination programs the Nazis later embarked on. Franz Stangl, who was active in the Euthanasia program before becoming the commander of the death camp Treblinka, said: "Wirth was a gross and florid man. My heart sank when I met him. He stayed at Hartheim for several days that time and often came back. Whenever he was there he addressed us daily at lunch. And here it was again this awful verbal crudity: when he spoke about the necessity for this euthanasia operation he was not speaking in humane or scientific terms... He spoke about doing away with useless mouths, and that sentimental slobber about such people made him 'puke'". [1] The extent to which Wirth was loathed even by his own men is reflected in the testimony of SS-scharfuherer Suchomel, who served under him: "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' [a German dive bomber]". [2] Stangl goes on to describe how Wirth first tested the Sobibor gas chambers: "Michel [the sergeant-major of the camp] told me later that Wirth suddenly appeared, looked around on the gas chambers on which they were still working, and said: 'right, we'll try it out right now with those twenty-five working Jews. Get them up here'. They marched our twenty-five Jews up there and just pushed them in and gassed them. Michel said Wirth behaved like a lunatic, hitting at his own staff with his whip to drive them on..." [3] Wirth's name comes up again in Stangl's testimony about his days in Treblinka: "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 humanity - it could not have. It was a mass - a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said 'what shall we do with this garbage'?" [4] According to the SS authorities, Wirth did not survive the war. He was transferred to fight partisans in northern Italy and was killed by them in May, 1944. [1],[3], and [4] are from Gitta Sereni's book "Into the Darkness", London 1974 (pages 53-54, 113-114, and 200-201 respectively). [2] is from the Belzec-Oberhauser trial in Germany, Band 9, p. 1731. -Danny Keren.
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