From dkeren@world.std.com Wed Sep  6 23:09:08 PDT 1995
Article: 6302 of alt.revisionism
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From: dkeren@world.std.com (Daniel Keren)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: 'Wirth behaved like a lunatic'
Date: 6 Sep 1995 19:06:04 -0500
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One of the cruelest 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 mentally retarded and 
insane people 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 commandant 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 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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