Eduard Wirths: A Holocaust Villain or Hero? Eduard Wirths is considered one of the most humane doctors of the Holocaust. People think about all of the good deeds Eduard Wirths did as a doctor and tend to forget the bad ones. Eduard is said to have a conscience and he had regretted the things he had done. Even though Eduard had a conscience, he didn’t let that stop him from killing thousands of innocent people. Eduard did save hundreds of lives, but those lives that he saved do not cancel out the thousands of lives he took. Although it is true that Eduard Wirths had gentle methods in his experiments, he was kind toward fellow colleagues and some of the Jews, he saved hundreds of people, in the end, he ended up killing thousands of Jews and …show more content…
A prisoner named Hermann Langbein knew Wirths from Dachau and described him as an “SS doctor with scruples, who had done his service in the examination everyday unwillingly” (Sauer). Langbein also said that Wirths was a “competent physician with a strongly developed sense of duty and extremely conscientious and careful” (Lifton 386). After the liberation of Auschwitz, a Polish survivor said: “I hereby declare that Dr. Wirths has always used in human and human way for the prisoners and that thousand of prisoners due to his energetic disease control and self-sacrificing care preserve the life” (Sauer). Even though Wirths was a Nazi, this quote is saying he actually was not as bad as the others and treated the prisoners as humans. In Auschwitz Wirths tried his best to be humane and kind to not only his colleagues but also some of the prisoners. As Timo Sauer said he even “tried to improve the disastrous sanitary conditions.” At the camp, Wirths had saved many people who could not work and would be sent to death, but he also had thousands of Jews sent to be killed in the gas. While Eduard was working at Auschwitz Rudolf Hoess said: "During my 10 years of service in concentration-camp affairs, I have never encountered a better one" (Lifton