Eduard Wirths was the highest-ranking SS physician at Auschwitz, overseeing camp doctors including Josef Mengele and supervising the medical system during some of the camp’s deadliest years. He participated in selections that sent prisoners to forced labour or the gas chambers and oversaw human experimentation, including gynaecological procedures, sterilization research, and typhus experiments.

Yet Wirths was a contradictory figure. He introduced measures that reduced disease, improved hygiene in prisoner hospitals, and sometimes intervened against abuses—while remaining deeply involved in the machinery of mass murder. After Nazi Germany’s defeat, Wirths was captured by British forces and confronted with his responsibility for the crimes of Auschwitz.