| Healing-Killing Conflict: Eduard
Wirths |
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| several occasions, and pointed always to the good he had
done for prisoners as contrasted with the fearful uncertainty of a potential
replacement. These efforts culminated in a Christmas card Langbein arranged to
have hand-lettered for Wirths and delivered by a camp messenger. The card
included two lines from Franz Griliparzer, the Viennese nineteenth-century
dramatist, which read: |
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One human life, alas, is so little,
One human
fate, however, is so much! |
| There followed: “In the past year you have saved here
the lives of 93,000 people. We do not have the right to tell you our wishes.
But we wish for ourselves that you stay here in the coming year.” The card
was signed: “One speaking for the prisoners of Auschwitz.” Knowing
that Wirths “was not able to escape the influence of the murderous
atmosphere at Auschwitz,” Langbein feared “that he [Wirths] might get
discouraged,” and wrote the card in order to encourage him to stay and
continue measures on behalf of inmates. The figure of 93,000 was drawn from the
difference in mortality rate among prisoners in 1943 as compared with that
during the summer of 1942.14 The relationship
between Wirths and Langbein could not escape the Auschwitz paradox operating in
all such relatively humane relationships between prisoners (including prisoner
doctors) and the SS: while contributing to the saving of many lives, it helped
the SS doctor adapt to his central function within the death factory.
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| Prisoner Doctors’ Recollections |
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Most prisoner doctors and other inmates who had contact
with Wirths remembered him favorably, and he had directly saved the lives of
several. Dr. Tadeusz S., for instance, admitted that his views were colored by
“personal feelings” because Wirths saved him on two occasions, once
from the punishment bunker which usually meant death. He characterized Wirths
accurately as “very intellectual … and broadly cultivated, unlike the
other SS people who were primitive, but… a Nazi ideologist … who did
not like the methods of the gas chamber, … [who] wanted the Nazis to win
but not in this way. … Surely a Nazi in spirit but not a cruel one.”
Dr. Wanda J., installed by Wirths as head of Block 10, was grateful
both for his sponsorship and protection and because “everything I asked
Wirths to do he agreed.” That patronage had saved her from the bunker as
well and had helped her to save a number of young women by keeping them on her
block as “maids.” Her ultimate judgment of him had to be ambivalent:
“He was a Nazi … from head to toe [as well as] a criminal …
because he was choosing women … and men for the gas.” Yet he had
saved her life: “I must say that toward me he behaved like a
gentleman.” |
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