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August Hirt

March 04, 2023

August Hirt (28 April 1898 – 2 June 1945) was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II. He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and played a lead role in the murders of 86 people at Natzweiler-Struthof for the Jewish skull collection. The skeletons of his victims were meant to become specimens at the Institute of anatomy in Strasbourg, but completion of the project was stopped by the progress of the war. He was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and in 1944, an SS-Sturmbannführer (major).

August Hirt
Born(1898-04-28)28 April 1898
Mannheim, German Empire
Died2 June 1945(1945-06-02) (aged 47)
Schluchsee, Allied-occupied Germany
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
RankSS-Sturmbannführer
Battles/warsWorld War I
World War II Battle of France
Memorial of the 86 Jewish victims murdered in 1943 at Struthof by August Hirt. Located at Institute of Anatomy of Strasbourg.

World War I, post-war education and joining the Nazi party

Hirt was the son of a Swiss business man. In 1914, he volunteered, while still a high school student, to fight in World War I on the German side. In October 1916, he was wounded in the upper jaw by a bullet. He received the Iron Cross and returned to Mannheim in 1917. He studied medicine at Heidelberg University. In 1921, he gained German citizenship. In 1922, Hirt obtained his doctorate in medicine with "Der Grenzstrang des Sympathicus bei einigen Sauriern" (English: The Ganglions in the Sympathetic Nervous System of Some Lizards). He then worked at the Anatomical Institute in Heidelberg and in 1925 he was authorized to teach thanks to a thesis on nerve cells. In 1930 he became professor at Heidelberg University.

In September 1932, Hirt joined the Militant League for German Culture. On 1 April 1933, he joined the Schutzstaffel (SS-Nr. 100 414), and was promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain) on 1 July 1937, but he was only a member of the Nazi Party from 1 May 1937, when he enrolled in the universities of the Reich (Mitgliedsnr. 4012784). From 1 March 1942, he was a member of the personal staff of the RuSHA, the organisation in charge of "racial and ideological purity" of the members of the SS. He attained the rank of Sturmbannführer (major) in 1944.

Hirt was married and had a son and a daughter.[1][2]

World War II

From 1 April 1936 Hirt was associate director of the Institute of anatomy at University of Greifswald. On 1 October 1938, he obtained the same post at Goethe University. At the beginning of the Second World War he was an SS medical chief (from August 1939 to April 1941). During this time the Battle of France took place, resulting in the fall of France and its occupation by German forces, and Hirt participated in the battle. He then became director of the new Institute of anatomy at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg.[3]

Jewish skeleton collection

The Ahnenerbe under the Third Reich was a society that organised "medical experiments" on prisoners. Hirt conceived and directed one called the Jewish skeleton collection, which was begun but not completed as intended. He also performed experiments on cadavers and collected human skulls. He was appointed director since 1941 of the Institute of Anatomy in Strasbourg. He wanted to create a collection of skulls of "Judeo-Bolsheviks", as part of his research on race. According to him, the Jewish race was on the point of extinction and he wished to gather a collection of them while there was still time. Hirt sent his project to Heinrich Himmler. Hirt wrote of this project: "There are important collections of skulls of nearly all the races and peoples. Except for the Jews, of which science has so few skulls, so it is not possible to draw any meaningful inferences. The war in the East gives us the opportunity to fill the gap. We have the opportunity to acquire a tangible scientific document by procuring the skulls of Jewish-Bolsheviks who embody the disgusting but characteristic subhuman."[4]: 882 

Hirt conceived the project to go beyond a collection of skulls, to a collection of Jewish skeletons and so presented his research plan to Himmler. He approved the project so that Hirt could begin his "medical experiments." Working with the Ahnenerbe division, Wolfram Sievers, Bruno Beger, Hans Fleischhacker and Hirt together collected people[5][6] from among the Auschwitz inmates in order to create an anatomical specimen collection specifically of Jews. Hirt proposed to use the small-scale gas chamber at Natzweiler-Struthof to murder the people selected, keeping their corpses intact, and then have their corpses shipped immediately to the Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg for the casts and skeletons he wanted for this collection.[4]: 882 

Hirt directed that 115 persons be selected for measurements: 79 Jewish men, 30 Jewish women, 2 Poles, and 4 "Asians".[4]: 882  They were selected among the inmates in August 1943 at Auschwitz by his assistants, the anthropologists Bruno Beger and Hans Fleischhacker. The group was quarantined to protect them from a typhus epidemic in the camp. Measurements were taken of the selected inmates at Auschwitz. Of those initially selected, it is believed that 89 persons (60 men and 29 women) were sent to Natzweiler-Struthof. Three men died en route, leaving 86 people.[7]

Natzweiler-Struthof camp

These 86 people were sent to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on 30 July 1943. They were fed reasonably well to improve their appearance for the body casts. They were divided into four groups and successively gassed by Josef Kramer, on 11, 13, 17, and 19 August 1943. Their bodies were returned to Hirt at the anatomical laboratory of the Reich University in Strasbourg for preparation as an anthropological display, taking body casts and preparing the skeletons.[7]

In September 1944, the rapid approach of the Allies led to the project being abandoned and Himmler ordered the destruction of all traces of this compromising collection.[4]: 883  That order was not completed, nor had the casts been taken or the skeletons been prepared. The Allies found corpses and partial remains preserved in formalin for eighty-six bodies upon the liberation of Strasbourg.[4]: 884  The corpses were buried 23 October 1945 in the municipal cemetery of Strasbourg-Robertsau before being transferred in 1951 to the Jewish cemetery of Strasbourg-Cronenbourg. The names of the victims were not known, and the purpose for their presence at the Anatomical Institute were not known. Some information was learned in post-war trials as to the project proposed by Hirt.

August Hirt fled Strasbourg in September 1944, hiding in Tübingen in southern Germany across the river from Alsace.

Death

Hirt committed suicide on 2 June 1945, aged 47, at Schluchsee, Baden-Württemberg, in the Black Forest.[3] His suicide was not known when he was tried in absentia at the Military War Crimes Trial at Metz on 23 December 1953 for his war crimes.[3] His death was finally confirmed in the mid-1960s when the Israeli secret service had his body exhumed, and an Israeli pathologist conclusively identified the bones.[8]

Some records prepared for his trial are in possession of the US National Archives, including the list of identification numbers tattooed on the prisoners at Auschwitz and "Photocopies of certificates of proof of ancestry, in connection with research on prisoners in the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler, ...Feb. 9-Nov. 3, 1942. Partial copies of slips for the admittance of prisoners into the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler, medical examinations on prisoners, and a death certificate, Dec. 9, 1942-Aug. 9, 1944. Feb. 9, 1942-Aug. 9, 1944".[9]

Posthumous

In the book, Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers, 2004, ISBN 978-3455094640), Hans-Joachim Lang describes this mass murder. He also recounts how he was able to determine the identities of 86 victims, 60 years after they were murdered. In November 2005, the remains of some of these victims were buried in the Jewish cemetery of Cronenbourg on the outskirts of Strasbourg, in the same area where bodies of other victims were buried in 1951, names unknown. On 11 December 2005, a memorial engraved with the names of the 86 victims was placed there. In addition, a memorial plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital.[10] In 2015, a researcher, Raphael Toledano, identified tissue samples of victims in test tubes and a jar in the Strasbourg Medical Institute's closed collection.[11] This followed his discovery of a 1952 letter from the then-director of the Institute, Camille Simonin, about the experiments directed by Hirt. On 6 September 2015, these remains were buried in the Cronenbourg Cemetery.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Photo of Hirt with his wife (caption: good husband, good father of the family)". l’Alsace au temps des "malgré nous" : 10.3.6. Expériences médicales (in French). Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  2. ^ "1994 -1995 Chronicle News". The Names of the Numbers: A Project of Hans-Joachim Lang. Retrieved March 19, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Lang, Hans-Joachim (19 August 2004). "Skelette für Straßburg Eines der grausigsten Wissenschaftsverbrechen des "Dritten Reiches" ist endlich aufgeklärt" [Skeletons for Strasbourg: One of the most gruesome crimes of science in the "Third Reich" is finally cleared]. Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  4. ^ a b c d e Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. United States: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-72868-7.
  5. ^ Reamey, Anne S. . Archived from the original on 26 December 2013.
  6. ^ Henry, Diana Mara. . Natzweiler-Struthof.org. Archived from the original on 21 February 2015.
  7. ^ a b Lang, Hans-Joachim. "The Names of the Numbers: Scientific Murders". Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  8. ^ Pringle, Heather Anne (2006). The master plan : Himmler's scholars and the Holocaust (1st ed.). New York: Hyperion. pp. Notes, Ch. 22 Nuremberg, #10. ISBN 0786887737. OCLC 60671887.
  9. ^ "German Documents Among the War Crimes Records of the Judge Advocate Division, Headquarters, United States Army, Europe" (PDF). 1967. p. 34. Retrieved 7 April 2016.
  10. ^ Leeson, Rosanne; Landé, Peter. "Natzweiler Medical Experiments Natzweiler-Strutthof Camp A Small List with a Big Lesson". JewishGen. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  11. ^ "Des restes de victimes d'un anatomiste nazi découverts à Strasbourg" [The remains of victims of Nazi anatomist discovered in Strasbourg]. Le Monde (in French). 19 July 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  12. ^ Lang, Hans-Joachim. "Chronicle- News". The Names of the Numbers. Retrieved 23 March 2016.

Further reading

  • Benzenhöfer, Udo, ed. (2020) [2010]. "August Hirt – Verbrecherische Menschenversuche mit Giftgas und „terminale" Anthropologie." [August Hirt - Criminal human experiments with poison gas and "terminal" anthropology.]. Mengele, Hirt, Holfelder, Berner, von Verschuer, Kranz: Frankfurter Universitätsmediziner der NS-Zeit [Mengele, Hirt, Holfelder, Berner, von Verschuer, Kranz: Frankfurt university doctors of the Nazi era] (PDF) (in German). Munich: Klemm & Oelschläger. pp. 21–42. ISBN 978-3-932577-97-0.
  • Courand, Raymond (2005). Un camp de la mort en France: Struthof Natzweiler (in French). Strasbourg: Ed. Hirlé. ISBN 2-914729-27-8.
  • Lang, Hans-Joachim (2004). Die Namen der Nummern; Wie Es Gelang, Die 86 Opfer eines NS-Verbrechens zu identifizieren (in German). Hoffmann und Campe. ISBN 3-455-09464-3.
  • Pressac, Jean-Claude (1985). The Struthof album : study of the gassing at Natzweiler-Struthof of 86 Jews whose bodies were to constitute a collection of skeletons. Serge Klarsfeld.

Documentary film

  • Emmanuel Heyd, Raphael Toledano (2014). (in French, English, and German). France: Dora Films, 2014. Archived from the original on 20 February 2015. Retrieved 6 October 2019.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to August Hirt.
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
  • Die Namen der Nummern – The Names of the Numbers: The Courses of 86 Lives
  • Holocaust History.org 5 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine

March 04, 2023
august, hirt, april, 1898, june, 1945, anatomist, with, swiss, german, nationality, served, chairman, reich, university, strasbourg, during, world, performed, experiments, with, mustard, inmates, natzweiler, struthof, concentration, camp, played, lead, role, m. August Hirt 28 April 1898 2 June 1945 was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natzweiler Struthof concentration camp and played a lead role in the murders of 86 people at Natzweiler Struthof for the Jewish skull collection The skeletons of his victims were meant to become specimens at the Institute of anatomy in Strasbourg but completion of the project was stopped by the progress of the war He was an SS Hauptsturmfuhrer captain and in 1944 an SS Sturmbannfuhrer major August HirtBorn 1898 04 28 28 April 1898Mannheim German EmpireDied2 June 1945 1945 06 02 aged 47 Schluchsee Allied occupied GermanyAllegiance Nazi GermanyService wbr branchSchutzstaffelRankSS SturmbannfuhrerBattles warsWorld War I World War II Battle of FranceMemorial of the 86 Jewish victims murdered in 1943 at Struthof by August Hirt Located at Institute of Anatomy of Strasbourg Contents 1 World War I post war education and joining the Nazi party 2 World War II 2 1 Jewish skeleton collection 2 2 Natzweiler Struthof camp 3 Death 4 Posthumous 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 Documentary film 9 External linksWorld War I post war education and joining the Nazi party EditHirt was the son of a Swiss business man In 1914 he volunteered while still a high school student to fight in World War I on the German side In October 1916 he was wounded in the upper jaw by a bullet He received the Iron Cross and returned to Mannheim in 1917 He studied medicine at Heidelberg University In 1921 he gained German citizenship In 1922 Hirt obtained his doctorate in medicine with Der Grenzstrang des Sympathicus bei einigen Sauriern English The Ganglions in the Sympathetic Nervous System of Some Lizards He then worked at the Anatomical Institute in Heidelberg and in 1925 he was authorized to teach thanks to a thesis on nerve cells In 1930 he became professor at Heidelberg University In September 1932 Hirt joined the Militant League for German Culture On 1 April 1933 he joined the Schutzstaffel SS Nr 100 414 and was promoted to Hauptsturmfuhrer captain on 1 July 1937 but he was only a member of the Nazi Party from 1 May 1937 when he enrolled in the universities of the Reich Mitgliedsnr 4012784 From 1 March 1942 he was a member of the personal staff of the RuSHA the organisation in charge of racial and ideological purity of the members of the SS He attained the rank of Sturmbannfuhrer major in 1944 Hirt was married and had a son and a daughter 1 2 World War II EditFrom 1 April 1936 Hirt was associate director of the Institute of anatomy at University of Greifswald On 1 October 1938 he obtained the same post at Goethe University At the beginning of the Second World War he was an SS medical chief from August 1939 to April 1941 During this time the Battle of France took place resulting in the fall of France and its occupation by German forces and Hirt participated in the battle He then became director of the new Institute of anatomy at the Reichsuniversitat Strassburg 3 Jewish skeleton collection Edit The Ahnenerbe under the Third Reich was a society that organised medical experiments on prisoners Hirt conceived and directed one called the Jewish skeleton collection which was begun but not completed as intended He also performed experiments on cadavers and collected human skulls He was appointed director since 1941 of the Institute of Anatomy in Strasbourg He wanted to create a collection of skulls of Judeo Bolsheviks as part of his research on race According to him the Jewish race was on the point of extinction and he wished to gather a collection of them while there was still time Hirt sent his project to Heinrich Himmler Hirt wrote of this project There are important collections of skulls of nearly all the races and peoples Except for the Jews of which science has so few skulls so it is not possible to draw any meaningful inferences The war in the East gives us the opportunity to fill the gap We have the opportunity to acquire a tangible scientific document by procuring the skulls of Jewish Bolsheviks who embody the disgusting but characteristic subhuman 4 882 Hirt conceived the project to go beyond a collection of skulls to a collection of Jewish skeletons and so presented his research plan to Himmler He approved the project so that Hirt could begin his medical experiments Working with the Ahnenerbe division Wolfram Sievers Bruno Beger Hans Fleischhacker and Hirt together collected people 5 6 from among the Auschwitz inmates in order to create an anatomical specimen collection specifically of Jews Hirt proposed to use the small scale gas chamber at Natzweiler Struthof to murder the people selected keeping their corpses intact and then have their corpses shipped immediately to the Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg for the casts and skeletons he wanted for this collection 4 882 Hirt directed that 115 persons be selected for measurements 79 Jewish men 30 Jewish women 2 Poles and 4 Asians 4 882 They were selected among the inmates in August 1943 at Auschwitz by his assistants the anthropologists Bruno Beger and Hans Fleischhacker The group was quarantined to protect them from a typhus epidemic in the camp Measurements were taken of the selected inmates at Auschwitz Of those initially selected it is believed that 89 persons 60 men and 29 women were sent to Natzweiler Struthof Three men died en route leaving 86 people 7 Natzweiler Struthof camp Edit These 86 people were sent to Natzweiler Struthof concentration camp on 30 July 1943 They were fed reasonably well to improve their appearance for the body casts They were divided into four groups and successively gassed by Josef Kramer on 11 13 17 and 19 August 1943 Their bodies were returned to Hirt at the anatomical laboratory of the Reich University in Strasbourg for preparation as an anthropological display taking body casts and preparing the skeletons 7 In September 1944 the rapid approach of the Allies led to the project being abandoned and Himmler ordered the destruction of all traces of this compromising collection 4 883 That order was not completed nor had the casts been taken or the skeletons been prepared The Allies found corpses and partial remains preserved in formalin for eighty six bodies upon the liberation of Strasbourg 4 884 The corpses were buried 23 October 1945 in the municipal cemetery of Strasbourg Robertsau before being transferred in 1951 to the Jewish cemetery of Strasbourg Cronenbourg The names of the victims were not known and the purpose for their presence at the Anatomical Institute were not known Some information was learned in post war trials as to the project proposed by Hirt August Hirt fled Strasbourg in September 1944 hiding in Tubingen in southern Germany across the river from Alsace Death EditHirt committed suicide on 2 June 1945 aged 47 at Schluchsee Baden Wurttemberg in the Black Forest 3 His suicide was not known when he was tried in absentia at the Military War Crimes Trial at Metz on 23 December 1953 for his war crimes 3 His death was finally confirmed in the mid 1960s when the Israeli secret service had his body exhumed and an Israeli pathologist conclusively identified the bones 8 Some records prepared for his trial are in possession of the US National Archives including the list of identification numbers tattooed on the prisoners at Auschwitz and Photocopies of certificates of proof of ancestry in connection with research on prisoners in the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler Feb 9 Nov 3 1942 Partial copies of slips for the admittance of prisoners into the Konzentrationslager Natzweiler medical examinations on prisoners and a death certificate Dec 9 1942 Aug 9 1944 Feb 9 1942 Aug 9 1944 9 Posthumous EditIn the book Die Namen der Nummern The Names of the Numbers 2004 ISBN 978 3455094640 Hans Joachim Lang describes this mass murder He also recounts how he was able to determine the identities of 86 victims 60 years after they were murdered In November 2005 the remains of some of these victims were buried in the Jewish cemetery of Cronenbourg on the outskirts of Strasbourg in the same area where bodies of other victims were buried in 1951 names unknown On 11 December 2005 a memorial engraved with the names of the 86 victims was placed there In addition a memorial plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg s University Hospital 10 In 2015 a researcher Raphael Toledano identified tissue samples of victims in test tubes and a jar in the Strasbourg Medical Institute s closed collection 11 This followed his discovery of a 1952 letter from the then director of the Institute Camille Simonin about the experiments directed by Hirt On 6 September 2015 these remains were buried in the Cronenbourg Cemetery 12 See also EditBlock 10 Anton Dilger Eduard Pernkopf Hermann StieveReferences Edit Photo of Hirt with his wife caption good husband good father of the family l Alsace au temps des malgre nous 10 3 6 Experiences medicales in French Retrieved 12 April 2016 1994 1995 Chronicle News The Names of the Numbers A Project of Hans Joachim Lang Retrieved March 19 2017 a b c Lang Hans Joachim 19 August 2004 Skelette fur Strassburg Eines der grausigsten Wissenschaftsverbrechen des Dritten Reiches ist endlich aufgeklart Skeletons for Strasbourg One of the most gruesome crimes of science in the Third Reich is finally cleared Die Zeit in German Retrieved 23 March 2016 a b c d e Shirer William L 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich United States Simon amp Schuster ISBN 0 671 72868 7 Reamey Anne S August Hirt profile Archived from the original on 26 December 2013 Henry Diana Mara Photographs at Natzweiler Struthof Natzweiler Struthof org Archived from the original on 21 February 2015 a b Lang Hans Joachim The Names of the Numbers Scientific Murders Retrieved 7 April 2016 Pringle Heather Anne 2006 The master plan Himmler s scholars and the Holocaust 1st ed New York Hyperion pp Notes Ch 22 Nuremberg 10 ISBN 0786887737 OCLC 60671887 German Documents Among the War Crimes Records of the Judge Advocate Division Headquarters United States Army Europe PDF 1967 p 34 Retrieved 7 April 2016 Leeson Rosanne Lande Peter Natzweiler Medical Experiments Natzweiler Strutthof Camp A Small List with a Big Lesson JewishGen Retrieved 23 March 2016 Des restes de victimes d un anatomiste nazi decouverts a Strasbourg The remains of victims of Nazi anatomist discovered in Strasbourg Le Monde in French 19 July 2015 Retrieved 12 April 2016 Lang Hans Joachim Chronicle News The Names of the Numbers Retrieved 23 March 2016 Further reading EditBenzenhofer Udo ed 2020 2010 August Hirt Verbrecherische Menschenversuche mit Giftgas und terminale Anthropologie August Hirt Criminal human experiments with poison gas and terminal anthropology Mengele Hirt Holfelder Berner von Verschuer Kranz Frankfurter Universitatsmediziner der NS Zeit Mengele Hirt Holfelder Berner von Verschuer Kranz Frankfurt university doctors of the Nazi era PDF in German Munich Klemm amp Oelschlager pp 21 42 ISBN 978 3 932577 97 0 Courand Raymond 2005 Un camp de la mort en France Struthof Natzweiler in French Strasbourg Ed Hirle ISBN 2 914729 27 8 Lang Hans Joachim 2004 Die Namen der Nummern Wie Es Gelang Die 86 Opfer eines NS Verbrechens zu identifizieren in German Hoffmann und Campe ISBN 3 455 09464 3 Pressac Jean Claude 1985 The Struthof album study of the gassing at Natzweiler Struthof of 86 Jews whose bodies were to constitute a collection of skeletons Serge Klarsfeld Documentary film EditEmmanuel Heyd Raphael Toledano 2014 The names of the 86 Le nom des 86 in French English and German France Dora Films 2014 Archived from the original on 20 February 2015 Retrieved 6 October 2019 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to August Hirt Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial and Museum Die Namen der Nummern The Names of the Numbers The Courses of 86 Lives Holocaust History org Archived 5 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title August Hirt amp oldid 1139954585, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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