Anthropologist and anatomist August Hirt became one of the key figures in the creation of a monstrous collection of skeletons of Jews, Slavs and Asians. The future war criminal was born in 1898 in Mannheim, Germany, and with the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered for the army. There, Hirt received a bullet wound to the upper jaw, which permanently left a characteristic scar on his face. After receiving the Iron Cross and demobilization, a brilliant scientific career awaited him - in 1922 Hirt defended his Ph. D. thesis, and three years later his doctoral dissertation. The scientist taught for some time at the prestigious and native Heidelberg University, until in 1933 he joined the ranks of the SS. Then he managed to work at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Greifswald, and from the beginning of World War II for two years he was the chief military doctor of the SS. Hirt had good relations with both the SS leadership and the functionaries of the semi-mystical organization Ahnenerbe. It is not known for certain whether the doctor sincerely believed in the racist theory of the Third Reich, or if these were his opportunistic maneuvers, but in 1941 his career peaked - SS Hauptsturmbannführer Hirt became the head of the SS Anatomical Institute at Strasbourg Reichs University.
Like many doctors in Nazi Germany, Professor Hirt, within the walls of the institute, conducted experiments on living people. In his jurisdiction was the study of the effects of mustard gas on humans and animals. In one of a series of experiments, the doctor overdid it and inhaled a decent dose of poison. Which, by the way, earned even greater confidence from the patron of the "Ahnenerbe" project Wolfram Sievers.
In addition to directing the dire research, Hirt taught anatomy at the medical faculty of the Reichsuniversity of Strasbourg, using the corpses of prisoners of war from a nearby hospital as aids for students. At the same time, the professor even complained about the lack of corpses and in the summer of 1942 demanded new "teaching aids". Among them were several dozen (if not hundreds) of the bodies of Soviet prisoners of war from the Mützig camp. Many of them died of natural causes from inhuman conditions of detention, and many were specially killed for Hirt's students … The anatomical department of the medical faculty received the bodies of prisoners of war until the end of May 1944, that is, in fact, before the liberation of Strasbourg. By this time, the allies had found sixty bodies in an emaciated state in the tanks of the "anatomist", about which they wrote in the reports:
“The origin of these corpses is well known. These are Russian prisoners of war who died in the Mützig camp and were transported by open means to a civil hospital in Strasbourg. The bodies are emaciated: an autopsy of two determined that the cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis.
In early 1942, Hirt, whose hands were already covered in blood to the elbows, wrote a top secret letter directly to Heinrich Himmler asking for assistance in one very important matter. According to another version, the professor first wrote to his immediate boss, Wolfram Sievers, and he had already redirected the request to Himmler. The letter wrote that the Holocaust, which was perpetrated by the Nazis, according to Hirt, would ultimately lead to the complete destruction of the Jewish race of "subhumans", and this created certain difficulties for the science of the future. German science at that time did not have a sufficient number of skulls and skeletons of Jews, therefore, for future generations of Germans, it is necessary to create a more extensive collection. This chilling initiative found a response in the SS leadership.
Skeleton collection
August Hirt, for reasons that were known only to him, asked Himmler to give him the corpses of the Jewish Bolshevik commissars as the most unpleasant for the Nazis. But most of these unfortunates did not even get to the concentration camp - they were shot on the spot. The well-known German anthropologist, SS, Bruno Beger, who became famous for his relatively harmless expedition to Tibet, was recruited to search for the victims. Now he, together with the doctor of sciences from Goethe University Frankfurt Hans Fleischhacker, had to decide which of the prisoners of Auschwitz was to become an exhibit of the Hirt collection. They selected 115 prisoners, including 79 Jewish men, 30 women, 4 Asians and 2 Poles. After careful selection, 86 of them were sent to the French camp Natzweiler-Struthoff, located 50 kilometers from Strasbourg. It was very important to bring the people alive, as transporting the corpses could render them unusable.
In the summer of 1943, the unfortunates ended up in the quarantine zone of the camp and lived there relatively well. Eyewitnesses even recall that the rest of the convicts were jealous of the newcomers, since they were not forced to work. The method of killing the selected prisoners became a big problem. The fact is that Hirt insisted on the preservation of the soft tissues of the bodies and especially the skeleton. Therefore, they had to build a miniature gas chamber in the vicinity of the camp - their own in the Natzweiler-Struthof either did not work, or the executioners did not want to attract too much attention. It was the only gas chamber in history built for a one-time action to kill people. It is not known for sure whether the anthropologist Bruno Beger was involved in the executions, but he first took blood samples from the doomed and even took X-rays. Like most Ahnenerbe functionaries, Beger escaped full punishment and spent only a few months behind bars after the war. Professor Fleischhacker was generally acquitted, and he continued to engage in scientific activities in post-war Germany. As a result of the Nuremberg trials, only Wolfram Sievers was hanged from the Ahnenerbe gang. SS Sturmbannfuehrer Professor August Hirt shot himself somewhere in the forests of France after the capture of Strasbourg by the allied forces.
Let's return to the Strasbourg Anatomical Institute in the summer of 1944. This story of the collection of skeletons became known largely thanks to Henri Aripier, the French assistant to Professor Hirt. Let's leave out of this narration the very fact of the French doctor's work for the occupation regime. When the first bodies of Auschwitz prisoners arrived at the anatomical department, Eripierre remarked:
“The first batch we received included the bodies of 30 women. The bodies were still warm. The eyes were open and shining. Red, bloodshot, they crawled out of their sockets. Traces of blood were only visible around the nose and around the mouth. But no signs of rigor mortis were observed …"
The French accomplice of German anatomists managed to rewrite the individual numbers of the deceased, which were applied to him back in Auschwitz. This later helped in identifying the victims.
Hirt, obviously, overestimated the capabilities of his institute and the butcher's team - the anatomical department could not cope with the processing of the corpses that came to him. Most of the bodies were only dismembered and disassembled in the tanks. In such a state, the allied forces found the failed collection of Professor Hirt. Until now, most of the photographs that they found in the hell of Strasbourg are not available to the public.
Echoes of August Hirt's horrific activities still surface in news feeds. So, in 2017, in Strasbourg, twelve boxes with anatomical preparations made by a killer professor were found at once.
Nazism not only plunged the country into the abyss of bloody madness for many years, but also deprived Germany of the most advanced science. Nine Nobel laureates left the country for one reason or another, finding a second home in the USA, Great Britain and Switzerland. Many researchers believe that this is what prevented the Third Reich from creating its own nuclear weapons. And created the conditions for the prosperity of such monsters as Professor August Hirt.
