Wirth, Christian, 1885-1944

Christian Wirth (German: [vɪʁt] ; 24 November 1885 – 26 May 1944) was a German SS officer and leading Holocaust perpetrator who was one of the primary architects of the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard. His nicknames included Christian the Cruel (German: Christian der Grausame), Stuka, and The Wild Christian due to the extremity of his behaviour among the SS and Trawniki guards and to the camp inmates and victims. Wirth worked within the Action T4 program, in which people with disabilities were murdered by gassing or lethal injection, and then at implementing Operation Reinhard, by developing almost single-handed, the extermination camps for the purpose of mass murder. Wirth later served as Inspector of all the Reinhard Camps. He was killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in Hrpelje-Kozina near Trieste after the conclusion of Operation Reinhard.