Story Highlights
- Historical event:
- 26 May 1944
- Christian Wirth was travelling in an open-topped car on an official trip to Fuime (today Rijeka, Croatia), when Yugoslav partisans killed him.
Christian Wirth held the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer, and participated in Nazi projects – the Aktion T4 program and Operation Reinhard (German: Aktion Reinhard). They included the most terrible mass crimes ever committed.
The Aktion T4 program was the programme of forced euthanasia, under which people with mental disabilities, and those who were “incurably sick” were killed.
Operation Reinhard was the secretive plan to mass murder European as well as most Polish Jews in concentration camps (Vernichtungslager – extermination camps).
In 1943, Christian Wirth was sent to Trieste (Italy) where a Nazi camp (“Risiera di San Sabba”) was located.
The Italian Jews were horribly persecuted after the Germans had occupied Italy (after Italy’ s surrender in 1943). Italian fascists didn’t treat the Jews as badly as the German Nazis.
On this day, Christian Wirth was travelling in an open-topped car on an official trip to Fuime (today Rijeka, Croatia), when Yugoslav partisans killed him in Hrpelje-Kozina (Slovenia).
He was buried with full military honours near Trieste.
