This Date in History: April 29

On April 29, 1943, Nazi forces cleared a large block of buildings at the productive Ghetto, a subset of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto.  Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander, reported killing 106 resistance fighters in combat and capturing 2,359 people.  SS-Schütze Johann Nissner of the SS Cavalry Replacement Detachment was wounded in action.  (The Ghetto Men: The SS Destruction of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto April-May 1943)

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Dr. August Hirt, SS-Sturmbannführer, born April 29, 1898 in Mannheim, Nazi anthropologist and surgeon, collector of pathological specimens of inmates at Natzweiler concentration camp, winner of Iron Cross 2nd Class in World War I, committed suicide June 2, 1945 after the war, on collecting samples for his anthropological studies:

“By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevist Commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive but characteristic sub-human, one has the chance to obtain palpable scientific data.  The best practical method is to turn over alive all such individuals.  Following induced death of the Jew, the head, which should not be damaged, should be separated from the body and sent in a hermetically sealed tin can filled with preservative fluid.”  (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1000-Year Reich)

Hirt’s death was reportedly finally confirmed in the mid-1960s, when the Israeli Mossad had his body exhumed, and an Israeli pathologist conclusively identified the bones.