'' SS-Unterscharführer '' ( Corporal ) Franz Suchomel testified about Wirth : From my activity in the camps of Treblinka and Sobibor , I remember that Wirth in brutality , meanness , and ruthlessness could not be surpassed . We therefore called him ' Christian the Terrible ' or ' The Wild Christian ' . The Ukrainian guardsmen called him ' Stuka ' . The brutality of Wirth was so great that I personally see it as a perversity . I remember particularly that on each occasion , Wirth lashed Ukrainian guardsmen with the whip he always kept ... If only someone had had the courage to kill Christian Wirth — then '' Aktion Reinhard '' would have collapsed . Berlin would not have found another man with such energy for evil and nastiness . During the construction of Sobibór , the second '' Aktion Reinhard '' camp , Wirth visited the incomplete site , and conducted an experimental gassing of 25 Jewish slave-labourers . He liked to carry a whip , and he used it on both Jewish victims and guards . When Treblinka ( the last and most efficient '' Reinhard '' camp ) was set up , Wirth took a direct role in reorganizing it when the first Commandant , Dr. Irmfried Eberl , was replaced by Franz Stangl . Stangl recalled one of Wirth 's inspection visits to Treblinka as Inspector of Operation Reinhard , around September 1942 : To tell the truth , one did become used to it ... they were cargo . I think it started the day I first saw the '' Totenlager '' extermination area in Treblinka . I remember Wirth standing there , next to the pits full of black-blue corpses . It had nothing to do with humanity — it could not have . It was a mass — a mass of rotting flesh . Wirth said ' What shall we do with this garbage ? ' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo . In May 1943 , after Himmler 's visit to Sobibór and Treblinka , Wirth was promoted to the rank of '' SS-Sturmbannführer '' ( Major ) . On 3 November 1943 , after the Sobibór uprising , SS and police units shot all of the Jewish labor forces still incarcerated at Trawniki , Poniatowa , and Majdanek concentration camps during Aktion Erntefest ( " Operation Harvest Festival " ) ; 42,000 prisoners in all
Aktion Erntefest
Aktion Erntefest
Christian Wirth