In a compound near the U.S. Capitol 141 years ago today, Henry Wirz was hanged.

Thursday, the great-grandnephew of the only Confederate official to be executed for war crimes was in Vicksburg from his home in Switzerland.

His tour of the Vicksburg National Military Park was more than a passing interest.

Heinrich Wirz, 70, a retired colonel in the Swiss Army, studies the American Civil War and writes about military and security issues in his homeland.

Henry Wirz, the ancestor, had come from Switzerland and was appointed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to run Camp Sumter prison in Andersonville, Ga., near Macon, in 1864.

He was in his post at the infamous prison for the last 11 months of its 14-month existence and was the only remaining member of the Confederate prison staff at Andersonville when he was arrested May 7, 1865.

Crowds gathered to watch as Wirz was hanged Nov. 10 of that year in Washington, D.C., an event that was photographed.

A military tribunal tried Wirz on charges of conspiring with Davis to &#8220injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States.” Wirz was also accused of cruelty to Union prisoners.

Historians agree that despite apparent misconduct in Wirz’s trial and inconsistencies in testimony and evidence, historical accounts say, Wirz was taken to the public gallows at Washington Penitentiary.

On the morning of Nov. 10, according to a William Marvel, author of &#8220Andersonville: The Last Depot,” Wirz &#8220rose in his cell at the Old Capitol and wrote a last letter to his wife.