Walther Bierkamp

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (April 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 7,076 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Walther Bierkamp]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Walther Bierkamp}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Walther Bierkamp also spelled, Walter Bierkamp (17 December 1901, Hamburg – 15 May 1945, Scharbeutz) was a jurist of Nazi Germany who was born in Hamburg. He served as Chief of the Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo (Security Police) and Sicherheitsdienst or SD (Security Service) in Düsseldorf. Later he held the same position for Belgium and Northern France. Bierkamp was involved in war crimes. He took command of Einsatzgruppe D, which was later known as Kampfgruppe Bierkamp, named after him when Bierkamp was its leader. He rose to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor of Police. He committed suicide in Scharbeutz on 15 May 1945.

Biography[]

He joined the Nazi Party on 1 December 1932 and joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) on 1 April 1939.^[1] He was employed from February 1937 to February 1941 as head of the criminal police department (Kripo) in Hamburg. From February 1941 to September 1941 he worked as chief of the SiPo (Security Police) and SD (Security Service) in Düsseldorf. From there he was sent to Paris as head of the SiPo and SD for Belgium and Northern France; along with being appointed Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer or HSSPF (Higher SS and Police Leader) "Southeast". Bierkamp remained there until April 1942.

From 30 June 1942 to 15 June 1943, he was commander of Einsatzgruppe D, a SS paramilitary death squad which was responsible for mass killings, (typically by shooting) in the Soviet Union. Later Einsatzgruppe D was known as Kampfgruppe Bierkamp (battle group Bierkamp). On 21 and 22 August 1942, 500 Jews from Krasnodar were shot. The same happened on 1 September 1942 in Mineralnye Vody. The Jews of Pyatigorsk were killed in gas vans. More than 6,000 Jews were killed. Additional Jews were murdered in January 1943 in Kislovodsk. The overall death toll of the SS unit during that period amounted to about 10,000 Jewish victims.

Bierkamp was then sent to Kraków as chief of police and security services until February 1945. In this capacity, as well as overseeing the "cleansing of the Jews" in Cracow, he organized the evacuation before the advancing Soviet forces. In his famous circular of 20 July 1944, he ordered the evacuation of prisoners from the prisons and the Jews from the armaments industries. If, he wrote, unforeseen circumstances have made it impossible to transport the inmates, they were to be killed on the spot and they would have to make the bodies disappear by burning them, by blowing up the sheds, or by other means.

In the final weeks of the Third Reich, Bierkamp was in Stuttgart and then in Breslau. He committed suicide in Scharbeutz on 15 May 1945.^[2]

Notes[]

References[]

• Andrej Angrick: Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 2003, ISBN 3-930908-91-3.
• Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Fischer, aktualisierte 2. Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8.
• Helmut Krausnick/Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938-1942. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-01987-8.