Bierkamp, Walther Karl Johannes, born 17-12-1901, in Hamburg, son of Emil Hermann Heinrich Bierkamp, died 1945 and Luise Frederike Vollmer, who died in 1942. He had one older sister Gerda Johanne Frederike Bierkamp, born in 1899. He joined the Nazi Party, NSDAP Mitgliedsnumber 1.409.449 on 01-12-1932 and joined the Schutzstaffel (SS)
SS-Nr. 310.172, on 01-04-1939. 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 30-06-1942 to 15-06-1943, 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 22-08-1942, 500 Jews from Krasnodar were shot. The same happened on 01-09-1942 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 20-07-1944, 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. He was promoted on 09.11.1944 to SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei.
Death and burial ground of Bierkamp, Walther Karl Johannes.




In the final weeks of the Third Reich, Bierkamp was in Stuttgart and then in Breslau and committed suicide in Scharbeutz on 15-05-1945, age 43.
Walther Bierkamp is buried with his wife Mita, who died 16-09-1992, on the Waldfriedhof Timmendorfer Strand Bäderrandstraße, Schleswig-Holstein.


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