Bernhard Walter (SS member)

Bernhard Walter (born April 27, 1911 in Fürth ; † July 7, 1979 ibid) was a German SS-Hauptscharführer and head of the identification service of the Political Department in Auschwitz . Together with his assistant Ernst Hofmann, he is considered to be one of the authors of the Auschwitz album , which contains recordings of Jewish people from Hungary from their arrival at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp to the undressing chambers of the gas chambers and crematoria . Numerous photographs of the so-called Höcker album were also presumably taken by Walter.

Life

Walter was a plasterer by trade . In May 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 3.178.708) and the Allgemeine SS (SS number 1.041.168). From April 1934 he was deployed with the guards in the Dachau concentration camp . He later moved to the 2nd  SS Totenkopfregiment Brandenburg and finally worked for the identification service of the Political Department in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . He completed a course at the RSHA . As a result of a car accident, he suffered a fractured skull in 1939. Walter was married. The couple had three children, two of whom died by 1945.

From the beginning of January 1941 until the camp was evacuated due to the war in January 1945, he was in charge of the identification service of the Political Department at Auschwitz. He set up the identification service in Block 26 of the main camp . His assistant was SS-Unterscharführer Ernst Hofmann, who was employed as a photographer, and ten to twelve prisoners had to support the two SS men in their work. Essentially, non-Jewish inmates were photographed for the files in the photo studio located there for identification purposes (three portraits, frontally with and without hats and from the side) and their fingerprints were also taken. Some photographs were also taken on behalf of the camp commandant or the SS camp doctors. According to a post-war statement by Walter in Nazi jargon, it had happened that “particularly typical representatives of Judaism were sent to the identification service to be photographed”.

Arrival of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 1944 - recording from the Auschwitz album

Walter and Hofmann were among the few SS men in Auschwitz who were authorized to take photos in the camp and in the area of interest of the Auschwitz concentration camp . These two SS men are considered to be the photographers of the Auschwitz album handed down by Holocaust survivor Lili Jacob . This album contains recordings after the arrival of Jewish people from Hungary at the end of May 1944 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, starting with the selection on the ramp in Birkenau after the train arrives, briefing those “able to work” into the camp, and bringing their belongings to the “effects camp” , up to the path of those destined to die from the ramp to the gas chambers .

Walter, who lived with his family in the SS settlement of Auschwitz concentration camp in the immediate vicinity of the family of his notorious colleague Wilhelm Boger , was promoted to SS-Hauptscharführer in February 1942. Walter took part in the shooting of prisoners on the Black Wall . In September 1942 he was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords. From summer 1944 at the latest, Walter was in addition to his function as head of the Spieß identification service at the command headquarters of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He also organized film screenings for members of the camp SS. In the course of the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, before the arrival of the Red Army in January 1945, he ordered inmate Wilhelm Brasse , who had been assigned to his department, to burn the negatives and prints of the prisoner ID photographs. Brasse apparently complied with these instructions as long as Walter was present and then extinguished the fire in the stove to save the documents for posterity. Walter then did military service with units of the Waffen SS . In the spring of 1945 he was still employed in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp .

After the end of the war he was in English captivity and was finally transferred to Poland. On April 8, 1948, he was sentenced by the District Court in Kraków to three years imprisonment and revocation of civil rights for a period of three years. In favor of Walter, the former prisoner Brasse testified, who attested that he had behaved correctly towards the prisoners. After his release from prison in July 1950, he moved back to Fürth, where he worked as a projectionist in a cinema. In the course of the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt , he testified as a witness in 1964/65, but gave only evasive answers. Walter denied being the author of the photographs submitted by the witness Jacob from the Auschwitz album. Only after persistent questioning did he admit to having taken some recordings. The identification of the alleged photographers of the Auschwitz album was, according to Gideon Greif, the "real sensation" of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.

literature

• Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz death books . Volume 1: Reports. K. G. Saur Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-11263-7 .
• Israel Gutman , Bella Gutterman (Ed.): The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-911-2 .

Movie

• Winfried Laasch and Friedrich Scherer: A day in Auschwitz , documentary film, ZDF 2020. The 90-minute film is based on interviews with surviving victims and on photos from the "Auschwitz Album" and focuses on the person and function of Bernhard Walter as “Photographer of Auschwitz” in more detail; scientific explanations in the film by the historian Stefan Hördler .

Web links

• Bernhard Walter is available online at FürthWiki

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 423.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.): Auschwitz death books . Volume 1: Reports. 1995, p. 302.
3. ↑ Lili Meier, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation: The Auschwitz album: Lili Jacob's album. 1980.
4. ^ Nina Springer Aharoni: Photographs as historical documents. In: Israel Gutman, Bella Gutterman (Ed.): The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport. Göttingen 2005, p. 94.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Gideon Greif : The Auschwitz Album - The Story of Lili Jacob. In: Israel Gutman, Bella Gutterman (Ed.): The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport. Göttingen 2005, p. 81.
6. ^ Dirk Rupnow: Destroying and remembering: traces of nationalistic memory politics. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, p. 237.
7. ↑ Kamilla Pfeffer: quarter of a second, aperture 16. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 17, 2010.
8. ↑ Christoph Löbel: 38,000 images for posterity ( memento from January 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: cult-zeitung.de. March 7, 2015.
9. ↑ Israel Gutman and Bella Gutterman (ed.): The Auschwitz Album. The story of a transport. Göttingen 2005, p. 82.
10. ↑ Katharina Stengel: Hermann Langbein. An Auschwitz survivor in the postwar memory-political conflicts. Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012, p. 210.
11. ^ Fritz Bauer Institute , Irmtrud Wojak (Ed.): Auschwitz-Prozess 4 Ks 2/63 Frankfurt am Main. Book accompanying the exhibition. Snoeck, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-936859-08-6 , p. 157 / Digital Library Vol. 101: The Auschwitz Trial - tapes, protocols, documents . DVD-ROM, ISBN 978-3-89853501-4 , p. 14820–14831 (77th day of the hearing)