Bernhard Walter

The recorded working language is German. Places of work recorded in the authority are Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp and Auschwitz. Works named in the authority record are Auschwitz Album. Work by Bernhard Walter is recorded in the collections of Yad Vashem.

Established by Rudolf Höss in December 1940 or January 1941, the Erkennungsdienst was based on the ground floor of block 26 in Auschwitz I, where there was a studio and darkroom. Bernhard Walter was director of the Erkennungsdienst. He was born on 27 April 1911 in Fürth, Bavaria, and joined the SS when he was 22, on 2 May 1933 (serial number 104168). He was assigned to the 2nd Brandenburg Totenkopf regiment at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he worked with Höss and ran the camp's Erkennungsdienst. Transferred to Auschwitz in 1941, he ran the Auschwitz Erkennungsdienst from 1 January 1941 until 18 January 1945. After Auschwitz, he was transferred to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Ernst Hofmann became deputy director of the Erkennungsdienst on 16 May 1941. Other staff members included SS-Unterscharführer Alfred Schmidt and SS-Rottenführer Wenzel Leneis.

Prisoners were assigned to work for the Erkennungsdienst as photographers and darkroom workers. Franz Maltz, a German inmate, was the kapo; he had been the kapo at the Sachsenhausen Erkennungsdienst. Other prisoners included Wilhelm Brasse (prisoner number 3444), Tadeusz Brodka (245), Eugeniusz Dembek (63764), Edward Josefsberg, Bronisław Jureczek (26672), Roman Karwat (5959), Leonid Koren (21953), Tadeusz Krzysica (120557), Tadeusz Myszkowski (593), Zdzisław Pazio (3078), Jozef Pysz (1420), Jozef Swiatloch (3529), Stanisław Tralka (660), Wladyslaw Wawrzyniak (9449), and Alfred Woycicki (39247).

• Illustration — Auschwitz I in 2010 As the Red Army approached Auschwitz from the east in January 1945, the SS ordered that the camp be dismantled and abandoned. Efforts were made to destroy evidence and thousands of inmates were sent on a westwards death march. The Erkennungsdienst was ordered to destroy their photographs, supervised by Walter. Walter saved the Auschwitz Album photographs and the photographs of Heinrich Himmler. William Brasse, a prisoner who worked for the Erkennungsdienst, said he believed Walter and Hofmann took their images to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, including film of medical experiments they had recorded for one of the camp doctors, Josef Mengele. Walter ordered Brasse and another prisoner, JureczekBronisław Jureczek, to burn the images of prisoners. Jureczek said: Before they left the camp on 18 January, Brasse said, they hid the negatives in the studio and boarded the door up behind them. As a result, 38,916 photographs survived. After the camp's liberation, prisoners carried the images in bags to the Polish Red Cross in Cracow, and in 1947 they were added to the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

The following is established of the heading itself.

The following works and productions are recorded by name or by count. It is also recorded that bernhard Walter is recorded with the occupation photographer. Recorded with the occupation concentration camp guard. Recorded with the occupation plasterer. It is also recorded that bernhard Walter is recorded as a citizen of German Reich. Institutional cataloguing adds that bernhard Walter is recorded with the gender male. Born on 27 April 1911. Walter died on 7 July 1979. The record continues: bernhard Walter worked at Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. Walter worked at Auschwitz.