Sunday, 29 April 1945, 10 miles  northwest of Munich, Germany.  Units of the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry  Division enter Dachau, the first regular   concentration camp established by the Nazis. The  soldiers are immediately confronted with the smell   of human excrement and decaying bodies.

 Many of  them cry or vomit as they find piles of severely   malnourished corpses, more than 30 railroad cars  filled with thousands of dead bodies, and nearly   30,000 survivors, most of them severely emaciated  and barely able to stand. Thousands are suffering   from typhus and starvation, and many will die  in the weeks and months following liberation.  One of Dachau’s commandants, responsible  for the systematic torture, mistreatment,   and deaths of prisoners held in  the camp, is Alexander Piorkowski.

Alexander Bernhard Hans Piorkowski was born  on 11 October 1904 in the city of Bremen,   then part of the German Empire. Piorkowski was 14 years old when   the First World War ended in November  1918, and in the years that followed,   he witnessed Germany descend into  economic and political turmoil.   The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 imposed  heavy reparations, territorial losses,   and severe military restrictions on the country.

  This led to widespread hardship, including   hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which wiped  out savings and plunged millions into poverty.  Politically, the Weimar Republic, which emerged  after the fall of the German Empire in 1918,   struggled with chronic instability. Frequent  changes in government, extremist political   movements, and weak coalition leadership fostered  deep disillusionment.

 Many Germans felt humiliated   by the Treaty of Versailles and were angered by  what they perceived as ineffective leadership.   Adolf Hitler exploited this frustration through  propaganda and promises of national revival,   stability, and economic recovery. Like many young Germans of his generation,   Piorkowski entered adulthood during a period of  uncertainty and limited economic opportunity,   training as a mechanic during the 1920s  before working as a travelling merchant.

In June 1929, Piorkowski joined the SA,  or Sturmabteilung, which was the Nazi   paramilitary force also known as the Storm  Troopers or ‘Brownshirts’ due to the colour   of their uniforms. In November of the same  year, he became a member of the Nazi Party. On 30 January 1933,   Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of  Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. 

Four months later, Piorkowski joined the  SS, led by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. In July 1935, Piorkowski was placed in  command of an SS regiment in Bremen,   responsible for recruitment, training, and  political enforcement within its region.   The following year, he was transferred  to command SS forces in the East Prussian   region of Allenstein, before retiring from  service in September 1936 for health reasons.

From July to December 1937, Piorkowski  was provisional commandant of Lichtenburg   concentration camp. Following its conversion into  a women’s concentration camp later that year,   he served as deputy camp commandant under  Günther Tamaschke until August 1938. In early August 1938, Piorkowski was transferred  from Lichtenburg to Dachau concentration camp,   located about 16 kilometres, or 10  miles, northwest of Munich.

 There,   he served as Schutzhaftlagerführer, or  head of the “preventive detention camp,”   responsible for the internal operation of  the camp and the supervision of prisoners.   From February 1940 to mid-September  1942, he was the camp’s commandant. As commandant of Dachau, Alexander Piorkowski  was responsible for the shooting of Soviet   prisoners of war. These killings were carried out  deliberately and repeatedly under his authority. 

From late 1941 onward, Soviet prisoners were  separated from the rest of the camp and confined   to blocks reserved exclusively for Red Army  personnel. They were deliberately excluded   from registration in camp records, ensuring  their deaths would leave no official trace.   Prisoners were removed from their barracks, taken  into custody, and killed within a short time.  

Their bodies were sent to the crematorium, while  only their clothing was returned to the camp.  In early 1942, entire blocks holding Soviet  prisoners were cleared. In February alone,   several hundred prisoners were taken from the camp  and executed. The killings took place both at a   firing range outside Dachau and inside secured  bunker facilities.

 Armed SS units carried out the   shootings, operating under Piorkowski’s command. Piorkowski’s responsibility for these   executions was later confirmed during postwar  proceedings by the testimony of Karl Schütz,   a member of the SS guard unit. Schütz stated  that he personally witnessed executions while   assigned as a medic.

 He described prisoners  being shot from a distance of 25 to 50 meters,   after which their bodies were stripped, loaded  onto trucks, and transported to the crematorium.  The exact number of Soviet prisoners murdered  at Dachau under Piorkowski’s command was never   established but during postwar proceedings,  evidence emerged indicating that victims numbered   in the several thousands.

 In one garage near  the SS headquarters, a container was discovered   holding approximately 10,000 identification  tags belonging to Soviet and Polish prisoners. As commandant of Dachau, Alexander Piorkowski  also authorized and enforced severe physical   punishments against prisoners. Inmates were  sentenced to flogging with sticks or ox whips,   receiving 25 or even 50 blows.

 Piorkowski  personally signed the punishment orders,   often approving more than one hundred cases per  week. On Saturdays, up to 200 prisoners were   subjected to so-called “hanging,” in which inmates  were suspended by their arms for hours. Because   the bunker could not accommodate the number  of prisoners punished at the same time, these   punishments were carried out in a camp washroom. Piorkowski also used violence himself.  

The Polish prisoner Graf Polinski, a former  Polish diplomat, was beaten by Piorkowski   and died shortly afterward from his injuries. Soviet prisoners of war were repeatedly beaten   as well. In May 1942, according to one witness,  groups of Red Army soldiers were seen leaving the   Gestapo—the Nazi secret police—office at Dachau.  He stated: “They came out bloody and beaten up.

”   Prisoners were also subjected to prolonged  solitary confinement in the bunker. Dr. Fromm,   a prisoner held at Dachau, later recalled:  “I was in solitary confinement for 17 days,   then placed in a dark cell for 42 days,  receiving food only every third day.” Under Piorkowski’s command, abuse at  Dachau expanded into systematic medical   experimentation on prisoners, carried out with his  knowledge and explicit authorization.

 Piorkowski   granted SS doctors permission to select  prisoners themselves for experimental use,   while SS guards enforced the procedures by  force. These guards operated under his authority   and ensured that prisoners could not refuse. In June 1942, Heinrich Himmler visited Dachau,   and Piorkowski personally escorted  him through the camp and into the   experimental areas.

 During this visit, a mobile  low-pressure chamber was demonstrated and a   prisoner died during the demonstration. After the war, prisoners described the   experiments in detail. Some testified that inmates  were strapped to operating tables and subjected to   surgical procedures, including goitre operations,  without anaesthesia. Others confirmed hypothermia   experiments conducted by doctor Sigmund Rascher  in which prisoners were exposed to extreme cold   or immersed in ice water until they collapsed.

 A Holocaust survivor, Walter Römer, testified   after the war about his personal experience.  In April 1942, he was deliberately infected   with malaria as part of an experiment conducted  by doctor Claus Schilling. Römer described how   the illness ravaged his body and how he was left  to take care of himself without adequate care.   Römer held Piorkowski responsible for his  suffering and for the deaths of other prisoners,   stating that Piorkowski had given the doctors  free rein to conduct these experiments. 

From medical experiments, Piorkowski’s crimes  extended directly into the systematic removal   of prisoners marked for death. Beginning in the  summer of 1941, transports of inmates deemed unfit   for work were organized under his authority.  Piorkowski personally selected these prisoners   together with camp doctors and stated openly that  those chosen would “go into the gas chamber.

” From   that point on, such transports were carried  out regularly throughout his entire tenure.  When one prisoner designated for transport  attempted to take his crutches, Piorkowski   forbade it, saying: “You do not need any  more crutches; tomorrow you are with Saint   Peter.” Among the remaining prisoners, this remark  confirmed that the transports meant certain death. 

From the autumn of 1941 until Piorkowski was  replaced, approximately 1,000 prisoners per   month were sent on these transports.  Those closest to death were targeted   first. At the end of January 1942 alone,  around 110 prisoners were taken directly   from the infirmary and assigned for transport.

 Between mid-January and the end of June 1942,   roughly 20 transports left Dachau, each carrying  about 100 prisoners. Surviving admission,   transport, and death registers confirmed the  scale of this system. These deportations were   not administrative transfers but selections for  extermination, carried out under Piorkowski’s   direct authority and forming a central part of  the crimes for which he would later face justice.

By 1942, Piorkowski had become involved in  a widespread black-market network operating   out of Dachau. Camp resources were  misused, valuable goods were diverted,   and SS personnel enriched themselves through  illicit trading schemes. Dachau effectively   became a distribution point for stolen food,  luxury items, and property looted from occupied   territories.

 Piorkowski protected these activities  and failed to enforce even SS regulations when   they interfered with personal gain. His conduct drew the attention of SS   leadership. During a visit to Dachau in 1942,  Heinrich Himmler reacted with fury to the state   of the camp and Piorkowski’s repeated, extended  absences from his command duties. An internal   investigation followed, focused not on  the killings, beatings, or experiments   carried out under Piorkowski’s command, but on  financial misconduct and abuse of authority. 

In mid-September 1942, Piorkowski was  removed as commandant. On 31 August 1943,   he was formally dismissed from the SS. The  mass crimes committed during his tenure were   ignored by the SS and left  unpunished until after the war. The Second World War in Europe ended on 8 May  1945.

 Almost two years later, in January 1947,   Alexander Piorkowski was brought before a United  States military tribunal at the Dachau trials.  He was charged with war crimes for his complicity  in the deportation, abduction, and ill-treatment   of prisoners at Dachau, his supervision  of inhumane medical experiments conducted   by SS doctors, and the mass shootings of Soviet  prisoners of war.

 The tribunal found Piorkowski   guilty and sentenced him to death. Following the  verdict, Piorkowski repeatedly begged for mercy,   filing clemency petitions in an effort to avoid  execution. However, every appeal was rejected.  When Alexander Piorkowski was hanged on  22 October 1948, he was 44 years old.  His last words were: “Long live Germany,   long live my family. Be well, Herr Pfarrer,  I am ready. My son, take revenge for me.

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