Born in Bremen, Piorkowski and was a trained mechanic who worked as a traveling merchant in the 1920s.

[3] From there he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp in early August 1938, where he served as Schutzhaftlagerführer.

[2] After the Second World War, Piorkowski, along with his adjutant Heinrich Detmers, had to answer to a U.S. military tribunal at the Dachau trials from 6 to 17 January 1947.

The charges were war crimes for his complicity in the deportation, abduction and ill-treatment of prisoners in the former concentration camp at Dachau, his supervision of inhumane experiments conducted by Sigmund Rascher and Claus Schilling, and the mass shootings of Soviet POWs.

[4] Making futile petitions for a pardon, Piorkowski was hanged in the Landsberg Prison for war crimes.