The Nazi Behind the Quisling

By Steve Rodan

For decades, the Jewish ghetto established by the Germans in the Polish city of Lodz was associated with Chaim Rumkowski, a Zionist leader who oversaw the death of hundreds of thousands -- whether by gassing, shooting or starvation.

But Rumkowski, the self-proclaimed king of the ghetto, was powerless without his Nazi master. And that superior was perhaps the most unlikely of people -- a businessman with no genuine affection for Hitler and the Third Reich,,rather driven purely by greed.

Hans Biebow represented the way Hitler sold the Final Solution to the German elite: Jews would not merely be killed. First, they would be stripped of all possessions bringing billions of marks to the fuhrer and his friends. Second, the hardy among the millions of Jews would be forced to work to death for German industry. Without salaries or even more than a morsel of food, the arrangement yielded vast profits for the German tycoons.

Lodz proved the model of efficient extermination. A coffee importer from Bremen, Biebow ran the second biggest ghetto in occupied Europe, following Warsaw. For more than four years, Lodz was the industrial center for the Wehrmacht, pumping out electrical equipment, shoes and other goods for the German soldier sent to destroy Europe and Africa.

Kid salesman

Biebow had all the traits useful to the Nazis: He was a baby-faced salesman who with help from his well-off father could exploit any business opportunity, even during rampant inflation in Germany. Joining the Nazi Party just two years before World War II, he was also ruthless and hardened to human suffering. He also knew how to stretch capital and provide the Nazi leadership with the luxuries unavailable in wartime.

"When the inflation ended, I became particularly interested in the reviving coffee trade," the 37-year-old Biebow wrote when he applied for a ghetto job in May 1940. "After a short training period with a business friend of my father's, I opened my own business with very little capital, building it, in the course of 18 years, into one of the largest such companies in Germany. At the end I employed about 250 workers and office personnel." [1]

Like any smart executive in a foreign country, Biebow, who held the position of Amtsleiter, or head of office, needed a local who could speak the language and maintain order in the ghetto. Chaim Rumkowski was the perfect candidate: He was a longtime Zionist activist familiar with the leadership in Lodz and in contact with the Zionist organization outside of Poland. He could manipulate the young Zionists by promising that his friends would be well-treated. He did not hesitate to denounce his critics to the Gestapo. He could rouse the Jews to keep toiling far past their endurance, deny food to both laborers and their families and finally persuade them to take the trains bound for the nearby death camps.

As important, Biebow would make sure that all of the cruelties would be blamed on Rumkowski rather than on his German masters. In return, Rumkowski, who rode on a white horse, could feed his ego and pockets anyway he wished.

No revolt

The result was astounding success. Lodz was the only major Polish ghetto not to revolt or even resist the German death machine in 1943. While the revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto was being prepared, the Jews starved and died in Lodz without a fuss. David Sierakowiak began his diary in a Zionist youth camp just before the German invasion in September 1939. In this entry for April 4, 1943, the 17-year-old prepares for his death.

My state of mind is worsening every day. The fever persists, and I look like a complete 'death notice.' I can’t bring my irritated skin back to normal, either. In politics there’s still nothing new. The war is extending infinitely, and here I am with no more strength. Everyone in the ghetto is sick. TB is spreading unbelievably, and there is a great number of other infectious and noninfectious diseases. Nadzia has noticed symptoms of scabies on her body again. If things continue like this, I will go crazy. Oh, this horrible, endless hopelessness. No chance or hope for life."[2]

The Lodz ghetto administration employed 250 Germans, and Biebow, aided by Józef Haemmerle and Wilhelm Ribb, tried to keep everything under his sole control. All the while, Biebow amassed his fortune. He would pilfer from the ghetto's budget for food allocated to the laborers. When the SS wasn't looking, he would dip into the revenues that stemmed from the 117 ghetto factories, where 95 percent of the adults spent 12 hours a day. He made sure to support the orders of SS chief Heinrich Himmler for deportations to Auschwitz and Chelmno. Biebow, whose superior was Arthur Greiser, the gauleiter of Warthegau, simply needed replacements for his slaves, many of whom came from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. [3]

Rape and torture

If Biebow was told by Rumkowski or the Jewish police that a Jew had concealed money or jewels, the torture would begin. Under Biebow's orders, the man's wife or daughter might be raped and mutilated. When they were no longer of any use, the victims would be killed. [4]  Biebow would make sure to collect even the wardrobes of the Jews that were taken away. [5]

By early 1944, Biebow knew that the days of the Lodz ghetto were numbered. Virtually all of the other ghettos in Poland had been eradicated ahead of the Red Army. That summer all of the ghetto survivors were sent to the gas chambers. He left 877 Jews to remove anything of value before they, too, would be executed.

Biebow's last victim was Rumkowski. The elderly quisling was sent to Auschwitz on the last transport from Lodz. In the camp, he was recognized by survivors and beaten to death.

For his part, Biebow never got to spend the Jewish loot. He fled with the rest of the Germans in August 1944 and after the war returned to Bremen under assumed name. A survivor recognized him and the fugitive was arrested and extradited to Lodz for trial. The city had 30,000 Jews and they demanded justice.

Biebow was indicted on charges of mass murder. Like Greiser a year earlier, Biebow insisted that he was just "obeying orders." Biebow was convicted and hanged on June 23, 1947.

Notes

1.  Litzmannstadt Ghetto: Inside A Community Under Siege, Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides. Pages 496-7. Penguin, 1989.

2. Excerpts from the diary of Dawid Sierakowiak. 04-ExceptsFromDiary_DavidSierakowiak.pdf (echoesandreflections.org)]

3. Memoirs of Michael D. Bulmash.  Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2014.1.121. 

4. Life After the War – Spatial and Collective Memories of Jewish Heritage Sites (cuny.edu)

5. Hans Biebow. Yad Vashem. Microsoft Word - 6013.pdf

Below: Biebow in his office in Lodz.