Hans Biebow Hans Biebow ( December 18 , 1902 – April 24 , 1947 ) was the chief of German Nazi administration of the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland . Biebow ' s early life is summarized by the following " curriculum vitae " which he submitted to the German Ghetto Administration ( ) on 10 May 1940 : After working as a coffee importer in his hometown of Bremen , Biebow became the overseer of the Łódź Ghetto . He realized that the Lodz Ghetto could make a profit for the Germans if it were converted into essentially a slave labor complex . Under his administration , the 164 , 000 Jews of Poland ' s second largest city were crammed into a small area of the city . Communication between the Ghetto inhabitants and the outside world was completely cut off and the supply of food was severely limited , ensuring that many of the inhabitants of the Ghetto would slowly starve . Over the course of its existence , the population of the Ghetto swelled to 204 , 000 with more Jews from Central Europe being sent there . The Ghetto Administration remained in operation from April 1940 until the summer of 1944 , but there were transports out of the Ghetto to extermination camp s ( primarily Auschwitz and Chelmno ) beginning at the end of 1941 . Biebow was a ruthless administrator , concerned with the ghetto ' s productivity and his own personal gain . He was directly responsible for starving the ghetto ' s population beyond limits of endurance , and he assisted the Gestapo in rounding up Jews during deportations . In the days just before the liberation of Lodz by the Red Army , Biebow ordered large burial pits to be dug in the local cemetery , intending that the Gestapo execute the remaining 877 Jews who served as a clean - up crew in the ghetto . This might have been an attempt by Biebow to eliminate witnesses to his role in the workings of the Ghetto . Biebow exercised his control in part through a Jewish administration headed by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski . Rumkowski believed that the Jews could survive if they produced cheap , essential goods for the Nazis . Biebow profited substantially from the sale of the products of Jewish labour as well as from the seized properties of Jews . He is also said to have provided less food to Ghetto inhabitants than was paid for , pocketing the difference . The Ghetto factories produced products such as boots for German soldiers and were profitable for the Germans because the Jews , cut off from all resources , worked for wages that consisted only of bread , soup , and other essentials . The German profits from the Jewish factories have been estimated at $ 14 , 000 , 000 and the productivity of the Ghetto was a factor in its comparatively long survival . The inhabitants endured four years of starvation , illness and overcrowding before being sent to the extermination camps of Chełmno and Auschwitz . Of the 204 , 000 inhabitants , approximately 10 , 000 survived . Among the Nazi hierarchy , Biebow was an early exponent of using the Jews as cheap labor rather than killing them , but he readily adapted to the extermination policy . Survivors report his encouraging the last surviving Jews of the Ghetto in the summer of 1944 to board the trains to Auschwitz with a speech that began " My Jews . . . ” and promised them work in the West . Biebow was able to escape into hiding in Germany in 1945 after the unconditional surrender , but was recognized by a survivor of the ghetto and subsequently arrested in Bremen . After he was extradited by the Allies to Łódź , he stood trial from April 23 to April 30 , 1947 . He was found guilty on all counts and executed by hanging .