Hans Bothmann " SS - Hauptsturmführer " Hans Bothmann or Hans Johann Bothmann ( November 11 , 1911 – April 4 , 1946 ) was the last commandant of the Chełmno extermination camp from 1942 on ( SS card number 117630 ) ; leader of the " SS Special Detachment Bothmann " conducting the extermination of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto and other places . He committed suicide in British custody in April 1946 while in Heide . Career highlights . Bothmann was born in Lohe - Rickelshof village in the Dithmarschen district of Holstein ( northern Germany ) in November 1911 . He joined the paramilitary Hitler Youth ( " Hitlerjugend " , HJ ) in 1932 . Soon , he got a full - time job with the Gestapo office " Stapoleitstelle Berlin " , and in 1937 became a " Kriminalkommissar " there . He was 28 years old at the time of the German invasion of Poland . During the summer of 1942 , after replacing " Hauptsturmführer " Herbert Lange at Chełmno , Hans Bothmann made substantial changes to the camp ' s killing methods . The improvements were prompted by two incidents in March and April of that year . First , the gas van broke down on the highway while full of living victims . Soon after that , the Sauer van exploded while the driver was revving its engine at the loading ramp ; the gassing compartment was full of living Jews . The explosion blew off the locked back door , and badly burned the victims inside . Drivers were replaced . Bothmann ' s modifications to the killing methods included adding poison to gasoline . There is evidence that some red powder and a fluid were delivered from Germany by Maks Sado freight company , in order to kill the victims more quickly . Another major change involved parking the gas vans while prisoners were killed . They were no longer driven en route to the forest cremation area with living victims inside . The Chełmno death factory , credited with the murder of at least 180 , 000 Jews before the war ' s end ( see Chełmno Trials for supplementary data ) , operated under Bothmann originally between the summer of 1942 and March 1943 . With almost all Jews of the " Wartheland " District already " processed " , the camp was closed in March 1943 . Bothmann was sent to Yugoslavia , but a year later he was summoned back to Poznań in order to supervise the renewed killing operations at Chełmno , because the Łódź Ghetto continued to take in prisoners not only from occupied Poland but also from Germany , Bohemia , Moravia and other places . A total of 70 , 000 Jews were still there . In this final phase of the camp operation , Bothmann supervised the murder of some 25 , 000 victims before finally , in mid - July 1944 , the SS and police began deporting the remaining inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz - Birkenau . In September 1944 , the SS brought in new Commando 1005 to exhume and cremate any remaining evidence of genocide . Bothmann took part in the shooting of the last Jewish workers . He fled the forest camp just before the arrival of the Soviet Army . His final assignment was in Flensburg with SIPO and the Border Police before the war ' s end . Captured in West Germany by the British , he hanged himself while in custody , unaware that a life of freedom might have awaited him , similar to other mass murderers ( Strippel , Reinefarth , Fiedler ) because " genocide " was not in the criminal code of the Third Reich and would not be applied retroactively . Yet , Hans Bothmann was not alone . He was one of at least a dozen high profile Nazi German functionaries and Holocaust perpetrators who committed suicide , including Theodor Dannecker ( ' 45 ) , Odilo Globocnik ( ' 45 ) , Richard Glücks ( ' 45 ) , Friedrich Kruger ( ' 45 ) , Ilse Koch ( ' 67 ) , Ernst Grawitz ( ' 45 ) , Karl Jager ( ' 59 ) , Otto Thierack ( ' 46 ) , Walter Frank ( ' 45 ) , Robert Ley ( ' 45 ) , Manfred von Killinger ( ' 44 ) , and Hans Jeschonnek ( ' 43 ) among other nationals .