Prisons, police summary courts and executions

Occupation terror relied on places that connected arrest with interrogation, sentencing and killing. A Gestapo political department could register prisoners and conduct investigations; a police summary court could issue mass death sentences after nominal hearings; camp or prison personnel then carried out executions.

At Auschwitz, the Katowice Gestapo’s summary court met in Block 11. Rudolf Mildner presided over proceedings, while Maximilian Grabner’s Political Department handled investigations and participated in the machinery around executions. Their responsibilities overlapped but were not identical. The distinction matters because it shows how institutional cooperation produced an immediate path from a file to the execution wall.

Radogoszcz in Łódź shows another part of the mechanism. Routine beatings, torture and executions culminated in the January 1945 attempt to liquidate the prison and its detainees as German forces withdrew. Walter Pelzhausen’s trial allows the command role to be examined alongside the actions of individual guards.