Regional security police, deportation and detention

Regional Security Police and SD offices were divided into commands, Gestapo departments, specialist sections and subordinate field posts. The Białystok records show why those levels matter: a KdS, the head of Department IV and officers responsible for Jewish affairs or resistance each controlled different decisions. Lothar Heimbach's conviction rests on specified deportations, a reprisal execution and an individual order, not on every act committed in the district.

Personnel and practices moved between regions. Karl Pütz commanded offices in Rivne and Lublin; Gerhard Flesch moved from an Einsatzkommando and the Łódź Gestapo to commands in Norway; Rudolf Batz served in mobile killing operations, Kraków and Dortmund. Hans-Joachim Böhme shows how a standing Gestapo office could supply the personnel and command structure for a mobile execution unit along a border. Each transition retains its own dates, documents and territorial limits.

Deportation required coordination beyond a single police office. Martin Fellenz directed field implementation of deportation complexes, Helmut Ortwin Pohl appears in a document concerning the onward movement and labour selection of a specific Slovak transport, and Paul Salitter commanded a railway escort and wrote its report. Otto Hantke connected ghetto selection to forced labour at Budzyn, while commandants and camp staff at Stutthof, Neuengamme and Majdanek occupied separate positions in detention and killing systems.

The postwar record ranges from executed sentences through limited prison terms to interrupted proceedings and no trial. Court findings are therefore used to individualise acts, while perpetrator reports and institutional files reconstruct logistics that a judgment did not always reach. An acquittal on a particular count, a discontinued case or the death of a suspect is stated directly and is not replaced by a collective allegation against an office.